64 MEETING OF INSPECTORS OF APIARIES. 
troduction of young, vigorous Italian queens from good stock. It 
has been shown repeatedly that Italian bees are less liable to disease 
than most of the black bees, especially of degenerate stock, as is so 
much of the black stock when no attention is paid to improvement. 
In a pamphlet issued in 1903 by the inspectors of New York the 
introduction of Italian brood was recommended. This is not 
advocated as a cure, however, but merely as a means of protecting the 
colony against future infection. 
Reference has been made to the introduction of Italian queens as a 
method of curing disease, and to this method the name of Mr. Alex- 
ander is attached. In the article in which Mr. Alexander first 
advocated the plan he says, in part: 
“How to rid your apiary of black brood” (By E. W. Alexander) .¢ 
This cure is on the line of introducing new blood into the apiary, * * * 
Go to every diseased colony you have and build it up either by giving frames 
of maturing brood or uniting two or more until you have them fairly strong. 
After this, go over every one and remove the queen; then in nine days go over 
them again, and be sure to destroy every maturing queen cell or virgin, if any 
have hatched. Then go to your breeding queen and take enough of her newly 
hatched larvee to rear enough queen cells from to supply each one of your dis- 
eased queenless colonies with a ripe queen cell or yirgin just hatched. These 
are to be introduced to your diseased colonies on the twentieth day after you 
have removed their old queen, and not one hour sooner, for upon this very 
point your whole success depends; for your young queen must not commence 
to lay until three or four days after the last of the old brood is hatched, or 
twenty-seven days from the time you remove the old queen. If you are very 
careful about this matter of time between the last of the old brood hatching 
and the young queen commencing to lay, you will find the bees will clean out 
their breeding combs for this young queen, so that she will fill them with as 
fine healthy brood as a hive ever contained. This I have seen in several hun- 
dred hives, and have never seen a cell of the disease in a hive after being 
treated as above described. 
It is not necessary to remove any of the combs or honey from the diseased 
colony; neither is it necessary to disinfect anything about the hive. Simply 
remove the old queen, and be sure the young queen does not commence to lay 
until three or four days after the old brood is all hatched. This treatment 
with young Italian queens is a perfect cure for black brood. 
In regard to those old queens that were formerly in your old hives, I think it 
best to kill them when you first take them from their colonies—not that the 
queen is responsible for the disease, for I am sure she is not; but a young 
Italian queen that has been reared from a choice honey-gathering strain is 
worth so much more to you that I can not advise saving these old queens. 
I have experimented along this line considerably, and found, after the colony 
has been without a queen twenty-seven days, as above directed, it will usually 
be safe to give them one of these old queens, and the cure will be the same. 
Still, there have been exceptions, so I advise killing them at once. 
The essential point in the treatment is to allow several days to 
elapse after the emergence of the last of the healthy brood before 
the queen begins to lay. 
aGleanings in Bee Culture, November 1, 1905. 
