OOT-DOOll WINT15UINQ. 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 suppUed, 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 reduced 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. 



632 (6is). 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 (629), 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. 



