58 EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



my neighborhood. But this party has just come into my neighbor- 

 hood and she wants to do all she can to get somebody to throw her out. 



Mr. Ressinger. — I should like to ask some one in the Associa- 

 tion what it will really do to a colony of bees. 



Mr. Seastream. — I can answer that. In the state of Pennsyl- 

 vania, where they were raising applies in an orchard, they started to 

 spray their trees a little too early and at the time when I was working 

 for this man, the hives were in fine shape, all of them, but after the 

 bees went through this orchard and got the poison I could see here and 

 there all through the orchard dead bees, and I noticed it then in the 

 hives; the hives were so depleted that the brood could not be cared 

 for, they would die right in the cells. When we discovered it, we put 

 them in the kitchen and fired up the kitchen three or four days, and 

 hatched them out in that way; a lot of the brood hatched but I believe 

 that man lost something like 25 to 30 hives, that did not amount to 

 anything during the summer. The bees were lost, so many of them, 

 that they were some hives of six or seven combs full of brood and 

 hardly half enough bees to cover them at the time. The spraying 

 was done right at the time of the bloom. 



Mr. Kildow.— Is it not considered that when you spray fruit 

 trees in bloom with arsenate of lead, that it would poison any insect 

 that takes it? 



The President. — I could not say for sure, but that is my under- 

 standing. 



Mr. Kildow. — That is the understanding that we got, that when 

 you spray with arsenate of lead during the bloom that it will kill the 

 insects. 



The President. — It will kill the bees if it will take the nectar. 



Mr. Dadant. — Will they take the mixture. 



The President. — I don't know. 



Mr. Dadant. — Is not that generally mixed with copper? If it 

 is mixed with copper it A\ill have a taste that the bees will not touch. 



Mr. Kildow. — That is hearsay. I would not vouch for that. 



Mr. Seastream. — I want to say that I found scores and scores 

 of bees under the trees. 



The President.— Do you know what the trees were sprayed 

 with? 



Mr. Seastream. — No, I could not tell you. It was something 

 like twenty-two years ago. 



Question. — If, among twenty-five stands of bees, a person has one 

 exceptionally good queen, how would such person proceed to re-queen 

 the other hives from her? 



The Secretary. — Learn queen breeding. 



Mr. Seastream. — Well, I can raise a few queens and so can you. 



The Secretary. — I go to the poorest hive I have, pinch the 

 queen's head off, then I go to the best hive where my best queen is, 

 and take out a frame of brood which has plenty of fresh laid eggs and 

 put it into that hive. Sometimes they will rear fifteen to twenty 

 queens. 



Mr. Dadant.— Do you remove the other brood frames from that 

 hive. 



