924 
WINTERING IN CELLARS 
4. Bees can be wintered in a cellar with¬ 
out much ventilation, provided the tempera¬ 
ture of the individual clusters is approxi¬ 
mately around 57 degrees. With average¬ 
sized colonies and average-sized entrances, 
a constant temperature of about 45 degrees 
in the cellar will not require much ventila¬ 
tion, provided the size of the entrances is 
in proportion to the size of the colonies. 
5. Ideal conditions for cellar wintering 
are the right cluster temperature, a slight 
amount of moisture, a moderate amount of 
ventilation, and absolute darkness. 
6. A very bad combination is a constant¬ 
ly varying temperature that goes down 
nearly to the freezing point, and then rises 
to 55 or 60 degrees. Such frequent changes 
are very hard on the bees. 
7. A high cellar temperature will require 
very much larger entrances, or possibly the 
removal of the bottom-boards entirely, 
leaving the whole bottom of the hive open. 
There are some cellars where the tempera¬ 
ture can not be held down, and in such 
cases more ventilation is required as well 
as larger entrances. 
8. Occasional disturbances by the bee¬ 
keeper himself in the cellar do no harm; 
but these disturbances should be as few 
as possible, and with no jar and as little 
noise as possible. No brighter light than a 
hand pocket electric lamp should be used. 
With this, one can easily make his way 
thru the cellar, taking a glance at the en¬ 
trances and also a glance at the thermome¬ 
ters in the entrances of some of the hives. 
A more durable and lasting light is an 
electric lamp attached to a full-sized dry 
battery. Small pocket batteries are usually 
short-lived. 
9. When good colonies winter well the 
dead bees do not collect on the hive floors 
nor are they scattered over the cellar floor. 
The live bees remove the dead ones, leaving 
them on the cellar floor just below the en¬ 
trances. If scattered all about, it is plain 
that they have flown from their hives and 
have not wintered well. Moreover, if there 
are several inches of dead bees on the cel¬ 
lar bottom in the spring, the owner of that 
cellar ought to investigate and ascertain 
the trouble. No matter if he does bring 
his colonies thru alive, it could hardly be 
said that he is wintering his bees success¬ 
fully. An ideal cellar is one that will bring 
the colonies thru the winter in practically 
the same strength as when they went into 
winter quarters. No colony should lose 
more than one-sixth of its bees, and well- 
wintered colonies will have much less loss 
than this — in some cases as Ioav as 100 bees. 
10. Honeydew, unsealed aster honey, mo¬ 
lasses, or syrup from brown sugar, makes 
a poor feed for indoor wintering. It is 
much better to have a good honey, well 
ripened, or syrup made of white granulat¬ 
ed sugar. 
11. Pollen in the combs does little or no 
harm. Indeed, it is an advantage to have 
some of it ready for next spring after the 
bees are set out. The old theory that an 
excess of pollen in the combs is the cause 
of dysentery is now an exploded myth. 
12. Shutting bees in the hive with wire 
cloth, or closing the entrance in any way, is 
usually attended with disaster. 
13. Bees can be wintered in a common 
house cellar provided there is not too much 
variation of temperature. The trouble with 
most house or vegetable cellars is that they 
become too warm or too cold. This makes 
it necessary for the beekeeper to enter the 
cellar, often opening and closing the cellar 
windows at night. The disturbance is a 
bad thing, and the variation of temperature 
is still worse. 
14. A cellar wholly under ground and 
frost-proof is much safer than the average 
house cellar. 
15. When one has from 100 to 300 or 
more colonies and the winters are so cold 
that there are many days of zero tempera¬ 
ture, especially if the locality is subject to 
high winds, it would be well to build a 
special bee-repository under ground, large 
enough to accommodate as many colonies 
as one would be likely to own. The mis¬ 
take should not be made of building it too 
small. It should be constructed on the 
lines indicated by David Running, as speci¬ 
fied in previous pages. Its shape should 
be long and narrow and wholly under 
ground. That means that the roof should 
either be below the frost line by three or 
four feet, or that the portion of the re¬ 
pository above ground should be covered by 
an embankment of three or four feet for 
the sides above ground and three or four 
