BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
So much has been written on wintering bees that it is not necessary to try the reader's patience by restating what has already been proven of the conditions that give best results.
Just an enumeration:
**Outdoor Wintering:**
Strong in your bees. Sufficient honey of good quality. No disturbance: Entrance and hive in proportion to the number of bees. Hive. Sufficient insulation. Sealed covers. Absorbent cushions?
**Inside Wintering:**
Strong in young bees. Sufficient honey of good quality. No disturbance. Large entrance. Ventilation of room good. Temperature of room 57 degrees.
Poor wintering is due to disturbance. Disturbance can be diagnosed as follows:
Jaring.
Poor honey.
Temperature of air
surrounding the hive.
Humidity of air
High: Disturbance.
70 to 80 % Comfortable.
Low: Disturbance.
The bee is so constructed that the temperature of its body can be reduced to 57 degrees.* This reduction of body-temperature the bee does not control, but it is the result of reduced temperature of the air surrounding the bee. The tmperature of the bodyof the bee can be raised in two ways; first, by the temperature of the air surrounding it; second, by a power inherent in the bee. The bee cannot of his own volition lower his temperature below that of the surrounding air, hence, to attain that
Where we find a colony with diarrhea we find even the frames and combs damp. This is the condition of most colonies that are dead or very weak in spring. Honey has an absorbing power for water and in a moisture-laden air will absorb great quantities of it. When honey gets thin and watery it is not good feed for bees, and with such a diet the system soon clogs, and we are all familiar with the results.
We naturally ask the cause of this moisture-laden air. Most beekeepers give respiration of the bees as the cause. One day in the fall I took a Seal-Tight cover from the hive and held it so that the drops of water that were condensed on its inside surface could run down to a corner of the cover. Then I poured out a little more than two ounces of water. What yet remained on the cover I estimated to be one ounce. Three ounces of water condensed on the cover. No estimate was made of the amount on the hive-walls. Did the bees breathe out that much water the previous night?
One of the axioms of physics is that something cannot be produced from nothing. If bees are confined in winter quarters 120 days and they consume 30 pounds of honey, of which 1-5 is water, making the consumption of 6 pounds of water during the winter, or 1 1-4 of an ounce for one day. Could they breathe out all the water that they eat, this amount falls away short of the amount that condenses on a Seal-Tight cover in a single-wall hive on a cool night.
## Outdoor Wintering
The ordinary beekeeper cannot keep his bees at a uniform temperature; neither can he control the humidity of the air. So his bees have a fluctuating temperature to overcome and consequently a changing humidity. This changing humidity is the one great unseen cause of disturbance in bees.
A clear understanding of the laws of meteorology that relate to moisture in the air, will be necessary to comprehend where this water vapor comes from. The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is ascertained by using two tested thermometers. One, called the dry bulb, is exposed and the temperature noted. The other one has a cloth covering the bulb. This cloth is moistened and the thermometer whirled in the air for a short time, and the temperature noted. Then by subtracting the temperature of the wet bulb from that of the dry bulb, we have a basis for computing the dewpoint, and from this the relative humidity. Knowing the tmeperature of the dewpoint and the amount of water vapor that saturates the air at that temperature, we have the absolute humidity. Divide the absolute humidity of the dewpoint by the absolute humidity of the dry bulb temperature and you have the relative humidity.
Air can be supersaturated; that is it can contain water in excess of that which saturates it at its temperature, but this excess water is held in the air in globules of water and is known as fog or clouds. The excess water has given up all its gaseous properties and is not subject to the same laws as the water vapor cf the air.
The gaseous vapor of the air is controlled by the same laws, in regard to its expansion and contraction as air. It is well known that if a chamber, in which the air is Fairified, is opened, the air rushes in from the outside until the outside and inside air have the same density.
Water vapor does not rush into a hive, where the hive air is relatively dry and a small opening is maintained, but is slowly forced in until its tention at hive temperature equals the tention of the outside vapor at outside temperature. Because of this slow movement of water vapor, when its tention inside the hive is greater than on the outside it condenses on the inner walls, or is transformed into fog, which then looses the expansive power of a gas and is retained in the hive.
Disturbance inside the hive which causes the bees to raise the temperature of the hive air, with its then greater capacity for moisture, or a fall of temperature or raise of relative humidity outside, give an unequal vapor tention and cause vapor to pass from the outside into the hive.
When the hive air is cooling it loses some of its moisture which is condensed in the hive. To illustrate; assume a hive temperature of 57 degrees and an absolute humidity of four grains, which temperature is raised to 70 degrees, and still 4 grains of moisture, to equalize the tention of the vapor, inside and outside, some moisture is slowly forced through the opening; let us say until this 70 degree air holds 6 grains. When this air is reduced to 57 degrees and an absolute humidity of 4 grains, two grains of water is left in the hive after this disturbance.
Suppose the hive is not insulated (no thickness of insolation is too much in any locality whose temperature falls below 50 degrees) and the outside temperature drops to 32 degrees, the hive temperature drops from 57 degrees, humidity 4 grains, to 40 degrees; at 40 degrees air is saturated with 2.86 grains. In this case about 1 1-2 grains of water is left in the hive.
Let us pass to the next cause, the change of the humidity of the outside air. Assume a maximum temperature of 40 degrees, a relative humidity of 84 degrees and an absolute humidity of about 2.30 grains: the hive air at 50 degrees, a relative humidity of 74 per cent and an absolute humidity of 3 grains. To equalize the tension of the vapor inside and outside the hive a constant movement of vapor into the hive is taking place, which when it is equal to the humidity that the condensing surface of the hive can maintain, is being constantly condensed on the inner surface of the hive. Consider the amount of vapor that is constantly passing into the hive on days when the relative humidity is 96 per cent. There are many days in the more souherly states when a 100 per cent relative humidity obtains.
Because of the small amount of moisture with which a zero atmosphere is saturated (0.54 grains) bees in the north have less moisture to contend with than in the south, where the temperature ranges from 32 degrees up to 60 and 70 degrees. In the latter locality absolute humidity of 32 degree air at saturation is 2 grains; at 60 degrees it is 5.76 grains. In the colder lo calities, with a temperature of zero or lower for weeks at a time, insulation is necessary to protect the bees from the cold, a.nd in spring and fall to protect them from excess of moisture. In localities where the cold is not so severe but that the bees can beat back what little cold comes in at the entrance, insulation is necessary to keep the hive dry. In the north we insulate to keep the hive warm and dry. In the south you should insulate to keep the hive dry.
The question naturally arises as to how insulation keeps the hive dry. How it keeps the hive warm is obvious. Because atmospheric vapor and temperature are so correlated they must be considered together. Heat is communicated in three ways: by conduction, when it travels from partical to partical in the substance heated; by convection, when the particals of the substance heated move away from the sourre of heat; by radiation, when heat travels through space in all directions from the heated substance.
Insulation has to do with heat communicated by conduction. A substance that is a poor conductor is a good insulator. The escare of heat from a substance or space depends on the amount and quality of insulation surrounding the substance or space. The fireless cooker is a good example of what insulation does.
The wood of which a hive is made is the insulation that surrounds the hive air. Add to this insulation a uniform thickness of leaves, sawdust, chaff or any other insulator and you make it harder for the heat to pass out of the hive by conduction. Hence a well insulated hive has a temperature more nearly uniform than a single wall one.
The temperature of a hive could easily be kept uniform if the bees did not have to have air. An opening must be left for ventilation, and because of this heat is passing out of the hive by convection. Not much heat passes through this opening by radiation or conduction, as air absorbs heat slowly and does not readily part with it. The escape of heat where the opening is not too large, is not great and the radiation and convection of heat from the bees will balance that, where outside temperature is not very low. Where they have both opening and single walled hives (poor insulation) to contend with, they exert energy, and the consequent consumption of stores, to supply the loss.
The more insulation and the greater the number of bees in the hive, the more the temperature of the hive air lags behind as the outside temperature changes. The hive vapor under these conditions moves out slowly and does not saturate the hive air,
When a colony of bees cluster they create for themselves a hive within a hive. The insulation of the cluster hive is the bodies of the bees on the outside of the cluster, and the colder the hive air the better they make this insulation.
Let us now indulge in a little speculation. It is an established fact that the heat of the inside of the cluster increases as the hive temperature falls and vice versa. The honey stores are mostly outside of the cluster and exposed to the vapor of the hive. We know that the bees have ways of controling the vapor of the hive in summer. May it not be possible that the rise in temperature of the cluster is for the purpose of increasing the lag in temperature? This may mean a great deal to them by protecting their honey from moisture.
## ABSORENT CUSHIONS
As understood by beekeepers any porous material placed between the cover and frames for insulation is an absorbent cushion. 'Claim is made that moisture escapes through this cushion. Sometimes the moisture has tried to escape this way and in the spring the cushion is wet. Sometimes the cushion does not fit snug against the super and an opening is left which gives upward ventilation. Moisture here travels in the path of least resistance and posses off through the largest opening it can find. If a close examination is made in the winter frost will be found where the moisture is passing out and the cushion found dry. Sometimes the cushions are found dry where the burlap is laid across the top of the hive and the super set on this and filled with padding. If this burlap is examined a great deal of propolis is found on it, put there by the bees to prevent upward ventilation. Sometimes this cushion is found dry because the inside of the hive is well varnished with propolis, the insulation is good, which conditions keep the hive air at a proper humdty.
The temperature of an nulated wall, which has an unequal temperature on its opposite sides, will at the points within this wall be influenced by the distance that these points are from the surface. If the outside temperature is 10 below zero the first quarter of an inch on the outside part of this insulation will be about 10 below zero. The inside surface would be about five temperature. Unless the laws of nature are bent or broken, water vapor would not travel far in this material, under these conditions, without being condensed.
In winter as well as summer, the big part that a well varnished hive and the consequent condensation play can be seen. Most beekeepers winter their bees in hives used a year or more. These hives give results in proportion to the way they are varnished with propolis and sealed at the top. When all hives are well varnished inside, a seal-tight cover provided, and other necessary things pertaining to good wintering, such as bees, food, sheltered location, insulation and a clear entrance, bee conservation will have advanced.
## 1.1. Indoor wintering
Indoor wintering differs from outdoor wintering in that the repository where the hives are stored is the regulator of the temperature and moisture, instead of each individual hive. A good cellar or other repository where a nearly uniform temperature of 50 to 57 degrees is maintained, and well ventilated, is an ideal place to winter bees.
When setting the hives in the cellar remove the bottom board from each hive; then forget that the bees are in individual hives, and think of your cellar as one big complex hive. About the only use there is for a hive in the cellar is that it is a convenient place to hang the frames. If the temperature and ventilation are good, and the cellar dark, the bees will winter as well if the frames are taken out of the hive and hung on a rack, and properly spaced.
Small entrances are the primary cause of more dead bees than anything else. Condensation takes place in a hive with a small entrance for the same reason as given in outdoor wintering; a change of hive temperature caused by some disturbance. The botton board must be left off to eliminate this moisture trouble. This gives an equal temperature to hive walls and hive air, and makes condensation on the hive walls impossible. If a colony of bees give off much moisture in respiration, and there is no doubt that they give off some, it is easily diffused through the air by means of the large opening at the bottom.
Let us remember that what we are trying to prevent is excess of moisture in the hive air, and that we control it by our control of the temperature of the repository. Temperature and its relation to moisture is the keystone to successful wintering.
When we compare evaporation by the aid of ventilation with that which takes place aided by condensation, and give this an application of the laws of heat, with its three ways of communication; conduction, convection and radiation, the tension of vapors; and the stillness, dryness and density of the atmosphere, our conclusion must be that condensation is so uniform in its results, that it eliminates everything ascribed to locality, but the number of flowers and the weather conditions that affect the flight of bees and the flow of nectar. All other conditions, by the aid of condensation, can be controled by the beekeeper.
Ventilation and shade each make more room in the hive, but not with uniformity under all conditions. So we must add to the treatments we give the bees, a well varnished inner surface to the hive, and a cover that, at no time, permits of upward ventilation. Then the bees will be able to keep the nectar out of the way of a queen, whose egg-laying capacity is increasing daily.
Room, and the procedure whereby the bees automatically make more room as they need it, is the single thing that we have to consider in urge prevention.
**Cernet University Library**
**SF 523.C592**
**Constructive bekeeping.**
**3 1924 003 100 306**
**DADANT SYSTEM**
**or**
**BECKEEPING**
**C. P. DADANT**
**North Carolina State University Libraries**
SF523.D15
DADANT SYSTEM OF BEKKEEPING
S02790050 8
## Chapter 1 The \(\mathbf{D}\)adam system
of BaelexenpingCopyright, 1920,
My C. P. Dadau
Dadant System \(of\) Bekeeping
C. P. DADANT
EDITOR OF THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL,
REVISER OF "THE Honey BEE," ACHOR
of"FIRSTLESONS IN BEREEEPING,"ETC.
* 1 Early experiments--Natural History.
* 1. The Queen.
* 1. The worker-bee.
* 2 Size of Hives.
* 2. The large hive.
* 2. Small hives.
* 2. Safety in wintering.
* 2. Frame spacing.
* 2. The supers.
* 2. Side storage.
* 2. Queen excluders.
* 3 Drones and Drone Production.
* 3. The Dadant Hive.
* 3. A simplified Dadant hive.
* 3. Hive making.
* 3. Handling Bces.
* 3. Our Apiaries.
* 3. Outapiaries.
* 3.1.1 Chapter 7. Apiary Management.
* 3.1.1 Spring.
* 3.1.2 The honey crop.
* 3.1.3 Increase.
* 3.2 Queens for increase.
* 3.2.1 Chapter 8. Swarm Prevention and Supering.
* 3.2.2 Prevention of natural swarming.
* 3.2.3 Putting on supers.
* 3.2.4 Chapter 9. Extracting implements.
* 3.2.5 Robbing.
* 3.2.6 Varying honey crops.
* 3.2.7 Requenching.
* 3.2.8 Queen Introduction.
* 3.2.9 Chapter 10. Nomadic Beckeeping.
* 3.3 Chapter 11. Fall Management.
* 3.3 Chapter 12. Wintering.
* 3.4.1 Cellular wintering.
* 3.4.2 Our house cellar.
* 3.4.3 Wintering in clamps.
* 3.4.4 Wintering out-of-doors.
* 3.4.5 Chapter 13. Diseases of Bces.
* 3.4.6 Chapter 14. Enemies of Bees.
_Library_
_N. C. Cacic: college_
The Dadant System of Bekeeping
Chapter I
Early Experiments.-Natural History
In writing a book, it is customary to begin with a preface, which very few people read. We want the student to read
Moses Quinby
Originator of the frame which the Dadants adopted.
this as well as the rest of the book, in order to secure an idea of the "why" of the system that the writer develops in the ensuing pages.
The senior Dadant, Charles Dadant, cmigrated to America from France in 1863. He had kept bees as a pastime in Europe. He was very fond of bees, ever since his youth and had already experimented on different styles of hc hives. In the early issues of the American Bee Journal, especially in Volume III, in 1868, he told his beginnings in apiculture.
In 1864, located upon a small brush farm, two miles north of Hamilton, Illinois, he secured two colonies of common black bees in box hives. From these two colonies came the establishment which is now supporting a number of families and has made them peculiarily independent. Mr. Dadant often said that those bees always paid, beforehand, in product, for all expenses put in their management and in numerous improvements.
After experimenting upon divers Old World methods of beckeping, he read in a magazine, of the success of Moses Quinby, of New York State, bought his book "The My-series of Bekeeping" and later "The Hive & Honey Bee" of Langstroh, which he was to revise, 20 years later, at the request of the author. In a very short time he became convinced that the Langstroh system was ahead of anything yet devised; that the movable-frame hive principle was the key of successful beckeeping; because of the perfect control which it gives the bekeeper over the bees and the combs.
The difference between the Langstroh and the Quinby methods
## 1 DADANT system of bekeeping
### 1 The Queen
The queen, the mother-bee, is fertilized for life, at the age of about 6 to 10 days, in normal circumstances. She is then fitted for a life's production of bees. Her greatest laying comes at the opening of spring, when it is necessary to rear, for the honey harvest, a large number of worker-bees. Early writers assured their readers that a good queen could lay from 200 to 500 eggs per day, and they perhapswondered whether the reader would believe this assertion. But when the invention of movable-frame hives enabled the beckeeper to study the innermost secrets of the bee-hive, it was found that queens of good quality (and we should have no others) could lay more than 3,000 eggs per day, for weeks and months together. This was asserted first by Langstroth and Quinby. Mr. Langstroth stated that he had seen a queen lay, in an observing hive, at the rate of six eggs per minute. We witnessed a similar performance ourselves. It is not necessary that a queen should lay eggs at that speed in order to prove very prolific, since a ten hour day of egg-laying would produce 3600 eggs.
Doolittle, one of the bright lights of bekeeping, from 1870 to 1918, asserted that he had had queens that laid as many as 5,000 eggs in 24 hours, for weeks in succession. There is a way by which any one, who owns bees in movable-frame hives, may ascertain how many eggs are laid by a prolific queen, without being compelled to watch her performances. It takes 21 days to carry the newly laid egg, intended for a worker-bee, through the different stages of metamorphosis, to the perfect insect with wings which cuts itself out of the scaled cell. So if we count the number of cells containing brood and eggs, during the height of the breeding season, if the hive be large enough and the queensufficiently prolific, we will ascertain that many queens can and do lay 3,500 and even more eggs per day, for a number of weeks. To count the number of cells it is only necessary to measure the number of square inches of brood surface, remembering that each square inch represents between 27 and 28 workers.
This heavy brood laying lasts only during the spring and early summer months, of course. In the fall the laying is reduced and in the winter it ceases.
It is important that we should enable the queen to lay to the utmost of her capacity for the time when her bces, or the bces hatching from her eggs, will be able to harvest a crop. Like a good general, we must marshal our forces for the battle neither too early, nor too late. With bces, it is more important than with men, because bees have but a very limited time of usefulness. In order to illustrate this, it is necessary to say a few words about the
**Worker-Bee**
The worker-bec is an undeveloped female. Had the young female larva, when hatching, been fed with milky pap during the whole time of her existence as larva, and had she been placed in a spacious quencell, she would have been a queen. But only one queen is needed in a hive. So the female larvae, and the drone larvae as well, are hatched in small cells and fed with the milky pap, or royal jelly, during only the first three days of life; after that time, the food is coarser and composed of pollen, or bee-bread as it is often called, and honey. The result is an entirely different being from what it would have been as a fully developed insect:
Figure 5: Head of the worker bee (magnified)
1. The worker has no egg sacks or ovaries; at least such ovaries as she may have are unable to produce eggs in ordinary circumstances and never more than a few eggs at best.
2. Her head is shaped differently, her jaws more powerful, her antennae rise up in the air at the least disturbance, she has salivary glands which do not exist or are very imperfect in the queen and the drone, she has wax-producing organs which exist in neither of the others; on her hind legs are brushes and baskets to gather and carry pollen, which are entirely absent in queen or drones.
3. She is of a determined disposition, flying at an intruder without fear, when irritated, while the queen runs and hides from view. Her sting is straight instead of being curved like that of the queen. She goes about in search of honey and pollen, takes care of the brood and does all the domestic service of the home.
4. She has great reverence for the queen-mother, while the queen herself, if any rivals are about, seeks to destroy them.
The worker bees hatch from the egg in 21 days, in ordinary circumstances. They do duty about the inside for a week, before attempting a flight outside. About the seventh day, in the afternoon, they take their first flight, coming back home after having made the acquaintance of the surroundings, and remaining another week indoors. It is therefore only after 2 weeks of insect life, 5 weeks from the laying of the egg, that the worker becomes a field bee and begins to harvest honey. This is important to know, if we wish to get our force of honey harvesters at the right time.
The worker does not live long in the busy season. Previous to the introduction of the Italian bee in apiaries of common bees, it was difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain how long a worker lives. The introduction of Italian bees has helped solve this problem in a positive manner.