[MEASURES OF SUCCESS IN CELLAR WINTERING.]
It is often difficult for the beekeeper to know whether his bee cellar is giving the best results, for he may not have been able to determine from reading or the observation of other cellars whether it is satisfactory. The writers, therefore, have attempted below to give a few measures which the beekeeper may apply to his apiary and his cellar, so that he may be able to decide whether his methods of cellar wintering should be improved.
(1) During the winter a thermometer inserted in the entrance of the hive should show a temperature of at least 52° F.
(2) There should never be any condensed moisture on the covers of the hives, and certainly never any on the bottoms.
(3) While, the cellar should be kept dark at all times, if a candle is held at the entrance of a hive at the end of January it should be several seconds before any of the bees break cluster. Frequently the cellar doors may be opened in March without disturbing the bees.
(4) There should never be many dead bees on the bottom of the hives. The live bees should be able to push them out as they die during the winter. The bees thus carried out will be found on the cellar floor just below the entrances. If there are bees all over the floor, it shows that these bees have flown from the hives—an indication of poor wintering.
(5) The bees should be quiet during the late winter. Noise at this time indicates that the bees are disturbed by an accumulation of feces, caused by low temperatures or poor food.
(6) If the bees were in good condition in the fall and have been wintered well, the loss during the winter will never be more than one-sixth of the total population of the hive. Such a loss is excessive, however, and in a well-wintered colony it may be as low as a hundred bees. This probably depends to a large extent on the age of the bees which go into winter, and if the temperature is right and the stores good there will be almost no loss of vigorous bees.
(7) The bees should not leave the hive while they are being carried from the cellar. If they do, it indicates that they are excited by an accumulation of feces.