No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 613 



be hard to find anything more in-teresting than the little realm 

 bounded by the walls of a beehive. When we enter that domain; 

 or better, observe it through a glass wall, it is to find a most orderly 

 and perfectly regulated commonwealth, its thousands of inhabitants 

 working in perfect harmony, an example we might well imitate. 

 There ought to be the most friendly relations between man, the 

 highest form of animal life and the honey bee, his most useful friend 

 among the insect world. It has become such a fixed notion in the 

 minds of most people that bees sting, that one would think that sting- 

 ing was their principal business; but while all working bees can 

 and will sting if occasion requires, the fact is most bees never do 

 sting at all. Few of us realize the magnitude of the forces in opera- 

 tion in the material world about us and fewer still have the time or 

 the opportunity to study how those forces operate. Only a very few 

 can have the means to penetrate the depths of the heavens to ex- 

 plore them to add to the sum of human knowledge, but any one with 

 an eye to see and a mind to grasp may walk afield and fi nd the world 

 a great hive of industry in which myriad forms of insect life are 

 working out world processes. It is getting to be more and more nec- 

 essary to know about these creatures. Some of them enemies and 

 some of them friends of man. At the head of the list of friends 

 stands the honey bee. Get acquainted with it, its acquaintance will 

 do you good. 



The following is the article by Mr. E. W. Alexander, as noted 

 above: 



HOW TO RID YOUR APIARY OF BLACK BROOD. 



A Cure that is Easily and Cheaply Applied without the Destruction 

 of Combs, Bees, Hives, or Utensils; a Valuable Article. 



[It may, perhaps, stimulate a more careful reading 1 of this article than it 

 would otherwise receive when I state that we have paid Mr. Alexander for the 

 privilege of giving this method to the world more money than we have ever paid 

 for any other article we have ever published, several times over. Black brood, 

 or the New York bee-disease, probably the most destructive of any brood 

 disease, was raging among Mr. Alexander's bees with unabated fury three 

 years ago. When he blundered on to this cure he scarcely realized that he was 

 going to rid the bees of the disease; but the proof of the pudding is in the 

 eating. I personally inspected hundreds of the very combs that were, three 

 years ago, badly infected, and which at the time of my visit were filled with 

 as nice solid healthy brood as one could wish to see. There was only one colony 

 that had a cell or two of the disease, but this was not treated strictly according 

 to the method to be described. One or two of the details were omitted to see 

 how far he could deviate from the plan. It is, therefore, with more than 

 ordinary pleasure that we are placing before the bee-keeping public one of the 

 most valuable communications that it has ever been our lot to give in these 

 columns. I expect to have it all printed in small pamphlet form, and send it 

 out for free distribution by the thousands. Of course, I may be mistaken as 

 to its value, but I hope it will be the means of entirely emancipating the State 

 of New York from the ravages of this dread disease, and other places where 

 it may find a footing. — Ed.] 



"This has been one of the hardest problems for me to solve that T 



have ever met in bee-keeping. For three years we tried everything 



in the line of disinfectants that we could hear of, also putting our 



bees on foundation, which did but little good. Some of the things 



33—6—1905 



