534 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



another beekeeper who lives about one mile east of me and found his 

 bees apparently all right. We then returned and examined the diseased 

 brood, which we decided was European Foul Brood, judging from what 

 we had read of the disease. It showed up in a few of my weak colonies 

 that fall. These colonies I destroyed. 



The winter of 1913-14 I lost about forty colonies in the cellar, a 50 per 

 cent loss where my loss for the winter of 1912-13 in same cellar was less 

 than 3 per cent. The disease did not show up in the spring of 1914 until 

 the bees had been out of the cellar about two weeks, when it spread rap- 

 idly to all of my colonies. During the meantime I had taken thirty-nine 

 colonies on shares from my neighbor to the east of me, he having moved 

 to Delaware county the fall before, taking twelve colonies with him. I 

 examined the thirty-nine colonies within a day or two from the time they 

 were taken from the cellar, they were apparently O. K. at that time, but 



Thirteen colonies left of 105, result of European foul brood in eight months. 



the disease soon developed in all of them. I visited this beekeeper in 

 Delaware county in August this year and found him with eight or ten colo- 

 nies all diseased; we also visited another beekeeper in his vicinity, who 

 had over one hundred colonies of which we examined ten or twelve and 

 found no disease. On May 19 I went to the picnic at McGregor and suc- 

 ceeded in having Mr. Pellett return with me that evening. The next day 

 we went through my colonies, caged the queens and muted them until I 

 had but 13 colonies of my original lot remaining. I also had fifteen colo- 

 nies that were apparently free from the disease, these I had bought about 

 the first of May. Mr. Pellett inspected a number of yards in this vicinity 

 finding one yard with all colonies diseased and one yard of twelve colonies 

 with three diseased. On May 22 my neighbor and myself ordered eighty 

 queens from a party in Arkansas, who kept putting us off and finally said 

 he could not furnish them at all. On June 17 we ordered the queens from 

 the American Bee Journal, and received them the 20th, introducing them 

 in the same day. Our colonies having been queenless for 30 days and hav- 

 ing given them close attention, some had reared new queens and had brood 



