20 
BEE-CULTURE. 
necessary in a hive to keep up heat; consequently, if swarms 
are very small they can spare but few bees to go abroad to 
labor. 
Bees, when left to their own instincts, cluster in the top 
of the hive, and most generally start about eight combs in a 
hive twelve inches wide, being built perpendicular and par- 
allel to each other, the edges of the combs being fastened to 
the sides of the hive, but no comb fastened to another. 
Combs built in surplus honey boxes will be more irregular 
in shape, and are generally thicker than in the main cham- 
ber ; and when the cells are very deep they are curved up- 
ward better to retain the honey. The combs in the side and 
top of the hive are filled with honey, and when capped over are 
about one-fourth of an inch apart. Ihe middle and lower 
ends of the combs are occupied by brood, and when filled are 
one inch tfiiek ; when emptied of young bees they are still 
less, leaving a ^pace of about five-eighths of an inch. This 
is the winter quarters for the bees. 
Bees can only keep up the necessary temperature 
OF BLOOD HEAT IN MIDWINTER BY HOVERING IN A COMPACT 
cluster. If all the combs in the hive were sheets of cold 
honey, only one-fourth of an inch apart, they would afford 
the bees rather cool lodgings, and they would certainly per- 
ish. But as the young bees are about through hatching by 
the first of November, the bees will crawl into the empty 
cells in the middle of the hive and fill the space between the 
combs, thus making a compact cluster presenting but little 
surface to the cool air; and empty combs being non-conduct- 
ors of heat, they are enabled to economize their heat most 
admirably ; hence it may be seen acolony may have too much 
honey to winter well. A good, populous colony will, in this 
way, if kept dry, endure the rigors of the most severe win- 
ters in the United States. In warm days they will carry 
some honey in from the side* and top of the hive, and deposit 
it in the cells in the centre of the cluster, where they may 
have access to it in severe weather, to prevent venturing out 
in the cold parts of the hive for it. This gives rise to the 
idea that bees eat most in warm weather. But there seem 
to be no cases where the extreme cold is so protracted that 
the bees, having consumed all the honey deposited in the 
cluster, and there being frost and ice on all parts of the comb 
containing the honey, they may starve in the cluster with 
