DISEASES OF liKKS. 



142 



DRONES. 



I'REVENTION. 



It would be useless to effect ii cure with- 

 out extreme care not to luive other colonies 

 arfected; and a little carelessness on the 

 I)ait of tlie bee-keeper may spread the dis- 

 ease throughout the whole apiary. .V comb 

 from a diseased colony or a single drop of 

 infected lioney is enough to carry the dis- 

 ease—hence the instructions to operate in 

 Ike evenings, so bees from healthy colonies 

 will not steal any of the diseased honey. .V 

 single bee from a diseased colony entering 

 a healthy one will carry the disease in its 

 honey sac. 



( AUTION. 



Do all work after dark, or at least when 

 no bees are flying. Take every precaution 

 not to start robbing, either of a diseased or 

 a healthy colony. If there is any robbing, 

 it endangers the whole apiary. If one sus- 

 pects foul brood in any part of his apiary, 

 he should by no means exchange combs. If 

 it is in any colony, it may be in one that 

 does not yet show the disease at all, but will 

 give it to others. If one has extracted any 

 honey he should not feed back without boil- 

 ing. After handling a foul-broody colony 

 he should not touch a healthy colony till his 

 hands are thororrghly washed. Any knives, 

 towels, or any thing daubed in the least 

 with foul honey, must be religiously got out 

 of reach of bees. One should be careful 

 from the first. Caution at the start will be 

 worth a luuidred times later on. 



FORMALIN, OR FORMALDEHYDE, 

 FOR CURING FOUL BROOD. 



In 1903 and '4 discussion arose in Glean- 

 ings in Bee Culture as to the possible value 

 of formaldehyde (or formalin) for curing 

 foul brood. Some of the experimenters who 

 had subjected several combs of honey and 

 brood from infected colonies to the fumes of 

 the gas in a tight box reported it a success. 

 ( )thers tried the same thing only to find that 

 such combs would transmit the disease the 

 same as before. Experiments conducted in 

 the Bureau of Entomology, Department of 

 \griculture, Washington, D. C, showed 

 that, when combs were subjected to the 

 fumes of the gas for 48 hours in a Novy's 

 anaerobic jar, all germs of the disease would 

 be destroyed; but as the average bee-keeper 

 could not have the requisite facilities, skill, 

 and knowledge to carry on such work, he 

 had better not take his chances of transmit- 

 ting any infectious disease through combs 

 fumigated under conditions such as he is 

 able to provide. In all probability the work 



would not be complete enough to make dis- 

 infection sure. If any infection at all were 

 left, the disease would spread again, and so 

 the work might just as well have not been 

 done— or not attempted ; because melting 

 up the combs and boiling, or, better, burn- 

 ing up the frames, would remove all jiossible 

 traces of disease. 



DIVIDING. This term is usually applied u^ 

 to the operation of increasing the number 

 of stocks by putting half the bees and coml)s 

 into a new hive, just about swarming time : 

 it is really one method of artificial swarm- 

 ing. If you have an extra laying queen to 

 give the queenless portion, it may do very 

 well; but otherwise it is a wasteful way of 

 making increase, and has been mostly aban- 

 noned. See Nucleus and Swarming, un- 

 der subhead Artificial Swarming ; also 

 Increase. 



DHOriTIiS. These are large noisy bees W^ 

 that do a great amount of buzzing, but never 

 sting anybody, for the very good reason that 

 they have no sting. The bee-keeper who 

 has learned to recognize them, both by sight 

 and sound, never pays any attention to their 

 noise, but visitors are many times sadly 

 frightened by their loud buzzing. We will 

 commence as we did with the worker-bees, 

 at the egg, and see how much we can learn 

 of these harmless and inoffensive inmates of 

 the bee-hive. 



If our colonies are prosperous, we may 

 find eggs in the drone-comb of some of the 

 best hives as early as March, but not, as a 

 general thing, until April. You can tell 

 the drone cells from the worker at a glance 

 (even if you have never seen them) by the 

 size, as you will see by looking at Honey- 

 Comb. Whenever you see eggs in the large 

 cells, you may be sure they are drone-eggs. 

 I do not mean by this that the eggs that 

 produce drones look any different from any 

 other eggs that the queen lays, for in looks 

 they are precisely the same. They are al- 

 most the same in every respect, for the only 

 difference is that the eggs that produce the 

 worker-bees have been impregnated, while 

 the others have not; but more of this, anon. 

 The egg, like those producing workers, re- 

 mains brooded over by the bees until it is 

 about three days old, and then by one of na- 

 ture's wonderful transformations is gone, 

 and a tiny worm appears, a mere speck in the 

 bottom of the cell. This worm is fed as be- 

 fore, until it is about a week old, and is then 

 sealed over like a worker larvae, except that 

 the cap to the cell is raised considerably 



