TREATMENT FOR BEE DISEASES. 61 
ating the disease and can be recommended more highly than the 
burning plan, as by this means the wax is not destroyed. 
California has the county system of inspection, and probably the 
smallest number of colonies which one inspector has to look after is 
30,000. From that number the colonies run up to 150,000 in a single 
county. 
Doctor Puimuirs. What Mr. Rankin has just said is in line with 
my own observation during the middle of the summer. I visited one 
apiary in Ventura County, with Mr. A. G. Edmondson, the inspector 
for that county, and he showed me 151 hives. Two years ago this 
aplary was in the hands of a competent bee keeper and no disease 
was present. Ventura County is so large that the inspector can 
cover only one half in one year and the other half the next year. 
When we examined the apiary we found 15 healthy colonies and 136 
hives in which the bees were dead or nearly so. 
TREATMENT FOR BEE DISEASES. 
In discussing the methods of treatment, it would be a good plan 
to call on each of the inspectors present and get each one to tell what 
method he employs. We should hear first from Mr. N. E. France, 
inspector from Wisconsin. He is the oldest inspector in the United 
States.in point of service. 
Mr. France. Referring to the paper which was just read, I have 
tried some of the methods of using drugs in the apiaries of competent 
bee keepers and invariably all these methods are failures in Wis- 
consin. The fumigating with formalin seemed for a time to check 
the disease, as did also some of the other drugs, but in the end they 
all are failures. The one method that has given universal satisfac- 
tion we owe to the oldest inspector in America, Mr. William McEvoy, 
of Ontario, and it has often been termed the “ McEvoy method.” 
The plan is to remove the bees from the infection and keep them away 
long enough to use up whatever infected honey there is in the stomach 
of the bee. 
IT am not satisfied to stop with finding disease in a yard and imme- 
diately prescribing treatment. In fact, I seldom, after looking over 
the yard and finding the disease, begin to prescribe treatment. for I 
feel that we are not yet ready for it. What is the use of treating 
when some neighbors might have diseased colonies? Take a wide 
circuit; then treat at once all colonies having disease. This has some- 
times vexed the bee keepers, for they want me to stay and show them 
what to do at once, but I tell them that I see no good in treating 
colonies while leaving another source of infection. 
I try first to instruct the owner of the bees to be careful in his man- 
agement. If, in my judgment. he is one who keeps the apiary clean, 
