108 
MANUAL OF APICULTURE. 
Fig. 72. — The American straw hive of Hayek 
Bros. 
good supply. When 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 (fig. 
71). The same difficulty is avoided 
by adding well-ripened honey to 
moderately thick sirup, about one- 
fourth or one-fifth as much 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 kept 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, 
^kI^^^ 
§\ 
I lllllli! 
I 
j^""^>>3! ,,:.,'i.l .:.:-.. 
fi; 
III 
,. 
Fig. 73.— Davis hive with newspapers packed 
between inner and outer cases, and brood 
frames on end for the winter. (Original.) 
