GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Jan. 1 



General 

 Correspondence 



EUROPEAN OR BLACK BROOD. 



Some More Evidence Tending to Show 



that Requeening after the Alexander 



Plan will Effect a Cure. 



BY DR. C. C. MILLER. 



I have an interesting letter from John T. 

 Greene, Interlaken, N7 Y., who has been do- 

 ing some things hardly according to ortho- 

 dox teaching in his dealings with black 

 brood. He says: 



I had six yards the past season in which nearly ev- 

 ery colony had the disease. We started in to shake 

 every diseased colony; but when one man, with only 

 his wife to help, undertakes to shake about 300 colonies 

 and care for a yard 50 miles away at the same time, he 

 has got to go some. 



We had to shake at "any old time" while daylight 

 lasted, and then found we couldn't quite catch up. At 

 the beginning we disinfected our hives, burning them 

 out with a painter's torch. We also had lots of other 

 work to do while caring for the bees. 



Well, to make a long story short we began to re- 

 queen with young Italian queens (most of my bees 

 were blacks or hybrids ) . We then began to wonder if 

 the young queens would not do the business and save 

 us a lot of work. You see we were getting tired, and 

 wanted help. So we began to requeen and leave all the 

 old combs in the hive, and were greatly pleased to find 

 about 95 per cent of the colonies thus left without a 

 trace of the disease at the close of a very light buck- 

 wheat flow. 



He explains that one thing that led to a 

 trial of this sort of treatment was the fact 

 that the previous year a colony in ve'y bad 

 condition had had z youner queen given to 

 it, and some time lator he v/ s surprised to 

 find that not a diseased cell v't;s to be found 

 in the hive. He also says that v'hfre a colo- 

 ny was weak, or did not clean up, tv/o were 

 united, the stronger being placed on the 

 weaker. 



Of course, as he says, it is too soon to say 

 that there may be no return of the disease; 

 but the plain facts that he gives are none 

 the less valuable. 



After knowing what a scourge black (Eu- 

 ropean) foul brood had been in the State of 

 New York, I had had some question whether 

 it were not in a milder form in Illinois. Ac- 

 cording to Mr. Greene's letter there is prob- 

 ably no difference. 



According to the teachings of Mr. Alexan- 

 der, the two essential things in the treat- 

 ment are, first, strength of colony; and, sec- 

 ond, a term of queenlessness. Perhaps he 

 would stipulate a third, the giving of a young 

 Italian queen. My own experience confirm- 

 ed and emphasized the importance of having 

 colonies strong. But instead of having a 

 colony entirely without a queen for three 

 weeks I would give-it a virgin at the end 

 of ten days. Now comes Mr. Greene, who 

 beUeves in strong colonies, but who makes 

 no mention of anytime of queenlessness — 

 merely requeens. At any rate, when a strong 

 colony was requeened a cure followed in 95 

 per cent of the cases. 



The question arises, is the queen diseased 

 or at fault in any way? and is the mere 

 change of queen all that is necessary? It 

 looks just a little that way. A number of 

 times my assistant, upon looking at the 

 queen of a bad colony, said, " How logy that 

 queen appears! " And one out of five of the 

 queens disappeared not many days after be- 

 ing thrown on foundation. It was not su- 

 perseding; generally no queen-cells were 

 started until after the disappearance of the 

 queen. Were the foul brood bacilli in the 

 body of the queen? If so, they were not in 

 the eggs, for the brood from these eggs was 

 in all cases healthy. Yet it seemed that in 

 some way the queens were weak, and per- 

 haps their worker progeny were correspond- 

 ingly weak, making a change of queens 

 favorable to recovery. 



Yet it is possible that it was not a mere 

 change of queens in the case of Mr. Greene's 

 treatment. It must be remembered that 

 generally, when a queen is introduced, there 

 IS a break in laying — practical queenlessness 

 — for a day or more, and perhaps for several 

 days. Even when the new queen begins 

 laying, she is not up to her full count for 

 some time, and a diminution in the amount 

 of brood ought to give the bees a better 

 chance to clean up. 



This much seems clearly established: That 

 bees are able to clean out a certain number 

 of cells in European (not American) foul 

 brood. It also seems nearly proven that 

 bees in good heart will clean out all, if there 

 is not too much for them to do, and that a 

 stoppage or diminution in egg-laying di- 

 minishes the number of foul cells to be 

 cleaned up, and increases the chances for 

 cure. A practical question is: "How long 

 should a colony be queen'. ss to give it a 

 fair chance to clean up? " 



Mr. Alexander's rule was to leave the col- 

 ony queenless for three weeks. But if I un- 

 derstand the matter correctlv, Mr. Alexan- 

 der had hardly gone beyond the experimen- 

 tal stage, and it is possible that he never 

 tried any shorter time than three weeks. 

 Perhaps he reasoned in this way: " It takes 

 three weeks for all brood to hatch out, so 

 that's the time for the colony to be queen- 

 less." But it is just possible that there is 

 little or no chance for conveying the disease 

 from a ceil that is sealed, and that eight or 

 ten days' queenlessness will serve the pur- 

 pose just as well as three weeks. And if 

 there be not too much cleaning up to do, it 

 seems reasonable to believe that even less 

 than eight or ten days may answer, when we 

 take into account Mr. Greene's experience, 

 and also the fact that a number of my colo- 

 nies that were mildly affected cured them- 

 selves without any interference on my part. 



Let me give one example of self-cure. 

 No. 100 was foul-broody, but not very bad. 

 July 16 I put an excluder on the hive, and 

 then piled on it four or five (I think five) 

 stories of foul-broody combs. Aug. 13 1 took 

 away the upper stories, out of which, of 

 course, all brood had emerged, and then 

 opened the lower story in order to treat it. 



