1874. 
GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 
41 
net of the stables. Perhaps we might as well 
admit that Novice has gone wild over the 
project, and declares he never wants to put 
bees in-doors again to winter. It will be re- 
membered the lower bar of the trellis is one 
foot from the ground, and by setting the hive 
about six inches back from them we can build 
the manure from the hive to this bar, in such 
a way that the entrance of the hive is nearly a 
foot back in the heap; the sun shines in here 
but no rain nor wind can enter, and the bees 
will come out and tiask in the sunshine, ap- 
parently as happy as kittens, during days that 
are too cool for them to fly. 
Min'd. 'Sril — To day we finished covering our 
whole 50 hives with the exception of the 
•Quinby hive whose great size appals us; all 
■strong ones except that, are working merrily 
■on the meal. 
Murd 4 th — We must have our Quinby hive 
enjoy all the advantages of the rest, and so we 
have taken away the hive entirely except the 
bottom-board and frames ; have covered the 
latter with shingles and were thus enabled to 
get them in shape to be covered nicely. As 
they occupy but a comparatively small com- 
pass in this way, we should consider it an 
excellent plan for wintering the Q. hive. 
We have found but one case of real dysen- 
tery, and that is the hive that hung on the 
Spring Balance. At the time of feeding them 
they had more scaled stores than any of the 
rest, but owing to the position they occupied 
they had been passed by when we did the 
regular Ext'ng preparatory to feed ing, and as 
our things were washed up we, “ kind of con- 
cluded’’ that it must have been mostly gath- 
ered horn tlie half barrel of dry sugar. Well, 
we to day cleaned out the hive, covered the 
frames with dry straw, put the cover over it 
loosely a la JVIuth, and covered them up with 
the rest. 
Morck 14th — We have had just two weeks 
of bad weather, some of it extremely cold and 
wintry. As most of the bees are out again to 
day, we concluded to be out too, making ex- 
aminations. Spring Balance colony is dead ; 
frames, combs, and bottom-board badly soiled 
with the' disagreeable excrement nearly as 
black as tar, although there was plenty of 
bees, and abundant ventilation arranged 
through the straw. As there is nothing like 
it any where else in the whole apiary, tVe hope 
we may be excused for thinking if we had left 
them all with their natural stores we should 
have had many similar cases. 
’Tis true, many of the sugar fed colonies soil 
the snow, and Mrs. N’s. clothes on washing 
day, (she says they are sure to fly on Monday 
forenoons) but the spots are light colored and 
of a yellowish hue, and even when fed late, on 
their syrup, they never exhibited the symp- 
toms of the colony just mentioned. 
'Tis our painful duty also, to chronicle the 
loss of 4 other colonies; and a fifth that was 
found with about a half dozen Italians guard- 
ing the entrance from a series of such desper- 
ate attacks made on them by robbers, that we 
were led to look inside, and beheld the Queen 
disconsolately trying to “keep house” alone. 
This colony was the only one of the 13 put 
under the manure heaps in Feb., but what are 
in flue condition, and in their case they were 
so well protected from the cold that their 
numbers were thinned down, one by one, until 
the last half dozen were actually doing duty as 
lively as ever. We caged the Queen with her 
few remaining subjects, proposing to send 
them to “Cyula” (we hope you will all know 
her bye and bye) but “more troubles” inter- 
rupted this neighborly plan. The day had 
been unusually tine and the bees poured out in 
such glee, that we several times feared for our 
Queens, and sure enough shortly after noon 
we heard the very unwelcome note of swarming. 
We could with a good relish, have “taken a 
shingle” to every individual bee, that started 
the mania, but there was no help. One Queen 
with a clipped wing we caught in a short 
time, but one young unclipped lass we found 
just in time to get her out of a knot of bees at 
the entrance to another hive ; this one we rec- 
ognized from her shape and color, and put her 
in her own home forthwith. The other one — 
well, she died, for no other reason that we 
know of, unless she did it “just a purpose.” 
Although “ Cyula’s” Queenless colony received 
no positive aid, they can take notice they are 
remembered. 
As to the cause of the swarming out, we 
found the colony of the Queen that died, des- 
titute of eggs and brood, although having 
plenty of bees, and so think it likely she had 
failed, as she was nearly 3 years old ; the 
other was a remarkably prolific Queen, reared 
last fall late, and had a fine family of bees, 
with brood and plenty of everything. We can 
only guess that the bees went out with such a 
rush that she thought they wanted her to go 
too, and she “go-ed” but we hope she will be 
good now and won’t any more. 
We have now lost 13 colonies out of 57 and 
our only way of accounting for most of the 
losses, is that there were too few bees in the 
fall. This is not wholly satisfactory however, 
for one of our most populous, are among the 
missing, (see page 30 March flo.) and three, 
that were among the very weakest are doing 
finely, in fact one of them had many more bees 
this spring than when put into the house. 
When Mr. Wilkin was here last Nov., we 
showed him a colony with the remark that it 
seemed folly to expect, such a handful of bees 
to winter, to which he replied they might 
nevertheless, and to our astonishment they are 
to day one of our fairest. Why didn’t they 
dwindle down too? 
If we were going to make any deductions 
'twould be about like this : Weak colonies 
may build up, but the chances are greatly in 
favor of their going the other way ; and the 
worst feature about it is that, judging from a 
great number of reports, we seem to have but 
little power to control the matter. Also, 
strong colonics may dwindle down , but the 
chances are rather in favor of their not doing 
so, hence we must conclude after summing it 
all up that, 
Stiiong colonies a he always safest, and 
perhaps we might add, for all operations in 
Bee Culture. 
March 18th — And the end is not yet. Two 
more stocks failed on account of insufficient 
numbers, in fact one colony hadn’t “ary num- 
bers” at all when we found ’em, but the combs 
indicated they had dwindled down to a very 
