552 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Sept. 1 



foul brood. I have read the Alexander book' 

 and, unlike Mr. Hartl, I have had some ex- 

 perience with European foul brood. Mr- 

 Alexander fought the disease for years, and 

 after losing a thousand colonies he found a 

 positive cure for it, J^y following his teach- 

 ings I have rid my own apiary of the dis- 

 ease. One of my neighbors cleaned his yard 

 of 70 colonies by following the Alexander 

 plan. 



Mr. Alexander was a great man, and his 

 writings are of great value. 



European foul brood made great headway 

 in this (Wyoming) county last year. Hun- 

 dreds of colonies died from the effects of the 

 disease. In my own experience I found that 

 weak colonies were not good to clean out 

 combs of diseased brood. The plan I like 

 best is, first, to buy untested Italian queens; 

 second, when the queens arrive, go to your 

 diseased colonies (in the forenoon) and kill 

 the queens; third, in the afternoon (three 

 or four hours after killing the queens) put a 

 caged Italian queen in each hive; fourth, 

 the next day lift out all combs, brood, bees, 

 and caged queen from each diseased hive; 

 put back a frame of brood from a healthy 

 colony, and fill out the hive with clean 

 combs or sheets of foundation; then shake 

 the bees in front of the hive; open the queen- 

 cage and run the queen in with the bees. 

 The frames of diseased brood I put on strong 

 colonies over queen-excluders. The bees 

 soon clean them out, and not one of those 

 colonies I put diseased brood on developed 

 the disease. 



Why does not the disease develop in those 

 colonies that I put foul brood on top over 

 excluders? Theory says, " It will;" practice 

 proves it will not. 



Last spring I had a diseased colony with 

 a nice yellow queen that I did not want to 

 kill. I took out all their brood and combs, 

 giving them a new clean lot of combs. In 

 one month they were full of foul brood again. 

 The queen certainly was to blame there. I 

 have hived swarms that died of European 

 foul brood, and they got the disease. One 

 of my neighbors spent $r>0.00 or $40.00 for 

 queens last year, and put them into diseas- 

 ed colonies, and lost all. This same neigh- 

 bor last August, during the buckwheat flow, 

 shook all his diseased colonies on full sheets 

 of foundation, and all died during winter. 

 Factoryville, Pa. 



WHAT IS THE COST OF HONEY TO THE 

 PRODUCER? 



Should a Higher Selling Price be Expected? 

 BY F. L. POLLOCK. 



Like most bee-keepers I have felt surpris- 

 ed at the fact that honey has not advanced 

 in i)rice correspondingly with other food 

 l)roducts, and it has almost seemed that the 

 honey-producer was somehow being discrim- 

 inated against. It occurred to me, however, 

 that no one seems to have attempted to cal- 

 culate just what a i)0und of honey is worth 



— what it actually costs to i)roduce it, allow- 

 ing a fair commercial profit. When I began 

 to make this calculation I quite exi)ected 

 that the figures would show honey to be 

 worth at least 15 cents a pound. They do 

 not quite do that, but they seem worthy of 

 consideration. 



Ijct us take the apiary of a man who owns 

 200 colonies. If he owns many less than 

 that he can hardly be considered a specialist 

 bee-keeper, for his bees will not take all his 

 time nor afford him a living, while 200 col- 

 onies are about the limit of one man's abil- 

 ity without employing labor. 



These 200 colonies may be estimated as 

 worth, with all fixtures, about $1500. An 

 allowance of ten per cent on this makes $150 

 annually for interest and depreciation. 



During four months of the year the own- 

 er will probably spend an average of about 

 six hours a day with the bees, counting 

 rainy days and all, or about 700 hours for 

 the summer. During the eight months of 

 off season he will not work more than 300 

 hours more, making a total of a thousand 

 hours. Allowing him payment at the rate 

 of forty cents an hour, his own labor is 

 worth annually about $400. The up-keep of 

 a horse may be estimated at $150 a year, 

 and a further allowance of $50 may be made 

 for labor during extracting, requeening, and 

 incidentals. The account stands, therefore: 



Interest on capital invested .... 8150.00 



Owner's labor 400.00 



Maintenance of horse 150.00 



Miscellaneous 50.00 



Total .... $750.00 



Allowing a profit of twenty per cent en 

 this total investment brings the sum up to 

 $900, which is the amount that the bee-keep- 

 er should receive from his crop. 



In a fair average locality, taking one year 

 with another, these 200 colonies will store a 

 surplus of at least 50 lbs. of white honey per 

 colony, or 10,000 lbs. for the apiary. A net 

 wholesale price of 9 cents per lb. is, there- 

 fore, demanded, or perhaps 9>^ cents to cov- 

 er cost of packages and freight. 



When there is a buckwheat flow amount- 

 ing to as much as oO lbs. per colony, this 

 price can be greatly reduced, for the fall flow 

 adds comi)arativery little to the bill for la- 

 bor. A price of 5 cts. for the dark honey 

 and 7 cts. for the light will make the total 

 receipts $1000. This may seem dangerous 

 doctrine to publish, and it is certainly un- 

 ]ileasant. I should be glad to see lioney 

 maintained legitimately at 12 to 15 cents, 

 and I shall be obliged to any one who will 

 prove my calculations wrong. 



But it may be that honey has not advanc- 

 ed in price, simply because it is as high as 

 it should be. In that case the way for the 

 bee-keeper to make more money is not to 

 seek to raise prices, but to keep more bees, 

 to cooperate for a systematic, businesslike 

 handling of the crop without glutting the 

 market, and to develop the trade by suitable 

 cooperative advertising, as other food-jiro- 

 ducers do. 



Stouffville, Ont., Can. . 



