38 



SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



The Secretary — If they have this where 

 they can read it. will they not profit bj' it? 



Mr. KDdow — Some of them wnll and 

 some of them will not. 



Mr. Williams — May I say a word here? 

 I have not had very much experience, 

 just a little bit along this line and I believe 

 that the men who keep bees for profit as 

 well as pleasure will bear me out in*^hat 

 I say. It is not from the men that keep 

 bees for profit, nor from the men that keep 

 bees for pleasure that we are in danger, it 

 is from the fellow that has one or tw'o 

 hives accidentally, he got them from some- 

 body or they came to his house. I did not 

 do much inspection this summer but it 

 seemed that foul brood was scattered by the 

 bees that froze to death in the winter. 

 That is, the man says they froze to death. 

 He did not know what was the matter. 

 All the bees of everybody else in the com- 

 munity had access |o it and that man did 

 not know that he wks doing wrong, he was 

 not intending to scatter that foul brood, 

 because he did not knovF he had it. There 

 is where our danger is. It is from the little 

 fellows that have bees from the bee trees 

 that are around over the forest, hundreds 

 and thousands of them in this State that 

 die through the winter, froze to death 

 they will tell you, when most of them that 

 I found were dead of the foul brood among 

 them. Now, as Brother Stone said a 

 minute ago, how can we get this State 

 law to those fellows that do not know 

 that there is such a law. They will not 

 ask for it, and, as Brother Kildow said a 

 minute ago, we have not appropriation 

 enough to reach all those fellows. How 

 long will it take to canvass this State 

 and find every man that has one swarm 

 of bees? They are the ones that v;e have 

 to look after. 



Mr. Dadant — Perhaps it would be ad- 

 visable to touch a little on the question 

 of deputies. The impression may be 

 abroad that the inspector can appoint 

 anybody he chooses. He used to be able 

 to appoint a man that he would select. 

 At present the State Civil Service Com- 

 mission has put a limit to that. They 

 have to give examination to a certain 

 number of candidates, as deputy inspectors, 

 and it is only among those that pass that 

 the inspector can select his deputies. In 

 one way this binds him up with those men 

 who have knowledge without going any 

 further than their examination to properly 

 diagnose the disease. But the inspector 

 has his hands tied. If there is no deputy 

 in the neighborhood where he is required 

 to go, then he must either send one from a 

 distance, or go there himself. So we must 



not criticise him too much for not selecting 

 men. He might select a man who had a 

 great interest in the matter and ask him 

 to look after it, and if he has sufiicient 

 diplomacy he will make friends with the 

 party. It is very much as Brother 

 Williams says, the rnan who is the owner 

 of one or two stands of bees is the one who 

 transmits the disease. 



I think we can illustrate the same point 

 in orchard growing. You and I and some 

 others who have only half a dozen apple 

 trees, peach trees and pear trees, will leave 

 our trees unsprayed and we cultivate 

 codling moth and San Jose scale and the 

 little curculio for the man who has a large 

 orchard and who takes good care of his 

 orchard; every year he has to spray be- 

 cause we careless fellows do not know any 

 better than to leave our trees without 

 spraying. It is exactly the same in the 

 bee business. The man who has only one 

 hive does not know anything about the 

 foul brood, he does not know how to treat 

 it and he is the man that we must look 

 after, and it is for every one of us to try to 

 educate those people. But the inspector's 

 duty is to see the people, give instructions, 

 and, if possible, enforce them. I think 

 that under the present circumstances we 

 must be satisfied with a sort of half 

 measure, until we can get more thorough 

 inspection by having more money and 

 more inspectors. In California they have 

 an inspector for each county, the same in 

 Colorado, because in those countries the 

 bees are so numerous that it is indispensa- 

 ble. It may come to that in Illinois, it 

 ought to come to it. 



Mr. Bennett— I know personally three 

 or four men who have kept bees from 

 twenty to sixty years. One has kept bees 

 for sixty years and has the worst kind of 

 cases of American foul brood, and he will 

 tell you that he never had a case of foul 

 brood in his life. I really do not think 

 that these men read very much about bees. 

 They are good, shrewd farmers, very smart 

 men, but they concentrate their minds on 

 their farm and their business and this bee 

 business is a side line, and they just keep 

 the bees.^ They have always kept them 

 and they will keep them until they are 

 dead I guess, and that is all there is to it. 

 If everybody knew the business, what 

 would be the use of any inspection? 



The Secretary — The bee-keepers are un- 

 fortunate in not being advertised as much 

 as they ought to be. If every man knew 

 where te find the inspector, there would 

 be a much better possibility of everybody 

 knowing what the disease is. About two 

 or three weeks ago a man came to my 



