(3) _Good food and plenty of it._--Any well-ripened sealed honey that is not crystallized is good winter food. Honeydew stored by bees and honey from a few flowers (cruciferous plants, asters, etc.) crystallizes in the combs soon after it is gathered and the bees are obliged to liquefy it as they use it. They can not do this well in dry, cold weather, and dampness within the hive, though it might enable the bees to liquefy the crystallized honey, is otherwise inimical to bee life, especially so during winter. Some of the crystallized food is also wasted; hence the bees may starve even though the fall weight indicated sufficient stores for winter. Disastrous results are very likely, therefore, to follow the attempt to winter on such food. The removal of all pollen when preparing bees for winter has been advised by some, who assert that it is unfit winter food and produces dysentery. It will not, of course, alone sustain the life of the adult bees, but if all conditions are right no more of it will be eaten than the bees require to repair the waste of bodily tissue, and this being slight in winter the consumption is small as long as other food lasts. The pollen grains which by accident find their way into honey as the bees gather it would probably be quite sufficient to supply this waste in the case of the adult workers and no harm would result to these bees from the substitution of other combs for those containing pollen. But good colonies should begin brood rearing in January or February, and pollen or a suitable substitute for it containing nitrogen most then be present or the nurse bees will be subjected to a fearful drain on their vitality to supply the rich nitrogenous secretion required by the developing larvæ; in fact, they can not do so long, and the colony dwindles. This absurd theory that bees can not have access to pollen in winter without detrimental results can best be answered by referring to the well-known fact that a colony in a large box or straw hive, freely ventilated, yet having some part of the hive protected from drafts of air and kept dry, will almost invariably come out strong in the spring if populous in the fall, heavy with honey, and having a young and vigorous queen. The pollen, it could not possibly be claimed, had been injurious to such colonies, although they always gather and store it without restriction, and are not disturbed in the possession of it. In truth, their stores of pollen have constituted an important factor in their development, and the strong instinct which they have toward making accumulations of pollen for winter use and which they have exercised for thousands of years undisturbed is of great benefit to them. [Illustration: Fig. 71.--Percolator for preparation of winter food. (Original.)]