No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 615 



nucleus with this valuable queen, so as to run no risk in introducing 

 her to a full colony. 



"Now, my friends, don't let another season pass without cleaning 

 your apiary of black brood, and also at the same time requeen it with 

 young Italian queens so you will not only harvest a fair crop of 

 honey next summer, but will have an apiary that you will be proud 

 of and take pleasure in showing to your friends. I know many of 

 you have become discouraged in trying to rid your apiaries of this 

 fatal disease; but that does not help matters any. The only proper 

 thing to do when these troubles do come is to face them with a de- 

 termination to overcome any and every obstacle that comes in your 

 way; then when success rewards you for your perseverance, how 

 pleasant it is to look back over the past and realize that you have 

 accomplished all you labored for. I hope that you who have this dis- 

 ease in your apiaries will give this treatment a thorough trial next 

 season, and please report the result of your trial to Gleanings so that 

 every reader of it mill have your opinion of the method.'''' 



I wish to call our readers' attention to the fact that there are 

 two or three important factors in administering this treatment. The 

 first is Italians, with a preference for the extra-yellow stock. Ex- 

 perience has shown in thousands of instances that black bees are 

 very much more prone to get this disease in the first place, and when 

 they do get it they are more liable to succumb to it than Italians or 

 Carniolans. Put this fact down big. 



Second, the bees must be given time enough to polish up — that ia, 

 disinfect their combs in anticipation of a laying queen; for, as 

 Mr. Alexander points out, the bees must not be allowed to have a 

 queen until after 20 days of queenlessness. The rationale of this 

 is thorough cleansing and disinfection. During the 20 days that in- 

 tervene, the bees are constantly expecting a queen, and therefore 

 polish and repolish up the cells ready for her. This scrubbing ap- 

 parently cleans out all the old germs of the disease. During the 

 interval of twenty days the nurse-bees use up all the chyle, or larval 

 food, containing a taint of the disease. 



• Now right here this question may come up. When brood-rearing 

 stops in the fall, there is not only 20 days without brood, but many 

 times 20. Why, then, should these same colonies next spring, as 

 they have repeatedly, come down with the disease? Mr. Alexander 

 explains it in this way: When the queen stops laying in the fall, the 

 bees do not polish up the combs as they do in the height of the 

 season, when the bees are fairly howling for brood or eggs. The 

 combs are left smeared with dead brood; the stuff dries on hard, and 

 is not removed till the subsequent spring; but in the height of the 

 laying season or brood-rearing season the combs are cleaned up, 

 when the dead matter can be removed in a sort of viscid state, and 

 before it has been glued fast to the walls of the cells. Mr. Alexander 

 and myself talked it over in company with no less a bee-keeper than 

 P. H. Elwood, who was present one of the days when I was at Mr. 

 Alexander's yards. On no other ground can be explained this cure, 

 except, possibly, that the disease might have run its course at the 

 Alexander yard, the same as many infectious diseases do. But when 

 we understand that black brood continues on in other yards in the 

 immediate vicinity where this treatment has not been applied, we 



