CONSTRUCTIVE BEEKEEPING 21 



Weather Station at Moorhead, Minnesota, for three days at 7 



P. M. are as follows: 



i 



1916 Temperature Humidity 



May 13 45.5 93 



May 14 42.5 100 



May 15 37.5 96 



To remove from the hive one grain of water vapor by fan- 

 ning on May 13, the volume of air that would have to be moved 

 would be five or six times the air capacity of the hive. To re- 

 move one pound of water would require the removal of a volume 

 of air equal to the capacity of from 30,000 to 40,000 hive-bodies. 

 On May 14 the outside air being saturated, no water vapor could 

 be removed by a change of air, and on May 15 the result would be 

 about the same. 



From this it can readily be seen that little evaporation from 

 the nectar could take place by ventilation, and we are led to be- 

 lieve that on such days as these the urge takes hold, giving 

 swarms the last week of May. 



No contention will be raised when the statement is made 

 that the water is evaporated from the honey before we have 

 ripened honey. It has been taken for granted that as soon as the 

 v/ater passes off by evaporation the bees were done with it. 

 They would be if this evaporation took place the same as from 

 the family wash hung on a line in open air. But if instead of hav- 

 ing the great volume of mooving outside air, we have in a stan- 

 dard hive body a little less than one cubic foot of air, where is all 

 this water vapor going to go ? Saturate this small volume of air 

 at hive temperature and the water vapor in it would be from 

 1-600 to 1-5000 of what the bees evaporate in a night during a 

 good honey flow. If they saturated this air 1 in the hive and then 

 forced it out at the entrance, they would cause rain in the hive 

 near the entrance. 



When hive conditions are as they should be we must con- 

 clude that all the air in the hive is never near saturation. There 

 is no known way of accurately measuring the humidity of the air 

 inside the hive, but we can safely estimate that, except for a thin 



