ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPEES' ASSOCIATION. 151 



of the hives. At first glance these bees seemed to be young bees, my 

 impression was they had swarmed and the young bees had dropped in 

 the grass. But in passing through the yard a few hours later. I found 

 practically the whole yard, about a hundred colonies, had these ap- 

 parently young bees in front of them, and there were thousands of 

 them crawling through the grass, and they could be found crawling 

 through the grass twenty or thirty or forty rods away from the yard. 

 Now this continued for several days and they entirely disappeared. 

 Whether that was the disappearing disease or not I don't know. I 

 never saw anything like it before. Perhaps some of you can enlighten 

 me on that. 



A Member. — Was that before clover flow or later? 



The President. — It was during clover flow, along the latter 

 part of June. We had a very heavy flow on at that time, and it was 

 not likely the bees would get anything but clover. There were some 

 orchards there, but there was no clover with those orchards, the orchards 

 were cultivated, so it does not seem possibly that it could be poison; 

 and since these bees were apparently young bees it rather puzzled me. 



A Member. — Did it follow some very hot weather? 



The President. — The weather was comparatively warm, and it 

 was in the swarming time, a number of colonies were swarming about 

 that time, trying to swarm at least; more than usual at that time of 

 year. 



A Member. — Can you tell us how to prevent it? 



The President. — No, that is why I asked you, what I would 

 like to find out. 



Mr. Wheeler. — At one time I made up my mind that it was 

 caused by the pollen the bees got. They were acting in that way in 

 the honey flow in the latter part of August, and I made up my mind 

 that it came from the pollen that had reached them, made them anxious 

 to get out and run, and I noticed some healthy bees would take a 

 hold of them and see if they could get over them, trim them up as if 

 they were something fine. ■ 



The President. — Any further discussion on this topic? We have 

 a paper by Mr. Hassinger. Mr. Hassinger is not present. I have 

 asked Mr. Kindig to read the paper and he has kindly consented to do so. 



Mr. Hassinger's paper was then read by Mr. Kindig, as follows: 



BUILDING AN EFFECTIVE WINDBREAK WITH CORN 

 STALKS AND WOVEN WIRE FENCING. 



(Edward Hassinger, Jr., Hortonville, Wis.) 



During the past year the value of a windbreak has been so strongly 

 presented both by bee-keepers and our government experts, that I 

 have been convinced of the necessitj^ for one as a protection for any 

 bee-yard. I had been thinking about windbreaks for five years or 

 more and had planned one such as I would build if I ever had occasion 

 to use one. The idea was to build an ordinary woven wire fence and 

 thread corn stalks or sugar cane stalks through the wires. Close 

 enough together to break the wind without diverting it onto parts of 

 the yard as a solid fence will do. Part or all of the stalks could be 

 easily removed during hot weather, if desired, and later replaced. 



