926 
WINTERING IN CELLARS 
feet on top. Err on the side of having the 
repository covered too deep rather than 
not deep enough. If the earth covering 
it is not a pure yellow clay that is imper¬ 
vious to water, it is better to make a special 
roof over it. Sand or gravel should always 
be covered to keep it from freezing. 
16. An electric fan can very often be 
used to good advantage in ventilating a 
bee-cellar. Where a cellar under a dwell¬ 
ing house becomes too warm, an electric 
fan can be stationed in such a way as to 
force air from outdoors into the room. 
Bees will stand a comparatively high tem¬ 
perature provided the air is fresh and 
sweet. 
HOW AND WHAT TO FEED BEES 
DURING MIDWINTER. 
It is generally advisable to avoid feeding 
syrup during midwinter, either in the cel¬ 
lar or outdoors. If a colony will run out 
of stores before spring, then thick syrup, 
two and a half parts of sugar to one of 
water, may be given all at one feeding. A 
better winter food next to combs of sealed 
stores is hard candy as mentioned under 
the head of Candy elsewhere, provided it 
is made right. Plates or blocks of this 
candy can be laid on top of the frames. If 
the candy has not been scorched in making, 
the bees will cluster up under it and win¬ 
ter on it, even tho there is not an ounce 
of stores in the combs themselves. But as 
it is a nice art to make hard candy that is 
just right, and as it is advisable, when pos¬ 
sible, to avoid feeding sugar syrup, bee¬ 
keepers should always have in reserve a suf¬ 
ficient number of combs of good honey 
saved out from the summer crop. When it 
is discovered that the colony is short, one 
or more of these combs can be inserted in 
place of the empty. 
A much better plan yet is to reserve out 
from the season’s crop of honey as many 
shallow extracting-supers of good honey 
as there are colonies in the apiary. (See 
page 236.) It may be argued that the 
honey in these supers can be sold for con¬ 
siderably more than it would cost to re¬ 
place the deficiency in the colony with 
sugar syrup. While this may be true from 
the standpoint of dollars and cents, the 
better class of beekeepers are beginning to 
discover that the honey will go much fur¬ 
ther, and, moreover, is much better in the 
spring when brood-rearing commences. 
To take time and make up several batches 
of syrup that is just right to feed to the 
bees and stir them up to unnecessary ac¬ 
tivity, costs not only in time and sugar but 
in bees; and it may be seriously questioned 
whether the sugar syrup is cheaper in the 
long run than the honey that is already in 
the combs and ready for the bees. Shallow 
extracting-supers of combs of good honey 
can be given to a colony in much less time 
than it takes to feed a like amount of syrup. 
While it may give that colony more stores 
than it may actually need before the next 
crop, it is a life insurance to the colony 
that will probably yield more money the 
following summer than one fed just enough 
syrup to carry it thru until spring, and 
the honey, if any is left, can be extracted 
later. 
In the language of Mr. G. S. Demuth, a 
half-depth super of honey is an “auto 
matic feeder,” and the cost of giving it to 
a colony, so far as time is concerned, is 
much less than giving it an equal amount 
of sugar syrup in a feeder. While the 
syrup may be slightly better for the coldest 
part of the winter, yet, taking the winter 
and the spring together, it is not as good. 
For a further discussion of these food 
chambers, see Comb Honey, to Produce, 
page 236. 
DO BEES HIBERNATE? 
The quiescent state or sleep into which 
bees enter when the wintering conditions 
are ideal, has been several times mentioned. 
In this period the bees seem merely to exist. 
With no activity the consumption of stores 
is very light. 
As shown under Temperature, partic¬ 
ularly the temperature of the winter clus¬ 
ter during winter, bees are the quietest 
when the thermometer is about 57° F. 
If it goes below 57°, the bees, instead of 
clustering, become active, and in the man¬ 
ner explained under Temperature they 
raise the heat of the cluster sometimes 
almost to the brood-rearing point. When, 
therefore, the temperature of the cluster is 
either below or above 57° F., the bees are 
in anything but a state of sleep or what 
some have called semi-hibernation. Strict¬ 
ly speaking, bees do not hibernate, and 
perhaps do not even enter into the condi¬ 
tion called semi-hibernation when they are 
