BEES 
out serious interruption during the latter 
part of the summer and the cluster of 
bees occupies, on a cool day in autumn, 
six to eight or more spaces between the 
combs, or forms a compact cluster eight 
or ten inches in diameter. Young bees, 
if not well protected by older ones, suc- 
cumb readily to the cold, while quite old 
bees die early in the spring, and others, 
which emerged late in the summer or au- 
tumn preceding, are needed to replace 
them. The third essential—good food— 
is secured if the hive is liberally supplied 
with well-ripened honey from any source 
whatever, or with fairly thick syrup, 
made from white cane sugar, which was 
fed early enough to enable the bees to 
seal it over before they ceased flying. 
The syrup is prepared by dissolving three 
pounds of granulated sugar in one quart 
of boiling water and adding to this one 
pound of pure extracted honey. Twenty 
to 25 pounds for outdoor wintering in 
the South, up to 30 or 40 pounds in the 
North, when wintered outside with but 
slight protection—or, if wintered indoors, 
about 20 pounds—may be considered a 
fair supply of winter food. 
Indoor Wintering 
A dry, dark cellar or special repository 
built in a sidehill or with double, filled 
walls, like those of an icehouse, may be 
utilized for wintering bees in extremely 
cold climates. It should be so built that 
a temperature of 42 to 45 degrees Fahr- 
enheit (the air being fairly dry in the 
cellar) can be maintained during the 
greater part of the winter. To this end 
it should be well drained, furnished with 
adjustable ventilators, and covered all 
over with earth, except the entrance, 
where close-fitting doors, preferably three 
of them, should open in succession, so as 
to separate the main room from the out- 
side by a double entry way. The col- 
onies, supplied with good queens, plenty 
of bees, 20 to 25 pounds of stores each, 
and with chaff cushions placed over the 
frames, are carried in shortly before snow 
and severe freezing weather come. 
Any repository which is damp or one 
whose temperature falls below freezing 
or remains long below 38 degrees Fahren- 
595 
heit is not a suitable place in which to 
winter bees. When in repositories, the 
bees have no opportunity for a cleansing 
flight, nor do they, when the temperature 
rises outside, always warm up sufficiently 
to enable the cluster to move from combs 
from which the stores have been exhaust- 
ed to full ones, hence in a cold repository 
they may possibly starve with plenty of 
food in the hive. As a rule, colonies 
would be better off out of doors on their 
summer stands than in such places. 
Outdoor Wintering 
Cold and dampness are the great winter 
enemies of bee life A single bee can 
withstand very little cold, but a good 
cluster, if all other conditions are favor- 
able, can defy the most rigorous winters 
of our coldest states. But if not thor- 
oughly dry, even a moderate degree of 
cold is always injurious, if not absolutely 
fatal. Dampness in winter is therefore 
the most dangerous element with which 
the bee keeper has to contend. The mat- 
ter would, of course, be quite simple if 
only that dampness which might come 
from the outside were to be considered, 
but when the air of the hive, somewhat 
warmed by the bees and more or less 
charged with the moisture of respiration, 
comes in contact with hive walls or comb 
surfaces made cold by outside air, con- 
densation takes place, and the moisture 
trickles over the cold surfaces and cluster 
of bees, saturating the air about them or 
even drenching them, unless by forming 
a very compact cluster they are able to 
prevent it from penetrating, or by greater 
activity to raise the temperature suffi- 
ciently to evaporate the surplus moisture, 
or at least that portion near them. But 
this greater activity is, of course, at the 
expense of muscular power and requires 
the consumption of nitrogenous as well 
as carbonaceous food. Increased cold or 
its long continuance greatly aggravates 
conditions. 
Nature has provided that the accumula- 
tion of waste products in the body of the 
bee during its winter confinement should 
be small under normal conditions, but 
unusual consumption of food, especially 
of a highly nitrogenous nature like pollen, 
