530 
BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 
and especially near the hive mouth. These keep up 
a constant current by uninterruptedly flapping their 
wings while they hold on with their feet, the air of 
the interior being scarcely less pure than that with- 
out. Very strong colonies, if visited at an early hour 
on chilly spring mornings, will be pouring out a stream 
of condensed vapour — popularly steam — while the water 
from it will continue to drip from the alighting-board, 
and if a lighted candle be placed in the outcast of air, 
it will be at once extinguished. But in biting weather 
the little labourers whose earnest efforts to secure an 
untainted atmosphere may often shame us, are driven 
from the door to the cluster, where, closely huddled 
together, they resist a temperature in which a single 
bee could no more continue its vitality than could a 
single coal continue to burn in the fire-grate. But 
air, although the fanners have ceased, is no less 
necessary than before, and our calculation shows the 
large amount actually consumed. If it is all to pass 
the hive mouth, this must not be greatly contracted, 
or the fallacious idea of “ keeping the bees warm ’’ 
will make them possibly the victims of cold. Bees 
stifled by contracted hive mouths, and the careful 
closing of all apertures above, are in the condition of 
coke in an Arnott stove with the draught-hole closed. 
The process of heat-production cannot go on, and the 
bees, stupefied by carbonic acid, possibly drop from 
their cluster to die, and, in dying, close more com- 
pletely the narrow opening by their bodies. 
I strongly advocated, in former years, that ventilation 
should be allowed through the top cover ; further 
developments have made it doubtful whether this is 
