206 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



wax and honey to run to the gate, no 

 matter how many cappings are piled in 

 the melter. Although this melter is 

 worked with a two-burner gasoline stove. 



it is of too small capacity, and another 



one built on somewhat different plans is 

 in course of construction. 



Remus, Mich., Mar. 7, 1910. 



Is the Bartlett Method of Treating Foul Brood 

 Open to Charge of "Nastiness." 



J. L. BYER. 



^^ I'UST at present, we are very busy 



ff I with the bees. Extracting honey 

 ^-^^ or piling up supers on the hives, 

 you ask? Well hardly that, as we are 

 unfortunately having an experience this 

 spring, unprecedented in our bee keeping 

 history, and instead of reckoning up the 

 amount of surplus on the hives, we are 

 hustling from one yard to another feeding 

 the bees to keep them from starvation 

 till the clover comes into bloom. Very 

 early spring opening, with unusually 

 warm weather for the time, then about 

 the 20th of April a change to cold 

 weather which has continued to date with 

 no immediate prospects for warmer 

 days. This explains in a nutshell the 

 why and wherefor of our present neces- 

 sity. 



Being so busy, you will no doubt won- 

 der what has made me take time to 

 write, and, dispensing with all prelimi- 

 naries, might as well say at once, that 

 that article of friend Bartlett's in the 

 June Review, "stirred me up" and I will 

 not feel all right until I "get it out of my 

 system." 



Foul brood, while not a very savory 

 subject for discussion, is unfortunately a 

 question that bee keepers must be 

 interested in, if they expect to make a 

 success of the business — at least that is 

 so in our locality, for it is continually 

 cropping out in places where we are not 

 looking for it, as, to-wit, only a few days 

 ago I ran across a rotten lot of bees 

 within a mile of my Cashel apiary~my 

 one yard where I fondly imagined there 

 ' . r ci the least bit of disease near. 



Naturally, then, we are interested in 

 every method given for the eradication 

 of the disease, and needless to say the 

 article of Mr. Bartlett's was read as 

 soon as the heading was noticed. Now 

 I am not going to question Mr. Bartlett's 

 statement that the treatment described 

 cured the colonies, although if I had not 

 heard his verdict, I would have hazarded 

 the guess that the disease would have 

 reappeared in a good many colonies, if 

 they were very badly diseased in the 

 first place. What I do want to register a 

 protest against, though, in the most 

 strenuous manner in my power, is the 

 nastiness about the system that must 

 be apparent to all who have had much 

 experience in the handling of foul broody 

 combs. Let's see for a moment what the 

 condition of those brood combs hoisted 

 above will be in the end of the 21 days 

 that Mr. Bartlett speaks of as being 

 necessary to leave them before extract- 

 ing — that specified time being, of course, 

 necessary to allow all the brood not 

 diseased to hatch out. The cells that 

 have had dry scales in them will, of 

 course, be nicely filled up with honey — 

 the scales being left there to soak. All 

 the dead larvae that have not reached 

 the dried state will be in the cells in that 

 nice ropy condition — you know how it 

 will stretch out on a tooth pick, like an 

 elastic bit of rope. Among all these 

 varied forms exhibited in the various 

 stages of the disease, will also be many 

 capped cells with foul larvae, the cappings 

 having the small perforations so char- 

 acteristic of the disease. Among all this 



