WINTERING BEES. 327 



HOW PART OF THE SWARM IS FROZEN. 



A good family will form a ball or circle about eight 

 incb.es in diameter, generally about equal every way, 

 and must occupy the spaces between four or five 

 combs. As combs must separate them into divisions, 

 the two outer ones are smallest, a?id inost exposed of 

 any ; these are often found frozen to death in severe 

 weather. Should evidence be wanting from other 

 sources to show that bees will freeze to death, the 

 above would seem to furnish it. It is said, " that in 

 Poland bees are wintered in a semi-torpid state, in 

 consequence of the extreme cold." We must either 

 doubt the correctness of this relation, or suppose the 

 bee of that country a different inaect from ours — a 

 kind of semi-wasp, that will live through the winter, 

 and eat little or nothing. The reader can have no 

 difficulty in deciding which is the most probable, 

 whether bees are bees throughout the world, endowed 

 with the same faculties and instincts, or that the facts 

 as they are, are not precisely given, especially when 

 we see what our own apiarians tell us about their 

 never freezing. 



Here I might use strong language in contradiction ; 

 but as I am aware that such a course is not always the 

 most convincing, I prefer the test of close observation. 

 If bees will freeze, it is important t^ know it, and in 

 what circumstances. 



HOW A SMALL FAMILY MAT ALL FREEZE. 



Suppose a quart of bees were put in a box or hive 

 where all the cells were filled and lengthened out with 



