418 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



July 1 



CHiTTAM [Cascara s(igrada), showing tup: blossoms 



AND LEAVES, ONE-SIXTH NATURAL SIZE. 



kind prevalent at that time) . I had two 

 colonies, while in Florida, of i)ure Italians, 

 which were badly infected with this disease. 

 I made a study of the disease, and hit on a 

 remedy that completely cured my bees with 

 very little trouble or expense. 



One thing I used in my medicated syru]) 

 was carbolic acid. I made a thin syruj) 

 with granulated sugar and hot water, then 

 added my chemicals; stirred well in a large 

 dish-pan. When it had cooled to about the 

 temperature of fresh milk I took 1 lie ])an to 

 one hive, took the frames, one at a time, 

 and immersed them completely in the med- 

 icated syrup, bees and all, then set them 

 Vjack in the hive, and so on until all ten 

 frames had been immersed. I then ])ut on 

 the cover, which did not take as long to do 

 as it does to tell how it is done. 1 then took 

 a small strainer I had made of wire cloth; 

 dipped the bees left floating on the pan of 

 syrup, and i)laced them on the alighting- 

 board. The bees then buzzed around and 

 sprayed thefront of the alighting-board, and 

 all inside the hive, with the thin syruj) on 

 their wings; also the few bees left oii the in- 

 side walls of the hive got a thorough s))ray- 

 ing by the immersed bees crawling aiid 

 buzzing among them. Strange to believe, 

 but the bees thought the best way to get rid 



of this syrup was to eat it, and 

 they did so; and if it hurt any 

 of them I never found it out. 

 It was then in their stomachs, 

 on their backs, in the cells, all 

 inside the hive, everywhere a 

 bee would go. 



Then the other hive was 

 treated in the same way. This 

 was done late in the afternoon. 

 In six days I gave the same 

 bees another immersion, the 

 same as the first; in six days 

 more, another — three in all — 

 job finished. 



In these treatments I never 

 looked for queens. They went 

 under with the rest. (This is 

 not Bible immersion, but foul- 

 brood immersion.) I believe 

 this treatment will cure both 

 kinds of foul brood. I kept the 

 same bees on the same combs 

 year after year, and it has now 

 been 1(3 years, and my ]>resent 

 stocks are descendants of those 

 diseased colonies, and I have 

 never seen a trace of the disease 

 since. 

 (Trenada, Miss. 

 [The plan you describe, of 

 smearing combs and bees with 

 carbolic-acid syrup, was thor- 

 oughly tried by us some fifteen 

 or eighteen years ago on some 

 fifty-odd colonies that had real 

 foul brood. We secured the best 

 carbolic acid we could obtain; 

 tried it in a syrup, and then in 

 the form of a spray, the acid 

 with water in the projiortion of 

 anywhere from five to ten jier cent. Our 

 diseased colonies were fairly doused with it, 

 timeand timeagain; but inevery case, soon- 

 er or later foul brood would reai^pear. 



If there is any thing we think has been 

 proven during the last fifteen or eighteen 

 years it is that carbolic acid in the jiropor- 

 tion of only about five per cent strength will 

 not cure foul brood. liecent evidence has 

 come to our knowledge that a colony suffer- 

 ing from only (h ad brood will, under some 

 conditions, show all the symi)toms of a real 

 foul-broody colony. The dead matter will 

 rope, and will have the characteristic foul 

 odor; but it is not foul brood. If you had a 

 case of this sort, the colony would have re- 

 covered just as soon without any application 

 of carbolic acid. The probabilities are that 

 the liberal feeding of syrup stimulated it to 

 the extent that they were able to recover 

 from the shock of dead brood. Bacteriolo- 

 gist Dr. White, of the Bureau of Entomolo- 

 gy, we understand, put microbes of foul 

 brood in five-per-cent solutions of carbolic 

 acid. These microbes {BacU/u.s fnrvce) con- 

 tinued to thrive for months at a time, show- 

 ing that carbolic acid had absolutely no ef- 

 fect upon (hem. While it would kill them 

 when stronger solutions were used, yet such 

 solutions would kill the bees. — Ed.] 



