The latter part of the summer of 1851 was very dry and cold; the yield of buckwheat honey was not a tenth of the usual quantity; the consequence was, that none but early swarms had sufficient honey for winter; twenty-five pounds is required to make it _safe_ in this section. I had over thirty young swarms with less than that quantity. Feeding for winter I avoid when I can; they would not winter as they were; and yet I made the most of them good stocks for the next summer by the following plan. HOW THEY WERE MANAGED. I had about twenty old stocks with diseased brood, and but few bees, yet _honey enough_. Now this honey appears healthy enough for the old bees, and fatal only to the young brood. I transferred the bees of these new swarms to the old stocks with black comb and diseased brood. The bees were thus wintered on honey of but little account any way, and all that was in the others, new and healthy, was saved. These new hives were set in a cold dry place for winter; _right end up_, to prevent much of the honey from dripping out of the cells; some will leak then, but not as much as when the hive is bottom up. Honey that runs out, when the hive is bottom up, will soak into the wood at the base of the combs; this will have a tendency to loosen the fastenings, and render them liable to fall, &c. The next March the bees were again transferred from the old to the new hives. My method is as follows: As the combs in the hive to receive the bees are rather cold, I set them by the fire, or in a warm room, for several hours previous. I take a warm room before a window, and as some few bees fly off, they will collect there. The new hive is turned bottom up on the floor; the old one on a bench by the side of it, having smoked the bees to keep them quiet. One comb at a time is taken out, and the bees brushed into the new hive; (a little smoke will keep them there). When through, I get the few on the window, and tie over a cloth to confine them, and keep them warm for a few hours longer. Paralyzing with puff-ball will answer instead, but they do not always all fall out of the combs when the hive is filled to the bottom, and it is possible that if a few were left, the queen might be one. Also a very few bees are worth saving at this season, and the combs might have to be broken out at last, for this purpose. When a good-sized family is put in a hive containing fifteen or twenty pounds of honey, and near half full of clean new comb, they are about as sure to fill up and cast a swarm, as another that is full and has wintered a swarm. CAUSE OF THEIR SUPERIOR THRIFT. One cause of superior thrift may be found in the circumstance, that all moth eggs and worms are frozen to death, and the bees are not troubled with a single worm before June. No young bees have to be removed to work them out. Nearly every young bee that is fed and sealed up, comes forth perfect, and of course makes a vast difference in the increase.