614 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



we tried seemed to help at first to cheek its deadly work; but in a 

 short time it would show itself again as bad as before; and so the 

 years went by while we lost nearly our entire honey crop and over 

 a thousand colonies before we got the first sign of a cure, and even 

 then it was so simple it seemed like a drowning man catching at 

 straws. But 1 kept at the little proof I had until I developed it 

 into a perfect cure. Then for three years we tested it thoroughly 

 on hundreds of colonies, so that we could be sure it was a cure which 

 could be depended on, and now I send it to Gleaning* for the A. I. 

 Root Company to give to the world. 



"This cure is on the line of introducing new blood into the apiary, 

 which will necessitate getting a choice Italian breeding-queen, one 

 of the best honey-gathering strains that can be procured. For this 

 special purpose I prefer quite yellow Italians. Now for the cure. 



"Go to every diseased colony you have, and build it up either by 

 giving frames of maturing brood or uniting two or more until you 

 have them fairly strong. After this, go over every one and remove 

 the queen; then in nine days go over them again, and be sure to de- 

 stroy every maturing queen-cell, or virgin if any have hatched. Then 

 go to your breeding-queen and take enough of her newly hatched 

 larva3 to rear enough queen-cells from to supply each one of your 

 diseased queenless colonies with a ripe queen-cell or virgin just 

 hatched. These are to be introduced to vour diseased colonies on 

 the twentieth day after you have removed their old queen, and not 

 one hour sooner, for upon this very point your whole success de- 

 pends; for your young queen must not commence to lay until three 

 or four days after the last of the old brood is hatched, or 27 days 

 from the time you remove the old queen. If you are very careful 

 about this matter of time between the last of the old brood hatching 

 and the young queen commencing to lay, you will find the bees will 

 clean out their breeding-combs for this young queen, so that she will 

 fill them with as fine healthy brood as a hive ever contained. This 

 I have seen in several hundred hives, and have never seen a cell of 

 the disease in a hive after being treated as above described. 



"It is not necessary to remove any of the combs or honey from the 

 diseased colony; neither is it necessary to disinfect anything about 

 the hive. Simply remove the old queen, and be sure the young queen 

 does not commence to lay until three or four days after the old 

 brood is all hatched. This treatment with young Italian queens is a 

 perfect cure for black brood. 



"In regard to those old queens that were formerly in your old hives, 

 I think it best to kill them when you first take them from their colo- 

 nies — not that the queen is responsible for the disease, for I am sure 

 she is not; but a young Italian queen that has been reared from a 

 choice honey-gathering strain is worth so much more to you that I 

 can not advise saving these old queens. 



"I have experimented along this line considerably, and found, after 

 the colony has been without a queen 27 days, as above directed, it 

 will usually be safe to give them one of these old queens, and the 

 cure will be the same. Still, there have been exceptions, so I ad- 

 vise killing them at once. 



"Now a few words about your breeding-queen. Buy one of the 

 very best you can for this purpose; for upon her real merits rests 

 the true value of your apiary hereafter. I would buy a three-comb 



