386 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 15. 



the letter. I hoped to give some information of 

 value to my brother bee-keepers in reference to 

 the treatment of foul brood. I had no new 

 remedy in mind, but hoped to add conclusive 

 evidence as to the efficacy of some of the sup- 

 posed cures now before the world. I regret to 

 say that I have very little of value to offer, up 

 to this date; and the present status of the trou- 

 ble in my apiary and its surroundings is of a 

 discouraging nature. I have already lost some 

 30 colonies, and have several more that are 

 quite weak from the various experiences that I 

 have put them through. I have tried lysol and 

 several other chemicals, without success. I have 

 fed all my apiary with medicated feed (using 

 lysol principally) as a preventive, repeatedly; 

 but the disease keeps reappearing. By the 

 McEvoy method T have succeeded in effecting 

 cures; but many colonies so treated would show 

 the disease again before much brood could be 

 raised; and a repetition of the treatment would 

 so weaken them that several would have to be 

 united to give them strength to survive. 



I still feel quite confident that I could stamp 

 out the trouble if it were confined to my apiary 

 alone; but a neighbor, a Manxman, one pos- 

 sessed of all the peculiarities of the natives of 

 the Isle of Man, has or had 90 colonies near by 

 that he has not examined for five months, al- 

 though he owns that there was something 

 wrong with them the last time he did so. Flor- 

 ida has no foul -brood inspector ; so, though his 

 apiary is probably a putrid mass of infection, it 

 can not be exterminated either by law or per- 

 suasion. The disease alone can do it. Under 

 these conditions I see but little hope of ridding 

 this section of the dread disease; and all efforts 

 to test remedies must almost necessarily prove 

 useless. Among my many reasons for regret- 

 ting this is the fact that yourselves and others 

 have sent me chemicals to test on the disease, 

 hoping for valuable results, and these hopes 

 must be disappointed. 



AN INTERESTING CASE OF A CURE OF RHEUiNIA- 

 TISM, BY BEE-STINGS. 



I am happy to report, however, that I seem to 

 have been successful, as a self appointed physi- 

 cian, in one direction that will interest many 

 bee-keepers. I inclose a short statement of the 

 case, from the pen of the patient, and would 

 add, to what is therein stated, the following 

 facts: Mr. Hendricksen is a well-educated young 

 Dane, a man of culture and bright intellect. 

 His sufferings from rheumatism for the first 

 four weeks here excited the sympathy of all 

 who met him. Being well versed in chemistry, 

 he was fully posted as lo the medicines that had 

 been prescribed, none of which had given him 

 much relief; and being of an active, joyous dis- 

 position, he was not as prudent as he might 

 have been, and his trouble was becoming worse 

 all the time. It was with little faith that I 

 suggested bee-stings as a remedy; and, though 



he was interested at once, it was not until I 

 loaned him printed matter referring to it that 

 he became fully convinced that there might be 

 real virtue in it. After suffering severely one 

 morning he applied the stings to his aching leg 

 at about 10 a.m. The benefit was apparent at 

 once, and that night he got his first good sleep 

 in a long time. On the morning of the third or 

 fourth day some of the boarders at the Bay 

 View were astonished to see him out on the 

 grounds at an early hour in the morning, alter- 

 nately leaping and kicking out in great shape. 

 Not knowing what in the world was the cause 

 of such gymnastics, one cried out to him to 

 know what was the matter, and found that he 

 was simply trying his legs to see if he could find 

 any rheumatism left in them. It is now some 

 weeks since then, and he is still apparently 

 cured, though it has not been his fault that he 

 is so, as he has been almost constantly on the 

 move, either upon the river or upon the shore, 

 and often with wet feet and other conditions 

 existing that would naturally bring the trouble 

 back. He starts for the North this morning, 

 carrying with him an active interest in "the 

 little busy bee," and the hearty congratulations 

 of the many friends he has made here, all of 

 whom know of and are astonished at the won- 

 derful cure. It may seem unusual that there is 

 no "one dollar a bottle " to come in here some- 

 where, or some expensive recipe to be filled; 

 but it is an honest, sober fact, that Florida cli- 

 mate is not necessarily expensive ; and even I, 

 the writer, will furnish the bee-stings, free of 

 cost, to all the patients that you will send to the 

 Bay View House next winter, though, having 

 no ax of any kind to grind, there is no *1000 re- 

 ward offered for a case I can not cure. 



W. S. Hart. 

 Hawks Park, Fla., Apr. 17, 1896. 



[The following is the statement referred to. — 

 Ed.] 



bee-stings a cure for rheumatism. 



In the summer of 189.5 I felt, occasionally, pain in 

 one leg; 1 ut, not being unable to attend to busi- 

 ness, I took no further notice of the case until the 

 middle of January, 1896, wljen the pain suddenly 

 became so intense that I was obliged to consult a 

 physician. He pronounced the case to be sciatica, 

 and prescribed a treatment of massage, vvhicii did 

 at the time possibl}' more harm than good. An- 

 other physician tried various remedies, but failed, 

 and finally advised me to change climate. I had 

 then been confined to my bed two weeks, and was 

 at the time unable to move about without a cane, 

 and sutfered intense pain. 



The first of February I went to Florida, and came 

 by mere chance to Hawlis Park, where I made the 

 acquaintance of the noted orange-grower and apia- 

 rist, W. S. Hart. He furnished me with reading- 

 matter from his well-filled library, and, among the 

 interesting books, were eight or ten volumes of 

 Gleanings, some of them dark with age, where I 

 found several articles on bee-stiugs and rheumatism, 

 and concluded to try the experiment. I had then 



