10 
for this when you learn that it takes twenty pounds of 
honey before they can build one pound of comb, just 
as certain as that a hop must eat one bushel of corn to 
take on ten pounds of fat. Now, you see how valuable 
comb already made is to bees, then, we say, away with 
the idea that the comb must be changed every three or 
four years. You might as well say that a man will 
prosper better by burning up his cabin every three or 
four years. Our advice is not to change the comb short 
of ten years, and you may leave it even longer with per- 
fect safety. 
WINTERING BEES. 
_ One thing is certain bees must have sufficient fresh 
air. They take in oxygen from the air and give out car 
bouic acid gas and unless this is allowed to pass off, and 
fresh air to take its place the bees are poisoned by it and 
die. Thousands of dollars worth ot' bees are lost an- 
nually for the want of fresh air. The McDonald Hive 
provides for this. 
Bees must be protected, in this climate, in the winter 
from the sudden changes from heat to cold. A man in 
Iowa, says that he came to the conclusion that what 
was good to keep ice in the summer would be good to keep 
bees in the winter and he built him an ice house suffi- 
ciently ventilated, and out of c’ghty-five stand of bees 
that he wintered in it he did not lose a single colony. — 
Some of them were very weak, so that lie did not ex- 
pect to winter them over, and he says he lost the winter 
before forty out of sixty-five, wintered on the stand 
without any protection. This house he says cost him 
forty dollars but, you say, we cannot afford to go to that 
expense for a few stand of bees. We grant all that but 
this need not hinder you from adopting some cheaper 
plau. 
In using the McDonald Hive and bench, late in the 
fall, in the first cold spell, when the bees will have no 
disposition to fly, we place our benches about six inch- 
es apart, one double hive on each bcueh with the back 
