PRACTICAL BEEKEEPING 53 
04-05. To facilitate these experiments and the general work of the 
apiary a clapboard, one story building was erected on the Station 
farm just east of the poultry buildings. This bee house contains 
three rooms, one for a shop fitted up with a work bench and the 
necessary tools, a second for a honey room, containing the ex- 
tractor, uncapping can, honey tank and tubs, together with scales 
and table and all the necessary: things for canning and labeling the 
honey. 
-At the back side of the building, and running the length of it, 
is a room with a dirt floor fitted up with two skeleton shelves of 
two-by-fours so that some forty or fifty colonies of bees may he 
wintered under as nearly normal conditions as possible with the en- 
trances connected with the outside, permitting the bees to fly at will. 
Above these rooms in the gable roof, is ample storage room for 
empty hives and for surplus combs when not in use for the honey 
harvest. 
During the first two winters prior to the erection of this bee 
-house, experiments were carried on in outdoor wintering and in 
packing a number of colonies in straw under one roof. The ea- 
periments during the last two years were not only modified by the 
indoor wintering with packing only above the colonies but also by 
packing colonies in straw in an open shed against the side of the 
house. (See the accompanying figures.) ‘tes 
Tests were also made of the wintering qualities of Carniolans, 
Italians, Cyprians,, Cyprio-Carniolans and Caucasio-Carniolans. 
The queens of these races and crosses were obtained through the 
courtesy of the agricultural workers of the bureau of Entomology, 
at Washington. The various qualities of these varieties of bees 
have been discussed in full in earlier ages. The Carniolans seem 
to hold the lead as winterers, though the marvelous powers of the 
Cyprians and their crosses to build up in the spring quite in contrast 
to the Italians, make them worthy of notice in this connection, as 
good winterers for this if for no other reasons. 
The methods of handling bees in Montana, as in some other 
localities, in the late summer and fall, has a good deal to do with 
their successful-wintering. This is particularly true in the Gallatin 
Valley, where there is no autumn yield of honey. By no yield 
we do not mean that absolutely no honey is gathered but that there 
is no harvest beyond what is needed by the bees. We observed that 
