We also place a pipe or tube quite around the inside of the room upon the floor or ground (a floor is quite unnecessary, worse than nothing, for it makes a hiding place for rats and mice), this tube may be made of foot boards, and inch holes bored in it, once in two feet, for the equal distribution of the cold and fresh air, when needed. One end of this pipe must pass through the wall, and must have a slide or valve at or near the outer end.
If my room was at the bank or hill, the lower side or end will of necessity be destitute of earth banking, and we would make the wall at least sixteen inches, filled as above with some nonconducting substance, and dry marsh muck is equal, if not superior, to almost any other substance, except fine charcoal, and is easily procured.
A house built altogether upon a level surface, with the walls of sufficient thickness, say eighteen or twenty inches, will be equally good. The cost of such a house as I have described cannot be great. Most, if not all the labor, can be performed by the apiarian.
This house will be found very convenient for many other purposes in the spring and summer, in the various operations, to wit: in overhauling and examining the bees in the spring, as a window sash may then be placed in the top of one of the doors, and a stove placed within—thus I have one arranged.
When you suspect there may be a material change in the temperature of the room, look to the thermometer; if too cold, close the valves, if too warm open them more or less, as occasion may require; if that is not sufficient, open the door after dark, and close it again before light, and if that is not sufficient, throw in and spread over the floor a few bushels of snow or pounded ice.
Many swarms will be benefited by being set out on their summer stands at the time of the January thaw, or in February, those that are besmearing their hives, that they may discharge themselves, which will cure most cases of diarrhœa, or dysentery as it is called—though there are real cases of diarrhœa, but not often.
Thus we have passed over the most essential points in the wintering of bees. I will now proceed to give some, if not all of the necessary steps in their management in the spring.
It is difficult to give the exact date at which they should be removed to their summer stands, but whenever it is done, it is not at all important that each swarm should be placed on the identical stand it had the previous season, neither is this precaution necessary if set out in the winter.
In removing them from the cellar, it will first be necessary to close up the fly-hole and remove the chip or block from under the honey board—to confine the bees in the hive.
Immediately after placing them upon their summer stands, if housed in special depositories, and perhaps about the same time or a trifle earlier if wintered out, the bottom boards should be cleaned of dead bees and other filth, it saves the bees much labor and no doubt conduces to their health.