How Part Of The Swarm Is Frozen
Categories: WINTERING BEES.Bee Keeping: Mysteries Of Bee-keeping Explained
A good family will form a ball or circle about eight inches in
diameter, generally about equal every way, and must occupy the spaces
between four or five combs. As combs must separate them into divisions,
the two outer ones are smallest, and most exposed of any; these are
often found frozen to death in severe weather. Should evidence be
wanting from other sources to show that bees will freeze to death, the
above would
wintered in a semi-torpid state, in consequence of the extreme cold."
We must either doubt the correctness of this relation, or suppose the
bee of that country a different insect from ours--a kind of semi-wasp,
that will live through the winter, and eat little or nothing. The
reader can have no difficulty in deciding which is the most probable,
whether _bees are bees_ throughout the world, endowed with the same
faculties and instincts, or that the facts as they are, are not
precisely given, especially when we see what our own apiarians tell us
about their never freezing.
Here I might use strong language in contradiction; but as I am aware
that such a course is not always the most convincing, I prefer the test
of close observation. If bees will freeze, it is important to know it,
and in what circumstances.
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