50 



FOURTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



cell; it stopped all sagging — all stretch- 

 ing of the foundation. 



Pres. Baxter — If there are no ques- 

 tions in the Question Box we will have 

 a recess of a few minutes. 



Pres. Baxter — (Convention called to 

 Order) We will defer Mr. Kildow's^e- 

 port until tomorrow morning. We fvill 

 listen to Mr. Henry Dadant. 



Mr. Henry Dadant. 



I had a little experience with Euro- 

 pean Foul Brood. 



We found European Foul Brood in 

 our apiary about ten miles from home. 



The apiary consisted of 91 colonies, 

 not all Italians by any means. They 

 were all selected and no old queens — 

 but we always selected the best, 

 whether they were hybrids or Italians 



They went into winter quarters last 

 fall in very good shape. 



We always have a fall flow. We were 

 surprised this spring — in April — to find 

 three badly infected cases and several 

 others, even as early as April. In fact 

 we were so surprised that we sent for 

 our State Inspector, Mr. Kildow, to give 

 us some assurance that we had some- 

 thing ahead of us. We secured queens 

 as quickly as possible and went after 

 it. There were ninety colonies; one 

 swarm was Italian; we didn't have to 

 touch that swarm at all. Out of 39 

 colonies this was the result: 



Ten colonies of Italians that were 

 not touched; they were healthy the 

 entire season. Ten colonies of Italians 

 were given three frames of European 

 Foul Brood in place of healthy brood, 

 and they turned out all right; — that is, 

 we had some very bad cases of Euro- 

 pean Foul Brood and we wished to 

 strengthen them. The main thing is 

 to keep the colonies strong, as we all 

 know in almost every case — so that 

 gave three frames of very badly in- 

 fected brood to ten colonies, and in 

 each one of those ten colonies of strong 

 Italians they cleaned out the foul brood 

 and went right ahead. 



There was no honey flow until the 

 later part of the season. 



There were two more cases; we did 

 the same thing; we gave them three 

 frames of European Foul Brood and 

 they did not develop the disease. They 

 were not as strong as the others; by 

 caging the queen once they got rid of 

 the disease. 



Nineteen colonies we re-queened 

 along in May and June before the dis- 

 ease reached them. 



Now we re -queened all the colonies 

 in that apiary that were not Italians, 

 even though they seemed to be perfectly 

 healthy. We wished afterwards we had 

 not been so radical, but we were really 

 scared. Perhaps some of those black 

 or hybrids would have pulled through 

 all right. Dr. Miller has had strong 

 hybrids that have pulled through or by 

 caging once have thrown off the dis- 

 ease. 



There were flfty-one that either had 

 the disease or took the disease by the 

 first of July. We were not able to 

 get at all of the apiary with queens, 

 and a great many of them develbped 

 along in May and June before we could 

 get to them. Out of the fifty-one 

 that were infected with European Foul 

 Brood, five were pure Italians and they 

 Qured themselves. They were very 

 slight cases ; perhaps some of these that 

 were reported as having European Foul 

 Brood at the time did not have it. But, 

 if there was any question at all, we 

 marked them as suspicious, hxiX in 

 some instances they cleaned it up all 

 right. 



Three were cured by re-queening 

 with Italians; six were cured by giving 

 frames of healthy brood after the cag- 

 ing plan had presumably failed; some 

 cases we caged once; sometimes twice, 

 caging the queen from 8 to 11 days. If 

 they keep getting weaker it is no use 

 in trying to cage the queen again. The 

 main thing is to keep the colony strong. 



There was no honey flow and it made 

 it very difficult work re -queening. We 

 lost lots of "good queens on that Job. 

 There were three cured by caging twice, 

 8 to 11' days, and we lost 3 by becoming 

 so weak that we united them with other 

 foul brood colonies. At the end of the 

 season we had a little flow. We ob- 

 tained 1,500 lbs. from the apiary. We 

 went into winter quarters with 3 out 

 of 91 colonies still having the disease; 

 two of these were really abnorrtial 

 colonies; one of them had a black drone 

 laying queen and right in the beginning 

 of the season, in April, we gave that 

 colony a queen taken from a European 

 Foul Broody Colony; that is, we didn't 

 have enough queens to go around and 

 as we were taking some European Foul 

 Brood out we tried introducing those 

 queens to other colonies; in three cases 

 we did this; in each case those colonies 

 took the disease immediately. 



Dr. Phillips — Were they; hybrid' 

 queens? 



