13G 
GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 
Dec. 
017 It OWN APIAKY. 
'.ffljVEN with the curtain clown, the heat has 
ffijj ] been so great to-day (Oct. 29th) that we 
made a door of wire cloth and now begin to 
think the sole cause of the bees dying may 
have been the high temperature. The t'ollow- 
in<r note from friend Palmer corroborates this 
view. 
The colony under glass seemed to “thrive” until it 
eras warm enough lor those outside. to gather pollen. 
When the thermometer indicated 20" in the shade 
outside it marked 50* to 55* under the glass; when it 
was 50’ outside it was sir to no inside. Then the bees 
commenced to die and 1 let them out. Is it any won- 
der the bees died in 00” of heat and no fresh air? 
Thanks for the picture. H. PALMER. 
Hart, Mich. Oct. 26th, 1874. 
Non. 2nd — We have at length had a day so 
cold, that the temperature out doors even in 
the sun, was not such as to induce bees to fly, 
and the green house does much better. In fact 
the bees now scarcely touch the glass, and yet 
they work on the meal almost as lively as if 
twere'spring. The strong stocks are rearing 
brood nicely, but the cool nights have spoiled 
all but the eggs in our pet nucleus. 
The house is too hot days, but too cold nights; 
to obviate this, we are about to build on at the 
end, so as to more than double its capacity, yet 
using the same sash which is about OfixVS. 
Every part of it except the glass is to be cov- 
ered with a thickness of about 18 inches of dry 
earth to prevent frost from penetrating ; and to 
keep all dry it has an additional protection of 
shingle roof over all except the sash. We ex- 
pect this large body of air will when once 
warmed to about 70", — we now think the tem- 
perature should never much exceed 70" when 
bees are confined to a room — keep warm 
all night, especially if the glass is also protec- 
ted at night by a curtain. The dimensions 
inside are now to be about 12x24 and (» feet in 
bight. We think it advisable to have the 
room as low as it can be consistent with com- 
fort, while working among the bees ; for the 
same reason a flat ceiling over head is to be 
preferred, as the bees collect in the ridge, and 
the warm air rising makes it so hot as to be 
quite unhealthy for them, while they only 
struggle to regain the open air. 
H e arc making preparations to put our bees 
in their winter quarters before cold and stormy 
weather, the hives are dry now, and the bees 
seem quite healthy. 
Sixty eight colonies now, counting nuclei 
and all. One of those under the glass was 
found Queenless, caused probably by bees from 
other hives getting in by mistake when first 
put in. We united it with a nucleus, but their 
artificial abode yet so nearly approximates na- 
ture that we found the Queen in the midst of a 
ball of bees on the bottom board an hour after. 
8ho was promptly caged and now all seems 
well. 
Jfov. 3rd — Our bees are all housed for the 
winter, except a few weak ones that are to be 
domiciled in the green house. We would like 
to say they are all nicely housed, and we sup- 
pose our readers of course presume we did 
everything just right. To be frank, we only 
succeeded in getting through with the first 20 
colonies when we set out to cut winter passa- 
ges. Remodeling and enlarging the Green 
House has taken much of our time and — we 
concluded to let the rest go. 
Why do we house them so early? Well, 
principally because the hives are dry and nice 
to handle; they seem very quiet, and have had 
their stores all nicely sealed for some time, and 
we thought it might be well to get them in 
before damp and stormy weather. 
We have left on their quilts just as they 
were in summer and carried in bottom-boards 
and all, that we might disturb them as little 
as possible. Quinby advises that they be 
housed so quietly that they will know nothing 
about it. This we started out to do, but some 
of the hybrids found out more of what was 
going on than was really comfortable to one’s 
feelings. The weak ones— and a large propor- 
tion really are weak again in spite of us — were 
docile enough it is true, but the heavy colonies 
of hybrids are rather averse to being disturbed. 
We know of no reason why our colonies should 
dwindle down as they do in the fall unless ’tis 
the cider mill, and we shall in the future have 
no more of this trouble we really believe, 
P. G.’s cloth curtains having proved a perfect 
remedy, yet great numbers were lost before 
they were used. 
Oct. 3th — Although we have had a couple of 
remarkably warm days for Nov., our bees 
seem as quiet as one could wish, and by the 
way there is something unusual about them 
this fall in this respect. For instance: iq 
building our Green House, two hives that 
stood handy, were used as “saw horses” to 
hold lumber, and as the sawing did not seem 
to disturb them, we even ventured to nail inch 
pine boards together on top of these laves. In- 
credible as it may seem, not a bee showed his 
“phiz;” to assure ourselves they were alive we 
raised the quilt and there they were, full blood 
Italians, grandchildren of our Imported Queen, 
and they were so densely packed that it almost 
seemed they would never get “untangled.” 
After we had looked at them a moment in 
amazement, they began to rouse up with a be- 
haviour that seemed to say, “what in the ‘dick- 
ens’ do you want of us this cool weather?” 
A man that we have in our employ to “dig” 
(toe can dig some alone, but when a “very big 
hole” is required we — that is — some how 
“ ’tothcr man” seems to be the most profitable) 
insists that our bees this fall really are. adiffer- 
ent kind, or they would never stand hammer- 
ing on the hives iu that way. How is it kind 
readers ? is it the new importation, or lias the 
sealed stores given them in Aug. and Sept., 
something to do with it ? or is it both? Now 
while we were putting them in the house we 
probably calculated on this sublime indiffer- 
ence to this world’s “bumps” and as it was 
almost dark — by the way do you know that it 
sometimes “gets dark” at provokingly inoppor- 
tune times? — but we finished putting them in. 
As we were obliged to hold the entrance 
against us in setting them on the upper shelves, 
two or three of the hybrid colonies which were 
very full of bees and correspondingly “sassy, 
“biled' out.” It was too dark to see them 
plainly, but from the neighborhood of our 
waist there came a peculiar hissing sound, la- 
miliar to most of our readers, plainly Indicating 
that they were anything but “dormant.” Were 
we stung? Well really, as we went on with 
our work after brushing them off with a broom, 
