BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
When all the food which is in their reach is consumed, they will starve, if the temperature is too cold to allow them to move their cluster to the parts of the combs which contain honey; hence, if the central combs of the hive are not well stored with honey, they should be exchanged fur such as are, so that, when the cold compels the bees to recede from the outer combs, they may cluster among their stores. In districts where bees gather but little honey in the Fall, such precautions, in cold climates, will be specially needed, as, ofteu, after breeding is over, their central combs will be almost empty. For this reason Canadian apiarists often feed their colonies until the central combs are entirely filled with honey at the opening of Winter.
**623.** It is impossible to say how _much_ honey will be needed to carry a colony safely through the Winter. Much will depend on the way in which they are wintered, whether in the open air or in special depositories, where they are protected against the undue excitement caused by sudden and severe atmospheric changes; much, also, on the length "if the Winters, which vary so much in different latitudes, and the forwardness of the ensuing Spring. In some of our Northern States, bees will often gather nothing for more than six months, while, in the extreme South, they are seldom deprived of all natural supplies for as many weeks. In all our Northern and Middle States, if the colonies are to be witnessed cut of doors, they should have _at least_ twenty-five pounds of honey.
In movable-frame hives, the amount of stores may be easily ascertained by actual inspection. The weight of hives is not always a safe criterion, as old combs are heavier than new ones, besides being often over-stored with pollen. (**263**.)
**621**. Practical bee-keepers usually judge of the amount of stores by sight. The majority of combs in an ordinary Langstroth live should be at least half full of honey, for outdoor wintering, in this latitude. Remember that food is needed, not only to carry them through the Winter, but also to help them to raise brood largely, during the cold days of early Spring. Bees do not waste their stores, and the wealthy colonies will usually be found stronger, and better prepared for the following harvest.
Enthusiastic beginners, in Apiculture, are apt to overdo extracting, leaving too little honey in the brood-chamber for Winter. If the bees are not actually crowded with honey, we would advise them to leave, to strong colonies, all the honey that the brood-chamber contains. Some may think that nine or ten heavy Quinby frames, are too many for a colony, for they _may be evintered on six or seven_. We will here give a bit of our experience on that point:
**625**. About the year \(18^{+7}_{-5}\), in an apiary away from home, where we were raising comb-honey, we had a number of swarms, which, in the rush of the honey-crop, we did not examine until their combs were built. At that time, the triangular bar (**319**) was the guide principally used, and the combs of some of these swarms were joined together in a way that rendered the frames immovable. In the Fall, we extracted (**749**) from the brood-chamber of nearly every colony, as was then our practice, leaving only seven Quinby frames on an average\(-\)for Winter. The colonies that had crooked combs were left with all their stores\(-\)ten frames\(-\)because we could not disturb them without breaking eombs, and causing leakage and robbing, and it was not the proper season to transfer (**57.1**) them. These colonies did not have to be fed, the following Spring, became very strong, and yielded the largest crop. This untried-for result caused us to make further experiments, which proved that _there is a profit in leaving, to strong colonies, a large quantity of honey, so that they will not limit their Spring breeding._
**626.** The quality of the bee-food is an important matter in wintering bees. Protracted cold weather compels them to eat large quantities of honey, filling their intestines with fecal matter which they cannot void, for bees never discharge their faeces in the hive\({}_{2}\) unless they are confined too long, or greatly disturbed.
Unhealthy food in prolonged confinement, sooner or later causes diarrhoea (**78.1**), not only in wintering out of doors, but in cellar wintering (**6.16**), and in shipping bees long distanes (**53.1**).
Diarrhea, or as some call it, dysentery, in bees, is not properly a disease, since it is only caused by the retaining in the abdomen, of a large amount of exreements, which in ordinary circumstances would be voided regularly. Whenever bees have been confined for two weeks. or more, they discharge in flight exreements which soil everything about the apiary. The housekeeping avoids hanging elothes out to dry on such days. These exreements or feces, from a reddish yellow to a muddy black in eolor, according to the quality of the food eaten, have an intolerably offensive smell. In excessive confinement, with a large consumption, from any cause, of more or less healthy food, when bees can no longer retain the exreements in their distended abdomen, they void them upon one another, upon the combs, upon the floor, and at the entrance of the hive, "which bees in a healthy state are particularly careful to keep elean."
If bees can void them, in flight (73), before it is too late, they experience no bad effects, hence it is indispensable that, when wintered out of doors, bees should be enabled to fly, at intervals, during the Winter.
**637.** From numerous experiments made, it is evident that _the purest saccharine matter will feed them with the least production of faeces_. Hence watery, unripe, or sour honey, and all honey containing extraneous matter, are more or less injurious to confined bees. Dark honey containing a large proportion of _mollose_ is inferior to elover-honey or sugar-syrup. Honey harvested from flowers which yield much pollen (263), is likely to contain many floating grains of it, and will be more injurious than elean, transparent honey, in cases where bees will be confined to their hives by cold for five or six weeks. Honey-dew (255) seems worse yet. The juices of fruits, apples, grapes, etc. (S77), are worst of all. After the Winter of 1880-81, we purchased the remains of some 90 colonies, that had been winter-killed, and in which the only food left was a)ple-juice, that had been carried in, during the preceding Fall, and had turned to cider. This unwholesome food in Winter confinement, by causing diarrhea, had killed bees everywhere around us (781).
**628.** Happily these instanes, of bees storing apple-juice, are scarce, but the practical bee-keeper will not allow such food to remain in the hive. It may be extracted (749), boiled, and fed back in Spring, for bees do not suffer from this food when not confined to their hives. The same may be said of inferior or unripe honey (261).
Much unsealed honey in the comb is injurious for Winter, even if the honey is ripe. This unsealed honey gathers moisture on account of its hypernterie properties, and becomes thin and watery. In addition to this peculiarity, honey, wheat cold, condenses the moisture or steam from the bees, in the same manner that a pitcher of cold water eondenses the moisture of the air in a warm room. In some Winters, we have seen unsealed honey gather so mneh of the moisture that it overflowed, and ran out of the cells to the bottom-board. Luekily the bees usually consume this honey first, before Winter begins.
**629.** To avoid the aecidents caused by poor honey, some Apiarists have suggested that all the honey might be extracted every Fall, and sugar-syrup fed in its place. At the first glance, this course seems profitable, when the difference between the price of comb-honey and the cost of sugar-syrup is considered, but when we take into account the trouble of feeding, and the poor results obtained in wintering the bees, we see mueh labor for a small profit. Having ascertained that bees winter better on Spring or light-eolored honey, we no longer extraet from the brood-chamber, avoiding the annoyance and the extra labor of feeding. Our experience has convinced us that, unless the Spring erop has failed, or the food is decidedly bad, such as unripe honey (**249**), or honey-dew (**255**), or fruit-juice (**S77**), it is cheaper to winter bees on natural stores. When sugar-syrup is needed, none but the best sugar should be used. (**616**.)
**630.** All empty combs, whether brood-eombs or surplus-combs, should be removed from the hive previous to cold weather, as the bees, whiieh may cluster in them, would starve at the first cold spell without being able to join the cluster. We have seen a whole colony perish, during a cold fortnight in December, because they had oeeupied an extracting story (which had but little honey in it, and had been left on by neglect), although there was plenty of honey in the hive, a few inches below them. The space left empty by the removal of the combs should be filled with a warm material placed between the side of the hive and the division board.
**631.** As some bees which cluster on the outside combs are often unable to join the others in cold weather, it would be well to have holes, or Winter passages, through the combs,
which commonly result from disturbing them when the weather is so cold as to confine them to their hives.
If the colonies are to be wintered in the open air, they should all be made populous, and rich in stores, even if to do so requires their number to be reduced one-half or more. The bee-keeper who has ten strong colonies in the Spring, will, by judicious management with movable-frame hives, be able to elos the season with a larger apiary than one who begins it with thirty, or more, feeble ones.
**632** (_bis_). Small colonies consume, proportionally, much more food than large ones, and then perish from inability to maintain sufficient heat.
Bees, in small or contracted hives, especially when deprived of all the honey gathered in Spring, as stated before (**629**), have too seanty a population for a successful wintering, especially out of doors; for, as it is by eating that bees generate warmth, the abdomens of a small number are soon filled with residues, and if the cold continues for weeks the bees get the diarrhoea (**781**). We have often seen colonies in small hives perishing side by side with large ones whose bees were very healthy.
Such facts abound, and we have but to open the bee-journals to find the confirmation of our statement.
In the _American Bee-Journal_ for February 8, 1885. page 83, Mr. J. P. Stone of Holly, Mich., asks why a colony, which was hived in 1859 in a large box. is prospering yet, while others have perished. The size given, 16\(\times\)16\(\times\)2, which shows that the box has twice the capacity of an S-frame Langstroth hive, answers his question.
In the following number of the same journal, page 107, Mr. Heddon mentions a colony which had vintered safely for seven years in a box ten times larger than the Langstroth, while many others died by its side. "The colony, when transferred, contained about double the number of bees usually raised from one queen."
Yet small colonies can be safely wintered out of doors, if their combs and honey are not spread over a large space, and if they are sheltered so as to maintain the proper heat. It is therefore indispensable to reduce the combs of a hive to the amount of room which the bees can best keep warm, by the use of the division or contracting board (349), leaving a sufficient supply of good honey, supply which, sometimes, may be taken from too rich colonies.
**633.** A queenless colony, in the Fall, should always be united to sonic other hive.
If two or more colonies, which are to be united, are not close together, their hives must be gradually drawn nearer, and the bees may then, with proper precautions, be put into the same hive. For this purpose, it is well to kill the poorest queen (if both have queens) and keep the best. This may be dispensed with, but the prudent bee-keeper will never neglect an opportunity to improve his stock. On a cool November day, the combs of the weaker colony that bear the cluster, should be lifted all together, and inserted in the other hive,after the bees of the latter have been thoroughly frightened with smoke. (**3S2**.)
**631.** If, when two colonies are put together, the bees in the one on the old stand are not gorged with honey, they will often attack the others, and speedily sting them to death, in spite of all their attempts to purehase immunity, by offering their honey. The late Wm. W. Cary, of Coleraine, Massachusetts, who was an aeeurate observer of the habits of bees, united colonies very successfully, by alarming those that were on the old stand; as soon as they showed by their notes, that they were subdued, he gave them the new-comers. The alarm which causes them to gorge themselves with honey, puts them, doubtless, upon their good behavior, long enough to give the others a fair chance.
They can also be made to unite peaceably, by sprinkling, a little sweet-seented water on them (**4S5**). It is well to put a slanting board in front of the entrance (**603**) to show the moved bees that their loeation is changed. The empty hive should be removed from its place to prevent the bees from returning to it. The number of e comins in the united colony may be reduced as soon as the bees have all clustered together.
In this manner a strong colony with little honey, and a weak one with plenty of stores, may be united to form a good hive of bees.
Out-Door Sheltering.
**635.** The moving of a colony to a warmer or better sheltered place, just before Winter, is not advisable, for many bees, not having noticed their new location, would perish of cold, while searching for their home, and the population would be greatly decreased.
In our Northern, Middle and Western States, the style of hive used has a considerable influence on the safety of outdoor wintering.
With hives that are single-walled all around, great care should be taken to shelter the bees from the piercing winds,which in Winter so powerfully exhaust their animal heat; for, like human beings, if sheltered from the wind, they will endure a low temperature far better than a continuous current of very much warmer air.**
In some parts of the West, where bees suffer much from cold winds, their lives are protected, in Winter, by sheaves of straw, fastened so as to defeul them from both cold and wet. With a little ingenuity, farmers might easily turn their waste straw to a valuable account in sheltering their bees.
Not only can straw be used for this purpose with much service, but also forest leaves, corn fodder, and rushe. Snow is found to be a very good shelter, provided its successive melting and freezing does not interfere with the necessary ventilation. It must be removed from the entrance on the approach of a warm day.
Mr. Geo. H. Beard, of Winehester, Mo,, safely wintered ninety-three colonies out of ninety-six, in the severe Winter of 1884-5, in the lower apartment of two-story Langstroth lives, by removing the oil-eloth and replacing it with coarse sack-eloth, filling the upper story with maple leaves, and covering the hives, on all sides, except the front, with what is commonly known as slough-grass. This sueress is worthy of notice, for in that memorable Winter, more than two-thirds of the bees in the Northern States died, some Apiarists losing all they had. Like that of 1855-6, it will long be remembered, not only for the uncommon degree and duration of its cold, but for the tremendous winds, which, often for days together, swept like a Polar blast over the land.
We have, for years, wintered part of our bees on the Summer stand, by sheltering them on all sides but the front, with forest leaves closely packed, and held with a frame-work of lath, or ladder.
**636.** One of the most important requirements for suecessful out-door wintering, is the placing of warm adsorbents, immediately over the cluster, to inbibhe the excess of moisture that rises from the bees, without allowing the heat to escape.
In Mareh, 1856, we lost some of our best colonies, under the following circumstances: The Winter had been intensely cold, and the hives, having no upward ventilation or moisture absorbents, were filled with frost\(-\)in some instances, the ice on their glass sides being nearly a quarter of an inch thick. A few days of mild weather, in which the frost began to thaw, were followed by a severely cold spell with the thermometer below zero, accompanied by raging winds, and in many of the hives, the bees, which were still wet from the thaw, were _frozen together in an almost solid mass_.
As long as the vapor remains congealed, it can injure the bees only by keeping them from stores which they need; but, as soon as a thaw sets in, hives which have no upward absorbers are in danger of being ruined.
Mr. E. T. Sturtevant, of East Cleveland, Ohio, once known as an experienced Apiarist, thus gave his experience in wintering bees in the open air:
"No extremity of cold that we ever have in this climate, will injure bees, if their breath is allowed to pass off, so that they are dry. I never lost a good colony that was dry, and had plenty of honey."'
The absorbents generally used are chaff in cushions, straw, forest leaves (maple leaves preferred), corn cobs, woolen trags, or wool waste, etc. Mr. Cheshire used eork-dust, which he claimed gave fourteen times as much protection as a dead-air space. The oil-cloth, which makes an air-tight covering, must be first removed, and if no straw-mat is used, the cushion of absorbents may be placed right over the frames. We use the straw-mat, and fill the upper half-story with dry leaves, these being the cheapest and best absorbent at our command.
In the coldest parts of our country, _if upward absorbents are neglected_, no amount of protection that can be given to hives, in the open air, will prevent them from becoming damp and mouldy, _crew if frost is excluded,_ unless a large amount of lower ventilation is given. Then they need as much air as in Summer. Often, the more they are protected, the greater the risk from dampness. \(\Lambda\) very thin hive _unpainted,_ so that it may readily absorb the heat of the sun, will dry inside much sooner than one painted white, and in every way most thoroughly protected against the cold. The first, like a _garret,_ will suffer from dampness for a short time only; while the other, like a _cellular,_ may be so long in drying, as to injure, if not destroy, the bees.
Some apiarists have objeated to this paragraph, because they have never had the experience mentioned in the two Winters above named. Such Winters are rare, but we must be prepared for a recurrence of similar conditions, as we too often have Winters similar to those of Siberia.
**637**. _If the colonies are wintered in the open air, the entrance to their hives must be large enough to allow the bees to fly at will._ Many, it is true, will be lost, but a large part of these are diseased; and, even if they were not, it is better to lose some healthy bees than to incur the risk of losing, or greatly injuring, a whole colony by the excitement created by confining then when the weather is warm enough to entice them abroad..
If the sun is warm and the ground covered with new-fallen snow, the light may so blind the bees, that they will fall into this fleecy snow, and quickly perish. Even at such times, it is hardly advisable to confine them to their hives. A neighbor of ours killed four colonies, all he had, by closing the entrances with wire-eloth for Winter. We had advised him to remove it, but he did not do so because some one had told him that his bees would get lost in the snow.
**63S.** In some countries, as in parts of France, or England, the weather is often for weeks just ehily enough to make it necessary for the bees to remain in the hive, as those who take advantage of an occasional ray of sun light become ehilled before they can go far, and yet there are no very cold days. In such countries the confining of them to the hive is not objectionable, because they have not consumed large quantities of honey at any time and do not become restless. For this reason Mr. Goutefangeas, of Noiretable, France, has devised what he calls a "cloister." The hive is made with a portico.
the alighting board is hinged on the bottom and raised up so as to close the hive when there is any necessity of confining the bees to the hive. Two tubes pierced with holes at their lower end serve for air, and light is excluded. With the use of this "cloister" the bees are confined in a way that keeps them quiet, for they see no light and the rays of the sun do not attract them to the field. But this implement must be used sparingly, for should a warm day come, the bees would become restless in spite of the darkness and the confinement would be more injurious to them than freedom. Mr. Goutefangeas claims for this invention a number of advantages, as it permits him to confine the bees without danger whenever there is chance of their being lost by salving forth in bad weather. In the _hot_ and _cold_ climate of the Mississippi Valley, the cloister could be used but little.
Great injury is often done by disturbing a colony of bees when the weather is so cold that they cannot fly.
Many that are tempted to leave the cluster, perish before they can regain it, and every disturbance, by rousing them to neediess activity, causes an increased consumption of food. On the other hand,it is of the utmost importance that they be allowed to fly and void their exerements (73) whenever the weather is warm enough. At such times it will be advisable to clean the bottomboards of hives, of dead bees, and other refuse.
**639**. To show the advantages derived by the bees from a Winter flight, we will give our experience during one of the coldest Winters, that of 1872-3. From the beginning of December to the middle of January, the weather was cold and the bees were unable to leave the hive.
The 16th of January was a rather pleasant day. We took occasion of this 10 examine our weak colonies, being anxious in regard to their condition. To our astonishment, they were found alive, and our disturbing then caused them to fly and discharge their exerements. Being convinced that all our bees were safe, we did not disturb the strong colonies, and a few
of the latter remained quiet. The next day, the cold weather returned, and lasted three weeks longer. Then we discovered that the weak colonies, that had had a cleansing flight, were alive and well, while the strong ones which had remained confined, were either dead or in bad condition.
**640**. In order to shelter bees more efficiently, in outdoor wintering, against climatic influences, Apiarists have devised hives, with double walls, filled at the sides. as well as on top, with some light material non-conductor of heat. Some are made on the same principle as the old two-story double-wall **L**. hive (fig. 131) without packing.
The most wide-spread style, is the chaff-hive, of A. I. Root. This hive is far superior to single-wall hives for outdoor wintering. It was formerly made in two stories, all in one piece, which rendered it very inconvenient. They now make it as we made ours for years. The cap may be filled with chaff, dry leaves, or a cushion of any warm material. Some Apiarists also use _one-story chaff-hives_ with loose bottom boards that can be taken off to remove the dead bees in Spring.
**641**. After having used some eighty chaff-hives during twenty-five years or more, we find two disadvantages in them: _1st_. They are heavy and inconvenient to handle, especially when made to accommodate ten large Dadant frames. _2d_.
As they do not allow the heat or cold to pass in and out readily, the bees in these hives may remain in-doors, in occasional warm Winter days, while those of thin-front lives will have a cleansing flight. Thus, in hard Winters, these bees suffer as much from diarrhea (**626-7S4**) as others, unless the Apiar-ist takes pains to disturb them and _make them fly_, occasionally, in suitable weather.