PROTECTION. 115 



cise in order to keep warm ! If a thermometer is pushed 

 up among them, it will indicate a high temperature, even 

 when the external atmosphere is many degrees below zero. 

 "When bees are unable to maintain the necessary amount of 

 animal heat, an occurrence which is very common with 

 small colonies in badly protected hives, then, as a matter of 

 course, they quickly perish. 



Extreme cold, when of long continuance, very frequently, 

 in thin hives, destroys colonies strong both in bees and honey. 

 The inside of such hives, is often filled with frost, and the 

 bees, after eating all the food in the combs ,in which they are 

 clustered, are unable to enter the frosty ones, and thus starve 

 in the midst of plenty. The unskilfuU bee-keeper who finds 

 an abundance of honey in the hives, cannot conjecture the 

 cause of their death. 



Bees will very seldom desert the combs containing brood, 

 and hence when the honey in ihem is consumed, they will 

 not, in a body, transfer themselves to other combs, but choose 

 rather to die upon their young. This is a calamity which 

 rarely occurs, in well protected hives. 



If the cold merely destroyed feeble colonies, or strong ones 

 only now and then, it would not be so formidable an enemy ; 

 but every year, it causes some of the most flourishing stocks 

 to perish by starvation. The extra quantity of food which 

 they are compelled to eat, in order to keep up the heat in 

 their miserable hives, is often the turning point with them, 

 between life and death. They starve, when with proper 

 protection, they would have had food enough and to spare. 



But some one may say, " What possible difference can 

 the kind of hives in which bees are kept, make in the quan- 

 tity of food which they will consume ? " To this I would 

 reply that we cannot move a finger, or wink even an eye-lid 

 without some waste of muscle, however small ; for it is a 



