1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



417 



combs to the wax-press I hunted up a colo" 

 ny that was weak in bees and united the 

 two on these cleaned-up combs. This colo- 

 ny wintered well and bred up strong and 

 healthy the next spring. This test was a 

 severe one, as the combs were in an advanc- 

 ed stage of the disease: but they were clean- 

 ed u\) after the close of the hc^ney season — 

 something that I did not at all expect. 



As is my custom, about the first work 

 that I do in the spring is to insiiect every 

 colony by remo\ing one of the center combs 

 and looking for foul brood; and when I find 

 it I mark every diseased colony. This year 

 but very few diseased colonies were found. 



On page ;>9, .Jan. 15, Mr. Chas. Stewart, 

 in criticising Doolittle's advice on foul 

 brood, says, "I have seen so much trouble 

 come from feeding back honey taken from 

 diseasetl colonies, even though it was boiled, 

 that I have always advised against it except 

 in the hands of an expert." I should like 

 to cut out the last clause of this advice and 

 then emi^hasize the rest. I will give a little 

 of my own experience. Several times I have 

 boiled and fed back infected honey without 

 bad results. One year I had quite a lot of 

 honey from diseased combs saved from the 

 year before; and about May 1 I set my hired 

 man to boiling it up and we fed it to the 

 bees. Soon afterward I found my home 

 yard badly diseased, and I was desperate. 

 To shake the bees meant cutting the surplus 

 honey crop in two. besides lots of work, when 

 I was needed elsewhere; so I decided to do 

 no melting of combs, but to run these colo- 

 nies for the honey they could i^roduce, re- 

 gardless of the after-effects. At that time, 

 before the white-clover bloom, there was but 

 little honey in the hives. There were a 

 great many combs free from brood or un- 

 sealed honey. I reasoned that many of 

 them might be free from infection, so my 

 first step was to lake from one colony all the 

 frames containing brood and proceed with 

 them to some other colony and take from 

 this second hive all combs apparently clean, 

 and rejilace them with the foul-broody ones; 

 then put the foul-broody combs back in hive 

 Xo. 1. and give to this first colony the clean 

 combs from both hives. In this wav one of 

 the colonies was given the advantage of a 

 clean set of combs while the other had dou- 

 ble the amount of brood. I tried quite a 

 number in this way, the result being par- 

 tially successful. With the colonies that 

 had the clean combs the majority remained 

 clean, although some of them contracted 

 the disease in a mild form. The other colo- 

 nies, that is, those that were given the dou- 

 ble amount of brood, soon became very 

 strong. 



My experience of previous years in getting 

 combs cleaned up, both honey and brood, 

 caused me to go further, and I made a lot of 

 special honey-boards for the purpose. They 

 were made like ordinary queen-excluding 

 boards excejit that they were solid wood with 

 the exception of two rows of queen-exclud- 

 ing holes extending lengthwise across the 

 hoard. I placed these boards on strong col- 



onies. I shook the colonies on to founda- 

 tion first, and then placed the combs above 

 these honey-boards, to be filled with honey 

 after the brood had hatched and the cells 

 were cleaned up. Then, after extracting, I 

 exchanged these cleaned-up combs for other 

 sets of foul-broody combs, and in the process 

 observed this result — that the colonies made 

 strong by additional brood seemed to suffer 

 no more from the increase of the disease 

 than did others which had no foul-broody 

 combs above the brood-chambers. The 

 clean-up ])rocess was so successful that I 

 continued it as fast as I could; and to hold 

 the disease in check in other colonies I put 

 queens on clean combs. Other queens I put 

 on foundation, and then put foul-broody 

 combs above my peculiarly constructed hon- 

 ey-boards. I had all kinds of results. In 

 many cases I was successful; but a few con- 

 tracted the disease in a mild form, while 

 many queens would sulk and the force of 

 bees go above and start queen-cells. Some 

 of the queens disappeared. The honey sea- 

 son being a good one I secured a very satis- 

 factory crop of honey at a yard well stocked 

 with extract ing-combs, and all the hives 

 were comparatively free from foul brood in 

 the fall. This was four years ago, and in 

 this yard of 200 colonies I have scores of sets 

 of these cleaned-up combs in the brood-nests 

 that are in use to-day. 



Last August Mr. W. B. Moore, foul-brood 

 inspector, visited this yard, and I took him 

 to a row of twenty colonies fitted up for ex- 

 tracted honey, with the queens having free 

 access to all the combs. These twenty hives 

 are of a different shape from the rest of my 

 hives, and I know that every set of combs 

 that thev contain have been foul-broody. 

 He inspected them thoroughly, and could 

 find no trace of the disease, iii spite of the 

 fact that there was a honey-dearth at the 

 time. 



Prophetstown, 111. 



Coatiiiiied in the next issue. 



DRUGS VS. TREATMENT. 



Curing Foul-broody Colonies by Immersing in 

 Carbolic Syrup. 



BY JOHN W. LOWRY. 



I have recently waked up to the bee-keep- 

 ing world. While I have always kept bees 

 to supply my own table with honey, for the 

 past fifteen Vears I have turned my atten- 

 tion to other'things, and have not been read- 

 ing the bee-journals. I read the A B C of 

 Bee Culture 20 years ago, and was very en- 

 thusiastic over the bee business at that time; 

 but other things caused me to lose much of 

 my enthusiasm; but it has been aroused 

 again— I think for all time. I am now read- 

 ing Gleanings regularlv, and have your 

 1908 edition of the A B C and X Y Z book. 

 I awake to find foul brood in its two forms 

 still the worst drawback with which the bee- 

 keeper has to contend. I had some experi- 

 ence with this disease fifteen years ago (the 



