OUT—DOOR WINTERING, 833 
Out-Door WInTERING. 
632. The usual mode of allowing bees to remain all 
Winter on their Summer stands, is, in cold climates, very 
objectionable. In those parts of the country, however, where 
the cold is seldom so severe as to prevent them from flying, 
at frequent intervals, from their hives, no better way, all 
things considered, can be devised. In such favored regions, 
bees are but little removed from their native climate, and 
their w nts may be easily supplied, without those injurious 
effects which commonly result from disturbing them when 
the weather is so cold as to confine them to their hives. 
If the colonies are to be wintered in the open air, they 
should all be made populous, and rich in stores, even if to 
do so requires their number to be réduced one-half or more. 
The bee-keeper who has ten strong colonies in the Spring, 
will, by judicious management with movable-frame hives, 
be able to close the season with a larger Apiary than one 
who begins it with thirty, or more, feeble ones. 
G32 (bis). Small colonies consume, proportionally, much 
more food than large ones, and then perish from inability 
to maintain sufficient heat. 
Bees, in small or contracted hives, especially when de- 
prived of all the honey gathered in Spring, as stated be- 
fore (G29), have too scanty a population for a successful 
wintering, especially out of doors; for, as it is by eating 
that bees generate warmth, the abdomens of a small number 
are soon filled with residues, and if the cold continues for 
weeks the bees get the diarrhea (784). We have often 
seen colonies in small hives perishing side by side with 
large ones whose bees were very healthy. 
Such facts abound, and we have but to open the bee- 
journals to find the confirmation of our statement. 
