330 WINTERING AXD SPRING DWINDLING. 



have an intolerably offensive smell. In excessive confine- 

 ment, with a large consumption, from anj- cause, of more or 

 less healthy food, when bees can no longer retain the e.x:ere- 

 ments in their distended abdomen, they void them upon 

 one another, upon the combs, upon the floor, and at the 

 entrance of the hive, "which bees in a healthy state are 

 particularly careful to keep clean." 



If bees can void them, in flight (73), before it is too 

 late, they experience no bad effects, hence it is indispensa- 

 ble that, when wintered out of doors, bees should be enabled 

 to fly, at intervals, during the Winter. 



627. From numerous experiments made, it is evident 

 that the purest saccharine matter will feed them with the least 

 production of faeces. Hence watery, unripe, or sour honey, 

 and all honey containing extraneous matter, are more or 

 .ess injurious to confined bees. Dark honey containing a 

 large proportion of mellose is inferior to clover honey or 

 sugar-syrup. Honey harvested from flowers, which yield 

 much pollen (263), is likely to contain many floating 

 grains of it, and will be more injurious than clear, trans- 

 parent honey, in eases where bees will be confined to their 

 hives by cold for five or six weeks. Honey-dew (255) 

 seems worse yet. The juices of fruits, apples, grapes, etc. 

 (877), are worst of all. In the Winter of 1880-81, we 

 purchased the remains of some 90 colonies, that had been 

 winter-killed, and in which the only food left was apple- 

 juice, that had been carried in, during the preceding Fall, 

 and had turned to cider. This unwholesome food in Winter 

 confinement, by causing diarrhea, had killed bees every- 

 where aroun 1 us (784). 



628. Happily these instances, of bees storing apple- 

 juice, are scarce, but the practical bee-keeper will not allow 

 such food to remain in the hive. It can be extracted (749), 

 boiled, and fed back in Spring, for bees do not suffer from 



