_Seneca Falls, N. Y._, Oct., 1868.
[For the American Bee Journal.]
Upward Ventilation.
MR. EDITOR:--I once found a bee-tree, with an excellent swarm in it. I
cut it down Gallup-fashion, and moved it home, in the month of February.
The entrance was a hole, about three inches in diameter, just at the top
of the cavity. The tree was a green butternut. I sawed it off, short
enough to handle easy, and set it up in the yard. The combs were bright
and clean, and there were not over a dozen dead bees in it when found.
It swarmed twice in June following, and next winter I stopped up the
entrance at the top, and made another within six inches of the bottom,
by boring a two-inch hole through the side. All this time I kept the top
closed tight. The following winter I came near losing them with dampness
and dysentery. Next winter, I closed up the auger hole, and opened the
top entrance again. They wintered as nice as a pin--no dampness or
dysentery. In April I thought I could still better their condition, by
making the entrance smaller, and reduced the entrance to one inch in
diameter. Within six days after, I came near losing them with dampness
and mould. Experimenting still further, I noticed that the fanners or
ventilating bees would, in hot weather, be arranged in this manner--one
set at the lower edge of the entrance, with their heads outward; the
other set at the top of the entrance, facing inward, driving out the hot
air. I then reduced the size of the entrance still more, and found that
in a very short time nearly the entire swarm would issue and cluster on
the outside of the log or gum. Enlarging the hole to three inches again,
the bees would soon return inside and resume work. I kept that log hive
four years, and then sold it to a neighbor. Whenever I wintered it with
the natural entrance open, there was no dysentery and no unnatural
distention of the abdomen; and on their first flight in the spring, they
would not even speck the snow.
In wintering bees in the Wellhuysen hive, made of willows and plastered
with cow manure, they would never have the dysentery--not the least sign
of it. The combs were always bright and clean, and the bees always in as
good condition as they were in midsummer. I have wintered bees in
Canada, in the old-fashioned straw hive, with the entrance, summer and
winter, a two-inch hole in the centre at top; and they always wintered
well, without the least sign of dysentery, even when they would not
leave the hive from the 10th of October to the 1st of May--nearly eight
months. In that climate they are nearly always confined from the 1st of
November to the 10th or 20th of April, or about five months. When I
lived there, there was scarcely ever any honey stored after the 15th of
August, yet bee-keeping pays in that climate. To encourage our northern
bee-keepers, I will say that, according to my experience, there and in
the West, I think the flowers secrete more honey, in the same length of
time, there than here. Our atmosphere is rather dry, while theirs is
moist and humid--just right for the secretion of honey.