iscovered the bees coming out?"

"As it was affected with dead brood, it was but little use to do
anything; you would have lost it eventually. But if it had been a stock
otherwise healthy, and was affected in this way only because it was a
small family, or the severity of the weather, you could have taken it
to a warm room, and turned it bottom up; the animal heat would then
convert the most of the water contained in their food into vapor; that
would rise from the hive, and the bees could retain the excrementitious
portion without difficulty till spring."

"I suppose you must get along without losing many through the winter,
if I may judge by your confident explanations."

"I can assure you I have but little fear on this head. If I can have
the privilege of selecting proper stocks, I will engage not to lose one
in a hundred."

"How do you manage? I would be glad to obtain a method in which I could
feel as perfectly safe as you appear to."

"The first important requisite is to have all good ones to start with.
Enough weak families are united together till they are strong, or some
other disposition made of them." I then gave him an outline of my
method of wintering, which I can confidently recommend to the reader.

ACCUMULATION OF FAECES DESCRIBED BY SOME WRITERS AS A DISEASE.

This accumulation of faeces is considered by many writers as a
disease--a kind of dysentery. It is described as affecting them towards
spring, and several remedies are given. Now if what I have been
describing is not the dysentery, why I must think I never had a case of
it; but I shall still persist in guessing it to be the same, and
suppose that inattention with many must be the reason that it is not
discovered in cold weather, at the time that it takes place. Some
stocks may be badly affected, yet not lost entirely, when moderate
weather will stop its progress. When a remedy is applied in the spring,
long after the cause ceases to operate, it would be singular if it was
not effectual. I have no doubt but some have taken the natural
discharge of faeces, that always takes place in spring when the bees
leave the hive, for a disease. Others, when looking for a cause for
diseased brood, and found the combs and hive somewhat besmeared, have
assigned this as sufficient; but according to my view, have reversed
it, giving the effect before the cause.

THE AUTHOR'S REMEDY.

For a time, I supposed that this moisture on the combs gradually mixe