. WINTERING. 
525 
discharge themselves upon their combs, producing 
a condition which has been incorrectly described 
as “ dysenteric,” dysentery being a well-defined 
disease, producing the symptoms described, but from 
a different cause (see next chapter). 
“ The pollen theory,” so called, now much advo- 
cated in America, as usually expressed at least, 
wrongly lays all the evil at the door of the pollen 
and asserts that bees need nothing but honey or sugar 
during the winter, and that, in consequence, no pollen 
should be allowed them, when the disagreeable 
results mentioned could not follow. It is true that 
without pollen the bowels will not become distended, 
but it must not be forgotten that the bees will suffer 
emaciation from semi-starvation (page 402). All crea- 
tures consume instinctively fitting food. Dogs long 
deprived of nitrogenous aliment will die of starvation 
with butter, which they commonly so much love, un- 
touched before them. Honey the bees consume to 
enable them to produce heat and give forth energy, 
and pollen to renew their nerve and muscle waste, 
selecting the one or the other, as Nature needs_ 
The right remedy for bowel distension appears to me 
to He in carefully securing good wintering conditions, 
and so saving that waste which makes nitrogenous 
food necessary. In America, this possibly means cellar 
wintering with a fairly dry air at a sustained tem- 
perature of 43° or a damp air 2° or 3° higher. Healthy 
bees, properly wintered in this country on their sum- 
mer stands, would rarely, if ever, consume so much 
pollen as to occasion the difficulty under consideration 
The removal of the pollen has been found by many 
