FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 293 



lighter ones have perhaps the advantage by being higher up, 

 where it is a little warmer. 



CARRYING IN BEES WHEN ROUSED UP. 



• Often the bees get so warmed up by the middle of the fore- 

 noon, that they fly out when their hive is lifted to be carried 

 into the cellar. In this case the hive is put back on its summer 

 stand, and another colony, less wide-awake, is taken. But if 

 the rousing up becomes general, operations must cease until 

 the after-part of the day or the next morning. If for any 

 reason, as the lateness of the season, or the fear of an ap- 

 proaching storm, it is thought best to carry in a hive whether 

 the bees are willing or not, the entrance must be stopped. For 

 this purpose — as there is no danger of suffocation from stop- 

 ping for a short time — I know of nothing better than a large 

 rag or cloth which will easily cover the entire entrance. The 

 rag must be dripping wet. In this condition it can be very 

 quickly laid at the entrance, and being cold and wet the bees 

 seem to be driven back by it, and when the rag is removed in 

 the cellar, few if any bees eome out. If dry, the bees would 

 sting the rag, and upon its removal in the cellar a crowd of 

 angry bees would follow it. 



WARMING THE CELLAR. 



There is a furnace in the cellar where my bees are kept, 

 which has been there since the winter of 1902-3. But let us go 

 back to the time before that, when the chief difficulty was to 

 keep the cellar warm enough. Some think it a bad thing to 

 have flre in cellar. I would rather have the right temperature 

 without the fire. So I would in my sitting-room. But when 

 the temperature in the sitting-room without a flre gets down in 

 the neighborhood of zero, I would rather have the flre. Same 

 way in the cellar. In this latitude, 42 degrees north, I have 

 known the mercury to reach 37 degrees below zero, and some 

 winters there is very little of the time when my cellar is warm 

 enough for the bees. A thermometer hangs centrally in the 

 cellar, and I try to keep it at about 4.5 degrees. Sometimes it 

 goes to 36 degrees, but not often, and not for long. Oftener it 

 reaches 50 degrees, but that is neither often nor long. 



