The wintering of our bees successfully has been the great problem confronting bee keepers. The winter losses have been so great some winters as to almost threaten to wipe out the industry.

In talking over winter losses with that veteran bee keeper, Geo. E.Hilton, he remarked that he felt sure that nine-tenth of the bees that have died have died of starvation. The cause for this was the hives were too shallow. They do not in any way provide space enough above the bees to hold enough stores for a winter's supply. When we think the matter over in regard to these shallow hives, we wonder that as many have lived through the winter without starvation in these hives as there have. 

Bees as every one knows, store their honey above them, and they should be given a hive of sufficient height to allow them to store a full supply to last them through any winter and spring and this is just what this tall hive made up of two bodies that I use and recommend, does. It is well known now that bees in the fall drop down to the bottom of any hive they are in, get into a circular mass and eat upward and do not or cannot see that it is well filled with winter stores. 

Then place these hives in shelters such as we recommend where you can give them the protection they should have from all storms that blow, where you can see that their entrances are opened at all times so they will have proper ventilation and have a flight at any time in the winter when the weather is suitable. For it has been starvation and want of ventilation that has been two of the great causes of mortality in our bees. Many of our hives weighed in the fall around a hundred pounds. A hive that weighs a hundred pounds in the fall, is good for 100 to 200 next summer.

The disasters to bees wintered in the old ways in the past twenty years, have been enormous ; while the percentage of losses of bees in buildings have amounted to nothing, although they have had little or no care, except perhaps the care a novice might bestow upon them, or had to get along with the care they could give themselves as they would have to do in a tree in the woods. 

Pearce, Joseph Abner. The Pearce New Method of Bee Keeping. Joseph A. Pearce Company, 1918.

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