I specially invite a careful perusal of this chapter, as the subject, though of the very first importance in the management of bees, is one to which but little attention has been given by the majority of cultivators. In our climate of great and sudden extremes, many colonies are annually injured or destroyed by undue exposure to heat or cold. In Summer, thin hives are often exposed to the direct heat of the sun, so that the combs melt, and the bees are drowned in their own sweets. Even if they escape utter ruin, they cannot work to advantage in the almost suffocating heat of their hives. But in those places where the Winters are both long and severe, it is much more difficult to protect the bees from the cold than from the heat. Bees are not, as some suppose, in a _dormant_, or _torpid_ condition in Winter. It must be remembered that they were intended to live in colonies, in Winter, as well as Summer. The wasp, hornet, and other insects which do not live in families in the Winter, lay up no stores for cold weather, and are so organized as to be able to endure in a torpid state, a very low temperature; so low that it would be certain death to a honey-bee, which when frozen, is as surely killed as a frozen man. As soon as the temperature of the hives falls too low for their comfort, the bees gather themselves into a more compact body, to preserve to the utmost, their animal heat; and if the cold becomes so great that this will not suffice, they keep up an incessant, tremulous motion, accompanied by a loud humming noise; in other words, they take active exercise in order to keep warm! If a thermometer is pushed up among them, it will indicate a high temperature, even when the external atmosphere is many degrees below zero. When the bees are unable to maintain the necessary amount of animal heat, an occurrence which is very common with small colonies in badly protected hives, then, as a matter of course, they must perish. Extreme cold, when of long continuance, very frequently destroys colonies in thin hives, even when they are strong both in bees and honey. The inside of such hives, is often filled with frost, and the bees, after eating all the food in the combs in which they are clustered, are unable to enter the frosty combs, and thus starve in the midst of plenty. The unskilfull bee-keeper who finds an abundance of honey in the hives, cannot conjecture the cause of their death. If the cold merely destroyed feeble colonies, or strong ones only now and then, it would not be so formidable an enemy; but every year, it causes many of the most flourishing stocks to perish by starvation. The extra quantity of food which they are compelled to eat, in order to keep up their heat in their miserable hives, is often the turning point with them, between life and death. They starve, when with proper protection, they would have had food enough and to spare.