WINTERING BEES. 
327 
HOW PART OF THE SWARM IS FROZEN. 
A good family will form a ball or circle about eight 
inches in diameter, generally about equal every way, 
and must occupy the spaces between four or five 
combs. As combs must separate them into divisions, 
the two outer ones are smallest, and most exposed of 
any; these are often found frozen to death in severe 
weather. Should evidence be wanting from other 
sources to show that bees will freeze to death, the 
above would seem to furnish it. It is said, “ that in 
Poland bees are wintered in a semi-torpid state, in 
consequence of the extreme cold.” We must either 
doubt the correctness of this relation, or suppose the 
bee of that country a different insect from ours — a 
kind of semi-wasp, that will live through the winter, 
and eat little or nothing. The reader can have no 
difficulty in deciding which is the most probable, 
whether bees are bees throughout the world, endowed 
with the same faculties and instincts, or that the facts 
as they are, are not precisely given, especially when 
we see what our own apiarians tell us about their 
never freezing. 
Here I might use strong language in contradiction ; 
but as I am aware that such a course is not always the 
most convincing, I prefer the test of close observation. 
If bees will freeze, it is important to know it, and in 
what circumstances. 
IIOW A SMALL FAMILY MAY ALL FREEZE. 
Suppose a quart of bees were put in a box or hive 
where all the cells were filled and lengthened out with 
