WINTER MANAGEMENT. 61 



CHAPTER X. 



MANAGEMENT DURING WINTER AND EARLY SPRING. 



One of the most important particulars connected with bee 

 management, is taking care that they are abundantly supplied 

 with food in autumn, and also taking care at that season to ascer- 

 tain whether or not they are sufficiently strong in numbers, and if 

 not, to unite your weak stocks, so as to form strong ones. It is 

 by such treatment as this that you may expect to preserve your 

 bees in health and strength through the winter, and to have 

 them in a condition to attend properly to their brood in the early 

 spring. 



In a large straw hive, there should be left, at your autumnal 

 honey harvest, from twenty to twenty-five, or even, according to 

 the size of the hive, thirty pounds weight of honey, exclusive, 

 be it remembered, of the weight of hive, stand, and bees. If 

 you should, from any accident, find your hive deficient in weight, 

 you must make up the deficiency by artificial feeding, either with 

 honey or with the mixture of ale and sugar. 



Having ascertained that you have supplied your stocks with a 

 sufficiently ample quantity of food for their support during win- 

 ter, or that they already possess enough, you should next narrow 

 the entrance of the hive so that it will scarcely admit of the pas- 

 sage of more than a single bee at a time ; and towards the middle 

 of November the entrance should be closed nearly altogether. 

 The hives should be covered up with matting, fern, or other 

 similar substance, in order to preserve them from rain, frost, or, 

 the most dangerous of all, the sun's rays of a fine winter's day. 

 These deceptive rays would afford a temptation to the bees to 

 sally forth, and the result would be, that they would become 

 chilled by the cold. Few would survive the flight so as to return 

 to the hive : its temperature would fall, and you would lose your 

 stock. Your hives should remain thus carefully covered and 

 closed until the beginning of March. 



I must here mention a mode of protecting your hives, and 

 rendering them in point of warmth in winter, coolness in summer, 

 imperviousness to wet, inaccessibility to moths, and other foes at 

 least, unless through the entrance, and also in durability, equal 

 to wooden boxes, viz., a coating of Roman cement on the exterior. 



