feeder should be made like a box with five sides closed, leaving a part
of the sixth side open, to admit the bees from their common entrance with
its floor level, when hitched on the front of the hive. It should be of
sufficient depth to lay in broad comb, filled with honey. If strained
honey without combs is used for feeding, a float, perforated with many
holes, should be laid over the whole of the honey in the box, or feeder,
so as to prevent any of the bees from drowning; and at the same time, this
float should be so thin as to enable them to reach the honey. It should be
made so small that it will settle down as fast as the honey is removed by
the bees. As soon as warm weather commences in the spring, the feeder may
be used. Small drawers cannot be depended on as feeders, except in the
spring and summer, unless they are kept so warm that the vapor of the bees
will not freeze in them. It would be extremely hazardous for the bees to
enter a frosty drawer. They will sooner starve than attempt the
experiment. Drawers may be used without danger from robbers, but when the
feeder is used, robbers must be guarded against as directed in Rule 4.

Care should be exercised, in fall-feeding, to supply them with good honey,
otherwise the colony may be lost before spring by disease. Poor honey may
be given them in the spring, at the time when they can obtain and provide
themselves with medicine, which they only best understand.

Sugar dissolved, or molasses, may be used in the spring to some advantage,
but ought not to be substituted for honey, when it can be obtained.

Bees sometimes die of starvation, with plenty of honey in the hive at the
same time. In cold weather they crowd together in a small compass in order
to keep warm; and then their breath and vapor collect in frost, in all
parts of the hive, except in the region they occupy. Now, unless the
weather moderates, so as to thaw the ice, the bees will be compelled to
remain where they are located until their stores are all consumed that are
within their reach. One winter we had cold weather ninety-four days in
succession, during which time the bees could not move from one part of the
hive to another. I examined all my hives on the eighty-third day, and on
the ninetieth day I found four swarms dead. I immediately examined for the
cause, which was as already stated. I then carried all my hives into a
warm room and thawed them, so that the bees could move. Some hives that I
s