REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGIST AND BOTAXIST. 247 



SESSIONAL PAPER No. 16 



flow, poorer even than 1899. In many places no surplus was secured, and bees hav& 

 had to be fed more or less during the autumn. 



Swarming was also poor on account of the shortage of honey. All thei swarms 

 that came out at the Experimental Farm Apiary were made to go back to the mother 

 hives or were put with weak colonies ; 18 of the old colonies were doubled up, leaving 

 now on hand 42 colonies. 



The returns from the experimental apiary show an average of only 13 sections per 

 colony. The colonies which were run for extracted honey gave 19 pounds per colony. 



John Fixter. 



Appexdix a. 



An Ontario bee-keeper wrote as follows to Mr. Wm. McEvoy, Inspector of Foul 

 Brood for Ontario : — 



' Dead brood appeared in half of my colonies. There would be from one to fiye- 

 or ten dead larv^ in a colony, and some of these I often found in capped cells^ 

 when I opened them with a penknife. 



'I tried the starvation plan. Several of the colonies I starved twice, as the 

 larvae continued dying. I even destroyed two sets of foundation. Just think of the time 

 and patience required to look into every cell in 80 colonies ; this I did several times. 

 I had made up my mind to clean them up. I have melted many a score of white 

 combs and super combs. I wish to be first on your list for inspection next summer. 

 I may buy a lot of colonies which will be subject to your inspection.' 



Mr. McEvoy's answer is full of valuable information : — 



' Your colonies ran out of unsealed honey while they had a large quantity of 

 brcod on hand to feed, and then your bees did not uncap the sealed stores fast enough 

 to keep pace with the amount of brood that required feeding, and the result was that 

 considerable brood died of starvation. And some time after that the brood would 

 suffer in proportion to the length of time that the brood nest was short of unsealed 

 stores, and it would end in an increase of starved brood, which the bees would allow 

 to remain in the combs for some time after the honey flow commenced. You never 

 would have found one cell of dead brood in any of your colonies if you had kept theni 

 well supplied with unsealed stores. You may say that I am very much mistaken as 

 to the cause in your case, but I am not ; I have travelled over every inch of this. 

 line for fully twenty years and from close observing, feeding and watching results, I 

 have found that such is the cause why the bees fail to feed all the brood at certain, 

 times. 



' On the night of May 28, 1889, we had a killing frost all over the province of 

 Ontario, which was followed by several days of wet weather. That frost coming at 

 the end of one of the warmest and most favourable springs ever known for bees, was 

 a serious thing, because it caught all hives full of brood and suddenly stopped all the 

 honey flow at lhe time when every colony had an immense quantity of larvfe to 

 feed. I warned every bee-keeper at that time that he could look out for a wholesale 

 starvation of brood and a very small crop of honey if he did not go to work and feed 

 his bees so as to give them a chance to feed the larvae. I kept my brood chambers 

 well supplied with unsealed stores (through uncapping and feeding) until the honey 

 flow began again. By thus doing, I secured one of the largest yields of honey I ever 

 took, and I did not see one cell of dead brood. Late in the summer of 1889, many 

 a bee-keeper became very much alarmed when he found his brood chamber in a rotten 

 state with dead brood. Spraying of combs, starving the bees, and other methods were- 

 resorted to, to'stamp out the dead brood. If these men had gone to work right after 

 that great frost of May 28, and kept the brood chambers well supplied with unsealed 

 honey through uncapping a part of the old sealed stores at one time, then another 

 afterwards, and so on until the honey flow began again, they would have had 



