June 30, 1904. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



457 



foul brood till at least six days after hiving. They are not 

 supposed to feed very young- larvif any honey. The creamy 

 food fed to the very young is a pure secretion, I believe ; 

 and there seems no probability of foul-brood germs being in 

 a pure secretion. Page 358. 



ANNOUNCING FOUL-BROODY APIARIES. 



Shall there be the fullest publicity given to every case 

 of foul brood ? On the whole, I'm glad a strong editorial 

 note on page 355 raises the question. We have been doing 

 the other way mostly ; and the results have not been at all 

 satisfactory. Both the uninfected and the infected are in- 

 jured. Bad for the former to catch a dire disease they 

 might have avoided ; bad for the latter to take such a 

 brutally selfish view of things as some of them degenerate 

 into doing. When good and impartial persons too easily 

 consent to keeping whist, the selfish man who is already 

 endangering the public thinks it's no great matter if he goes 

 further and does worse. 



FOUL BROOD AND BLACK BROOD. 



A modified form of the same foul brood bacillus is he 

 that produces black brood, we hear. As we hear it from 

 authority, we must heed also. Bacilli propagate with such 

 fearful rapidity — such a myriad of generations in a year — 

 that it doesn't take many years to have an incipient breed. 

 Interesting to see that Prof. Cook had noticed a division 

 into two distinguishable types before black brood appeared. 

 Page 358. 





Dr. Miller's Answers 





Send Questions either to the oflBce of the American Bee Journal, 

 or to Dr. C. C. Miller, Marengo, 111. 



Perhaps Mason-Bees— Qiueen-Cells in Supers— Apis 

 Florea. 



I have mailed you a queen-cage containing a few bees that 

 I caught on the school-ground to-day. They are a peculiar kind; ihey 

 have their abode in the ground and enter it through a small, round 

 hole, just the size of a bee. 



1. Are they any good as honey-gatherers? You will notice that 

 their back legs are very much larger than those of regular honey-bees. 

 They are different in shape, their eyes are green, and thet are a little 

 smaller than the Italian bees. They have no stinger. It may be the 

 stingless bees. 



2. You will notice in the cage a lump of some kind of stuff they 

 stored in there as soon as caught. What is it; 



3. If there is a super on top of the brood-chamber, separated by a 

 zinc honey-board, with queen-cells in it, and one was to batch, would 

 it cause the bees to swarm ? 



4. Where can the Apis llorea be obtained, and at what price * We 

 want a colony for curiosity. Louisiana. 



Answers. — 1. I don't Know much about such things, but believe 

 they are mason-bees, which store no honey whatever. 



2. A mass of pollen. 



3. Generally not; but in some cases it might. 



4. I don't know; doubtful if you find any in this country. 



Beeswax— Queen Progeny— Cider and Bees. 



1. What is beeswax, or what does it originate from? 



2. In my hive No. 1, I put a (Moore) queen last fall, and the 

 week in May I took out the frame she was on and clipped her wintrs, 

 found her laying. I timed her with my watch, and she layed nine 

 in one minute and fifty-tiTe seconds. At this writing honey is tlo' 

 in at a great rate, but I can see nothing but hybrids. Do you thir 

 time for her brood to be out ; The honey-flow did not begin here 

 until about the middle of May. The leading apiarists here are w i 

 ing my hive No. 1 with interest. 



The red clover fields are very heavy here, and I only wish I i 

 have a few colonies of " bumble-bees," as it gives a good flow 

 frost. 



3. While I am encouraged with the honey outlook in Linn tU i 

 still I am fearful of one thing: 1 am within '.j mile of a large a 

 orchard, and it is loaded with fruit, and they make cider there, 

 while I will have a good patch of buckwheat at the very front |> 

 of my bees, still I fear they will get hold of the cider. Now, o 

 think we could prevent the bees from storing cider, by not aliH\ 

 them anymore storage-room in the hives? This bothers me more i 

 anything else. Missoiiii. 



Answers. — 1. Look closely at a lot of bees, especially at svi 

 ing-time, and you will see some of them that have along then ;ii 



tirst 

 and 

 ■k'gs 

 ling 

 ikU 

 well 

 tch- 



)uld 



intil 



nty, 

 >ple- 

 and 

 irch 

 you 

 'ing 

 han 



mens Little plates of pure beeswax somewhat pear-shaped. That's 

 where the wax originates, being secreted by the bee from the food it 

 eats, somewhat as the cow secretes milk from the food she eats. 



2. There certainly ought to bu plenty of bees from the new queen 

 by this time. It you got an untested queen, she may have met a 

 black drone, in which case her worker progeny should be hybrids. If 

 you got her for a tested queen, there is a possibility that she was killed 

 immediately upon introduction, and another queen was in the hive. 



3. It will hardly be practicable for you to have the hive so full of 

 stores that no plunder from the eider-mills could be stored. You 

 might, however, do this: Get the bees to cram their combs as full a.% 

 possible before the cider era ; then at the beginning of cider-making 

 take out of each hive one or two of the filled combs, replacing them 

 with empty combs. That will give the bees a chance to do most of 

 their cider-storing in these empty combs, and when the cider business 

 is over you can take out the cider combs and return the ones taken 

 away. Possibly you could get the cider-presses screened with wire- 

 cloth. That would also avoid the loss of bees that are killed in large 

 numbers in presses. If the cider-makers will not screen their places, 

 get them to do this : Take a paddle and kill every bee that comes 

 about the press, so that no bees shall go back to the hive to tell others 

 where they can go to get cider. 



Wood Splints Instead of Wires— Separators. 



I am somewhat puzzled to know how you use your splints in 

 fastening in foundation. 



1. Are they made long enough so as to fit tight between top and 

 bottom bar, or are they pressed into the foundation a little way from 

 either bar ? That is, are they a little shorter than the distance between 

 the bars? 



2. If they are shorter, what good are they at all? 



3. Do you use wire in addition to splints? 



4. How thick and wide are the splints? 



5. What kind of wood are they made of, and are they sawed or 

 split? 



6. What is your opinion regarding the Australian way of using 

 splints instead of wire? They use only one, and it runs horizontally. 



7. I am going to use 1'^ sections and plain separators. The 

 separators are tacked onto one side of each section-holder and trade 

 narrow enough so as to leave J4 of an inch opening at top and bottom 

 of section. What do you think of this plan? And will it give light 

 sections? Ontario. 



Answers. — 1. The space between top and bottom bars is S inches, 

 and the length of splints T's, making the splint lack 'j, inch of filling 

 the space ; this for no other reason except convenience in putting in. 

 When putting in, no attention i« paid to whether the splint is close 

 against the top or the bottom, or any where between. 



3. The shortest answer I can make to that is to say that after hav- 

 ing thousands of them in use I find them to act just the same at it the 

 splint filled the whole space. 1 suppose the sagging that can take 

 place in a depth of '?, inch is imperceptible. 



3. No. 



4. About 1-16x1-16; measurements need not be exact. 



5. Basswood, sliced or sawed. 



6. They use hardly splints but horizontal bars of substantial 

 thickness. The depth of the frame being cut in two in this manner, 

 of course the sagging will be more than cut in two; but still there 

 will be some sagging, I suppose, and the combs will either be sagged 

 near the bottom-bar, or else there will be a space between the comb 

 and bottom-bar. Please remember that the chief end sought and at- 

 tained by the use of the splints is to have the combs built down solid 

 to the bottom-bar. But this building must be done when honey is 

 coming in, or else the bees will dig away a passage under the comb. 



7. Wooden separators tacked <jn did not work satisfactorily for 

 me, curling in an objectionable way. Tin nailed on works all right. ' 

 If the sections are of such size as to make the proper weight when 

 used with fences, of course they will be light-weight when used with 

 plain separators. 



Perhaps a Case of Plclded Brood. 



We now have 15 colonies of bees, all coming through the win- 

 ter in good shape txcepting 1. which had a drone-laying queen, 

 so I united ii with another colony. The others were all very strong 

 as we had a splendid season here last summer and a mild winter. My 

 bees are hybrid Italian, excepting one colony of blacks. 



In looking through the different hives, cutting out queen-cells, I 

 found the llack bees had some kind of a disease. Since looking 

 through " A B C of Bee-Culture" and back numbers of the American 

 Bee .lournal, I think it is a case of pickled brood, but I am not posi- 

 tive. The young brood is not affected but just before and after being 

 capped over. The larv;e are black in color, and lying on the bottom 

 side of the cells. It has no odor, nor ropy appearance. The bees will 

 not clean out the cells, and we found from one to four eggs in cells 

 that were diseased. We also found plenty of honey, but very little 

 pollen. It has been very cold and wet here for a month. When the 

 dead larv;e are taken out with a match they are very watery or dark 

 fluid. Please tell me what the disease is, and what can be used as a 

 cure. Some recommend burning, .nnd some say not. Will it do any 

 good for me to iry to cure the difease, as there are a number here who 

 keep bees as 1 used to keep theni, never looking at them until winter, 

 and probablv go with some sulphur and destroy some colonies of bees, 

 getting what honey they have. There is but one person in all this 

 neighborhood that takes a bee-paper besides myself. They don't want 



