WINTERING. 
527 
those that are strong ; and experience shows me 
that there is no risk with a pint of bees on two 
frames, properly handled, in the South of England, 
and I have wintered a teacupful, which subse- 
quently built itself into a stock, with no help beyond 
food. We have no need to see how much our 
bees can sustain, but should rather desire to 
bring them through till April, little tried, and ready 
for the severe labour of giving us the nurses for the 
heavy population which is to do the work of honey- 
gathering, and so prevent spring dwindling, which I 
venture to believe, in common with some of the best 
observers, is almost always the result of excessive 
effort, rendered necessary by poor protection. 
Some years since, I made experiments on hive walls, 
which have led many makers to modify their patterns. 
I took a number of tin chambers, each holding i2oz. 
of water. After filling with water at 200°, they 
were placed in boxes, representing different descriptions 
of hive sides, all of which had been before carefully 
brought to a uniform temperature, and then the time 
occupied by each in falling through a certain number 
of degrees was noted. For this very delicate ther- 
mometers were used, and the calculations based on 
Newton’s Law of Cooling. The following results were 
made clear: If a hive side of fin. pine have its pro- 
tective power represented by i, that of a double 
side with lin. dead (?) air space would equal 4, while 
the same wooden sides packed tightly with chaff would 
equal 10. It has been argued that air is a better 
non-conductor than any solid substance, and, therefore, 
is better than any form of packing ; but the fallacy 
