108 



MANUAL OF APICULTURE. 



Fig. 72. 



-Tlie American straw hive of Hayek 

 Bros. 



good siii)ph\ Wlien natural stores are found to be lacking in the 

 brood chamber, the best substitute is a sirup made of granulated sugar, 

 which should be fed early in the autumn as rapidly as the bees can 



manipulate it and store it away. If 

 given slowly the bees will be incited 

 to rear brood unseasonably, and will 

 consume much of the food in this 

 way. If several pounds be given 

 at a time — placed in the top story of 

 the colony to be fed, just at night- 

 fall — it will be stored away quickly, 

 so that in a week at most the full 

 winter stores will be completed. 

 The bees will seal it over better if fed 

 slowly at the last; that is, after the 

 main feeding. Sirup made by per- 

 colation of cold water through a 

 mass of sugar and then through some porous material, as cotton, is what 

 is called a completely saturated solution ; that is, it contains all the sugar 

 the water can be made to hold, and will not trouble by granulation (tig. 

 71). The same difficulty is avoided 

 by adding well -ripened honey to 

 moderately thick sirup, about one- 

 fourth or one-fifth as nuich honey 

 as sirup. Molasses, brown sugar, 

 glucose, etc., are not suitable for 

 winter stores for bees. 



It is poor policy to permit bees to 

 enter winter quarters without an 

 abundance of stores — better twice 

 the amount that will be actually 

 consumed than merely enough to 

 enable them to live through. 



(4) The bees must be l<ept dry and 

 warm. — A substantial hive with a 

 tight roof will keep rain and snow 

 from the cluster; but the bees must 

 have air even during the severest 

 weather and also when in their most 

 quiescent state; hence the question 

 of ventilation has to be considered. 

 It has occasioned more discussion 

 and experimentation than any other 

 point concerned in the wintering of bees. The amount of ventilation 

 both indoors and outside, whether upward ventilation or lower ventila- 

 tion, or both, and whether through the wooden walls of the hive alone, 



Fig. 73. — Davis hive with newspapers packed 

 between inner and outer cases, and brood 

 frames on end for the winter. (Original.) 



