158 



JOtTENAL OF HORTICULTUKE AND COTTAGE GAEDENEE. [ August 25, 1863. 



It is true that mine is, to a very gi-eat extent, an experi- 

 mental apiaa-y, and that when once the poison had been in- 

 troduced by means of infected combs from common hives, I, 

 in my ignorance, assisted its dissemination through all my 

 colonies by the very endeavoiu-s wliicli I made to palliate it ; 

 but Mr. Lowe is quite mistaken in stating that " it is only 

 in the hands of the experimentalist that we find it generally 

 manifested." I will give a case in point. Mr. Quinby, an 

 American writer, and the cleverest and most sensible api- 

 ai-ian of the old school that I have ever met with, has lost 

 as many as a hundred stocks in a single year from tliis pes- 

 tilence, although he kept bees in the ordinary manner in 

 •simple boxes without bars or frames ; whilst Mi-. Langstroth, 

 who claims to be the original inventor of fi-ame-hives, and is 

 probably by far tlie most scientific and exijerimental api- 

 ai-ian in America, declai-es that it has never made its appeai-- 

 ance in his apiaries, and that he shoiJd regard its general 

 dissemination in America as the greatest possible calamity 

 to bee-keeping. 



I can also state that the process of di-iving healthy bees 

 one day, stowing the deserted hive in a warm kitchen during 

 the night, and fitting the combs into frames the next morn- 

 ing,* is by no means deserving of the reprobation with 

 which Mr. Lowe has visited it. Of com-se, when the liive is 

 on the spot none of these delays should take place ; but the 

 actual mischief is very trifling, being confined to the loss of 

 a few of the larger worms which protrude from then- cells, 

 and are siieedily removed by the bees. Neither the eggs, 

 vei-y young brood, nor that which is sealed over, is at all in- 

 jured, nor can foul brood be created in this manner, as I 

 have proved reijeatedly in former years. The fact is, if foul 

 brood were identical with chilled brood, I should have met 

 with it long ago, nor would my friends, Mr. Fox, " B. & W.," 

 "J. E. B.," Mr. John P. Edv.-ards, and hundieds of others, 

 have entu'elj' escaped it. 



I do not expect to convince Mr. Lowe, nor am I by any 

 means sm-e that a bystander would not deem me out-argued, 

 since the firmness of Mr. Lowe's convictions is fully equalled 

 by his ability in maintaining them ; but in this case I have 

 had ample opportunities of judging, and I may confidently 

 ask the apiarian readers of The Jouknal of Hokticul- 

 TUKE, if I have ever misled them in a single instance which 

 has fairly come under my obsei-vation as — A Devonshire 

 Bee-keepek. 



P.S. — Since writing the foregoing I have pei-used Mr. 

 Edwards' exceUeut article in page 137, for wliich, as well as 

 that in page 120, I beg to tender him my best thanks. He 

 has, I perceive, anticijjated some of my arguments in another 

 form, and confirms much of my own experience in driving, 

 artificial swarming, the eifects of chloroform, itc. 



THE FOUL BEOOD CONTEOVEESY. 



Apiakians have the chai'acter of being the most preju- 

 diced class in the world; and su-relywe have had an instance 

 of this characteristic lately, when we iind Mr. Taylor, Mi'. 

 Lowe, and Col. Newman — men who have carefully studied 

 the habits of bees — attacking " the experimental " apiai-y of 

 Mr. Woodbury, and almost rejoicing over what they would 

 call the failure of Ids "scientific" management; and by 

 exaggerating or misintei-preting it, they seem to want to 

 drive us back to nature, as they call the old-fashioned straw 

 skeps and swaniiing system. I am afraid that we, who are 

 anxious to learn from the experience and misfortunes so 

 generally divulged by " A Devonshike Bee-keepek," can- 

 not hope to benefit by a discussion of the question whether 

 foul brood is a disease or not. 



Mr. Lowe, who acknowledges that he passes over om-sorily 

 the experience of other writers on the diseases of bees, has 

 found this disease, or complaint, or malady, or evU, or what- 

 ever he may choose to call it, in his own Idves. But is he 

 not taking for gr,inted the cause of it — namely, a sudden 

 chill to all the brood affected ? It is quite as probable that 

 this evil has a small beginning, and spreads rapidly through- 

 out the hives, since experience teaches that a hive attacked 

 by it rarely recovers, but that all the comb becomes affected. 



Jlr. Woodbury, by the great advantage his "experimental " 

 system gives liim over Mr. Lowe, has discovered that it is 



* All this ie, of coui-tc, only perniiesible during warm summer weather. 



contagious, and probably infectious too. Mr. Lowe com- 

 pares the evil to the chilling of eggs which are being hatched. 

 Has he found that one chilled egg will communicate its 

 rottenness to other sound eggs 'i The origin of the disease 

 foul brood is stiU a mystery to us English bee-keepers, like 

 that of typhus, or cholera, or the potato disease (does Mr. 

 Lowe deny the name of "disease" to the lasts') and our 

 object should be to collect as much information on the sub- 

 ject as possible, and not to check the efforts of oui' pioneers 

 by a sneer at their faUui'es. 



>Ir. Woodbiu-y has communicated promptly his bad suc- 

 cess that all might learn fi-om him. The cause of it he was 

 enabled to discover, because his system was a scientific one. 

 How many old-fashioned apiaries have died out during the 

 last thi'ee or four years, and the cause of their death left 

 in obscurity because theu' owners would not be " fighting 

 against nature ?" And yet this fatal visitation is denied to 

 be a disease, or, at least, called " anenth-ely artificial one," 

 in face of the acknowledged ignorance wliich prevails in 

 England on the subject, and in face, too, of the larger expe- 

 rience of bee-keepers in Germany and America. Our immu- 

 nity must surely be the immunity of ignorance only. 



Our progress in knowledge on tliis interesting branch of 

 natural history will be lamentably slow if our writers on the 

 subject persist in "passing over with a cursory glance" the 

 information afforded by others, even though they be foreign 

 bee-keepers, and perhaps ignoring them altogether. 



One word more on those that oppose the scientific and 

 exjierimental system. Are we to fall back on the cottager's 

 usual reason for the dmndling of a hive — " There is some- 

 thing the matter with the queen," when Mr. Woodbury has 

 been able, by scientific management, to discover and cope 

 with a disease in his apiai-y, which may have been the un- 

 known cause of the destruction of many apiaries on the old 

 system ? Mr. Edwai'ds has refen'ed to the artificial treat- 

 ment of the cow and sheep as authority for the " rational 

 management " of bees. I, too, would ask these " followers 

 of natui'e " why we may not increase the breeding of our 

 bees much in the same way as we increase the laying of 

 our hens ? 



Mr. Woodbirry's estabUshinent is for the purpose of pro- 

 pagating the Ligiu-ian breed, not for making honey : at least 

 so I understand. His success is proved by the numbers of 

 Ligurian colonies which he has spread over England. 



1 have heard of diseases running through the stock of 

 horse-breeders ; but I have not heard that then- misfortune 

 was attributed to theu- assisting nature by keeping then- 

 stock ill stables and boxes, and on good food, instead of 

 letting them run wild. 



I must ajjologise for the length of my letter, but it is on 

 a subject on which I, in common with so many other bee- 

 keepers, feel strongly. We cannot hope for improvement in 

 bee-keeping in England, if the efforts toward progress are 

 so unceremoniously snubbed. And there is no English bee- 

 keeper wlio ought not to feel, and be ready to express, his 

 gratitude for the information which Mr. Woodbury has so 

 li-eely placed within his reach ? — W. C. Ellis, Bothal. 



I HAPPEN to possess a copy of a book translated some 

 years ago from the original of Jonas de Gelieu, entitled the 

 "Bee Preserver," and which the author tells us is "the 

 result of sixty-foiu' years experience." From this high 

 authority we have the following passage — " Bees have no 

 real disease. Dysentery, about which so much noise has 

 been made, never attacks the bees of a well-stocked hive 

 that is left open at all seasons, but only those that are too 

 long and too closely confined. All their pretended diseases 

 are the result of hunger, cold, or the infection produced by 

 a too close and long confinement during the winter." 

 Nothing is here said about a so-called malady — " foul brood." 

 Foul, indeed, is the state of tilings, when in early spring 

 the stock has been so much weakened, no matter how, that 

 the labom-ers are insufficient to bring out the grubs that have 

 perished prematm-ely for want of the warmth necessary to 

 matui'e them, only to be insui-ed by adequate numbers. Is 

 more requii-ed than thousands of rotting carcases (sensitive as 

 bees are to the least offence), to fill the hive with unnatural 

 stench and idtimate disease ? What would be the condition 

 of a human family imder aualagous cu'cumstancea — viz., 

 supposing a dead body in a house were to remain unburied 



