TEMPERATURE. 
21 
centre, a sudden cold spell will freeze a number of them be- 
tween the outside combs. Holes made through the centre 
of these combs in the fall, would remedy the evil. In com- 
mon hives a hole could bo bored through them ; in movable 
comb hives the combs could be lifted out and holes cut in 
them, I said a populous hive of bees could endure a great 
amount of cold if kept dry inside. Bee-keepers have gone to 
their hives in a warm day, immediately succeeding a cold 
spell, and found water running down the inside of the hive, 
and standing in puddles on the bottom board, and have won- 
dered where so much water came from, as their hives were 
well covered. Bees are constantly perspiring, and the per- 
spiration rises and settles on the sides and top of the hive 
and on the combs. Turn a box hive bottom up after a night’s 
hard freezing, and the combs inside of the hive will be found 
covered with frost. If the freezing should continue several 
weeks, the amount of ice would be considerable. In the 
winter of ’55 and ’56, hard freezing continued two or . 
three months, until in many cases, where there was no upward 
ventilation, there was moisture congealed to the amount of 
from a pint to a quart. One warm day thawed it and it ran 
among the combs and bees, and the same evening there set 
in a hard freeze, and many colonies of bees perished. It is 
estimated that one-half of the bees in the State of Ohio died 
that winter, although generally rich in honey. Hives that 
had holes in the top and empty boxes set over them, or were 
otherwise ventilated, fared much better. 
PREPARING TO WINTER. 
It is not good economy to attempt to winter bees not amply 
supplied with honey to last them until the flowers appear in 
the spring, for winter and spring feeding is generally very 
unsatisfactory ; and to have bees die in the spring, after 
eating fifteen or twenty pounds of nice honey, is quite a dis- 
appointment. Difference in colonies, and different seasons, 
and the manner of wintering, variously affect the amount re- 
quired by a colony. It is perhaps best to have a rule not to 
commence wintering a colony with less than twenty-five 
pounds of honey, although it is seldom a colony will consumo 
so much as that ; but it is unsafe to ruu them too close. On 
the first of November, unless the combs in a hive arc very old, 
