Editor American Bee-Keeper:

Dear Sir-
Permit me to say for the benefit of your readers, that in wintering out of doors in an eight-frame hive, I find It an advantage to remove one frame-leaving but seven. In this way you get more bees together and they are kept warmer. Give a little ventilation at the top, and If the seven frames are full of honey they will winter out of doors all right, without protection. And furthermore, without protection they feel the cold winds strike the outside of the hive and will not come out every bright day to be chilled and die, which they will do if protected on the northwest, as I have proven during the past winter. You cannot freeze a colony to death that has plenty of stores and ventilation. Heat without ventilation produces mould, and that Is what kills the bees. The cover was blown off of one of my hives last winter when the mercury was twenty degrees below zero, and when I found It the bees' only covering was a piece of canvass, still they came through all right. 

Yours truly, E. CHARLES McCLEARY.
Verdoy, N. Y., March 28, 1898.

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