24 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOLH^Al.. 



Jan. 14, 1904. 



did not take the disease. Still, I feel about foul brood as 

 Mr. Lyons did in a similar discussion in one of our meet- 

 ings, when he jumped up and said, " Don't monkey with 

 foul brood." 



Mr. Adams — Why not produce a honey-flow by feeding ? 

 If not, why not ? 



Mr. Gill — Because you can't get the bees to do as you 

 V?ant them to. You can't get the conditions the same, so 

 that all the bees will be handling the feed. 



I remember that remark of Mr. Lyons, but Mr. Lyons 

 has monkeyed with foul brood since then, and the result is 

 he has some more now to monkey with. No amateur should 

 get this method in his head to go by. I am sorry I said 

 anything. 



Mr. Porter — This season I had a good many cases simi- 

 lar to those 75 with the disease just starting. It made me 

 feel blue, and I began to think I would have a hard time 

 getting rid of it. I shook one yard, and the other yards 

 were delayed, as the flow was just coming on. But foul 

 brood did not further develop in the yards not shaken, 

 though the ropy consistency and the turning brown were 

 present in one or two cells per hive. 



Mr. Aikin — A few years ago I had a foul colony in my 

 home-yard. I set a hive beside it containing a comb with 

 a little healthy brood and the queen, and covered the en- 

 trance of the old hive with wire-screen, and fixed a cone so 

 it would empty the bees from the old into the new hive, 

 according to the Baldridge method. The plan succeeded. 

 Sometimes I do refrain from saying things in convention 

 for fear of misleading, but I will say this, that sometimes 

 when a foul-broody colony is next to a healthy one I take 

 it away and set it beside another in another part of the 

 yard, and in a week or two beside another in another loca- 

 tion, and so on. In this way it gets so depopulated, and so 

 little honey is gathered by it, that there is not much of any- 

 thing left of it at the end of the season but the foul brood, 

 and then I attend to it. I have also shaken foul-broody col- 

 onies, when the day is so far advanced that every bee is full 

 of nectar, right back into the same hive on starters, taking 

 all their combs away. As for myself, I have not that in- 

 tense dread of foul brood that has been alluded to. Usually, 

 in my yard, a robbing of one only goes into three or four 

 out of a hundred. That percentage is not very large. In 

 one instance I discovered ten colonies dead of foul brood 

 three miles from one of my yards. They had fixed four to 

 six in that yard of mine. I have had several such cases. 

 Where one case develops in one year, from five to ten will 

 in two years, when it is let alone. Where one colony would 

 be badly foul the first year, I have had 10 colonies that were 

 slightly foul the first year and badly the second. When 

 there are yards of 10 to 30 colonies within reach of your 

 bees that get badly foul, then look out. 



Pres. Harris— Are not the conditions different with dif- 

 ferent colonies ? I have known people to get among small- 

 pox cases without being vaccinated and not take it, while 

 with others may they not take it because they are just in 

 the condition to ? Is it not so with foul brood ? • 



Can or will foul brood be carried or distributed by any 

 other means than through honey ? 



H. Rauchfuss— I think only through honey. Mr. Aikin 

 shook bees right back into their old hives, and if they had 

 no brood-combs it was all right. You can shift bees from 

 one hive into the other and be perfectly safe. You can put 

 the old hive over a bee-escape on top of the new hive, and 

 be perfectly safe. I have transferred many that way bv 

 using a Porter bee-escape, and allowing no cracks in the 

 upper hive. There should be no gunnysacking used above, 

 as the bees will gnaw it and make fuzz, which will stop the 

 escape. Perhaps it would be better for that purpose, to 

 have more than one escape in a board, as one escape may 

 become clogged with a dead bee, though I have never tried 

 more than one escape. Once in awhile I found it stopped 

 up. I never found that the disease was carried down to the 

 hive below, though sometimes the upper hive was left on a 

 month later than it should have been. It is not as conta- 

 gious as we think. It has to be carried in the honey. The 

 bees that go into the new hive don't carry the old hive with 

 them. 



Mr. Rhodes— I have my doubts about that position. 

 Smallpox can be conveyed without contact with the person. 

 I remember a case in which a postmaster, by request, read 

 aloud a letter from a person sick with the smallpox. The 

 postmaster took the disease and died, though he was many 

 miles away from the source of infection. Our professors 

 make a culture of foul brood, and inoculate several other 

 successive cultures without honey. During the early devel- 

 opment of foul brood in Colorado it was very virulent, just 



as bad as it could be. The same is true of other contagious- 

 diseases. It may be from the condition of the germ, or the 

 patient may be more susceptible, but I am satisfied that it 

 may be communicated otherwise than through honey. 



Mr. Adams — Somebody says it may be conveyed' 

 through pollen, fed by the nurse-bees. 



Mr. Aikin — That would not be different. Pollen comes- 

 under the same head as honey. The disease is a disease of 

 the larval state. Unless a spore gets into the system of the 

 larva it is not going to have foul brood. The only way it 

 gets it is by feeding. We have all had cases in which the 

 combs on one side were thoroughly rotten with it, and the 

 colony had moved over to the other side and established its 

 brood-nest there, and it was perfectly clean. The point is, 

 the disease must be introduced through the food into the 

 larva. Making new cultures is just the same thing as put- 

 ting it into the larval bee. Therefore, I say, that probably 

 999 cases out of 1000 contagion is by food. But we must be 

 careful in applying this. I said you could shake bees into 

 the same hive they had before and have them clean. But 

 suppose the bees that were shaken up and full of old honey 

 get to flying around and entering adjoining hives, you have 

 not accomplished the object. Especially will they do so if 

 the new hive is different in appearance from the old one. 



Mr. Gill — Smallpox and foul brood are hardly parallel. 

 That postmaster who took it was in a recipient condition. 

 It is possible for 12 or 15 diseased colonies to be in the 

 neighborhood and be robbed by strong colonies without 

 communicating the disease at this time of year. If ten days 

 or so of severe weather follows immediately, the bees will 

 cluster up and consume every bit of the honey robbed, and 

 spring will find them healthy. 



H. Rauchfuss — It is wrong to shake off bees in trans- 

 ferring for foul brood. They are taken out of a hive that, 

 to them, is in normal condition. After being shaken off 

 and flying around they return and find a hive that is not 

 the same, and the hive sitting next, that has brood, seems 

 to them more like home, and many thus go to other hives. 

 It is the same with making forced swarms ; shaking causes 

 many to go elsewhere, and it ought not to be done. 



Mr. Frances — Is it not all right to use the old hive 

 again, with starters in it, to shake them in front of ? 



H. Rauchfuss — No, because the inside of the hive is 

 different. 



Mr. Harris — Might not the foul brood develop some- 

 times in a light form ? In Georgetown, in 1877, the small- 

 pox broke out in a very severe form. About every one that 

 took it died. In Mesa County we have had it in a light 

 form. Conditions in surroundings may have an influence. 



Mr. Gill — Is it not a fact that foul brood is a progres- 

 sive disease, mild at first, and bad later? 



H. Rauchfuss — Is it not possible that one larva might 

 catch it and not die, while another would catch it and die ? 



Mr. Adams — Several times I have known of colonies 

 badly diseased being robbed without imparting the infec- 

 tion. But that was at a time of year when there was no 

 brood. 



Mr. Aikin — If your bees have foul brood, and can't tend 

 to it right away, carry the infected colonies to a corner of 

 the yard by themselves, or to a special yard reserved for 

 that purpose — a pest-yard. But don't handle it among the 

 others, even in a heavy flow. 



H. Rauchfuss — If that is done at a time when bees are 

 robbing, and there are not many young bees, the change of 

 position will leave the colonies weak, and exposed to at- 

 tacks by robbers. 



Mr. Aikin — Don't do it except during a honey-flow. 



Mr. Porter — Have any of the members observed foul 

 brood as a disease of the bees as well as of the brood ? Mr. 

 Benton's pamphlet speaks of it as a disease of the bees and 

 brood, and Cheshire says the spores are found in the bees 

 and the queen. I have made my home lot a pest-yard for 

 diseased colonies, as there are no other colonies there. I 

 brought one small colony home and put with it the brood 

 from three others, so that in a short time it became of im- 

 mense size, and also became very foul, so it could be smelled 

 outside. Pretty soon I noticed every day SO to 100 bees 

 straggling around on the ground outside. They would 

 unite in a little cluster on the grass in the evening, and in 

 the morning they would be dead. Finally, I shook the col- 

 ony onto starters, and after the third day there were no 

 more stragglers. So I am quite satisfied that foul brood is 

 a disease of the bees as well as of the brood. 



H. Rauchfuss — I don't think that is conclusive. I have 

 had plenty of bees acting the same way that had no foul 

 brood at all. 



Mr. Porter — If the bees got well after shaking that is 



