Vol. LVL— No. 2 



HAMILTON, ILL, FEBRUARY, 1916 



MONTHLY, $1.00 A YEAR 



Beekeeping at Washington 



What Uncle Sam is Doing for the Beekeeper 



While the impression prevails that 

 beekeeping is an old business, and al- 

 though the bees have long been robbed 

 of their honey, practical beekeeping 

 is the newest among agricultural ac- 

 tivities except fur-farming. Several 

 of the men who assisted in establish- 

 ing the new industry are still living 

 and the others were well known to 

 men still among us. 



In 1851 Langstroth invented the 



for the beekeepers that the Govern- 

 ment has established a laboratory for 

 the purpose of investigating their pe- 

 culiar problems. A representative of 

 the American Bee Journal recently 

 visited the Government laboratory at 

 Drummond, Maryland, near Washing- 

 ton, tor the purpose of learning some- 

 thing of the work in hand, and of 

 placing before our readers a state- 

 ment of what has been done there and 



to be dealing with frivolous things 

 when he experimented with a silk 

 cord and a key attached to his kite, 

 but our telephone, telegraph, electric 

 light, electric railways and other mod- 

 em conveniences are practical appli- 

 cations of his discoveries. 



Ten years ago, little was known 

 about bee-diseases. Beekeepers had 

 learned that a colony could be rid 

 of foulbrood by the shaking treat- 



LABORATORY FROM THE STREET 



movable-frame hive which made bee- 

 keeping commercially possible. This 

 invention was later followed by the 

 extractor and comb-foundation. At 

 the most, beekeeping cannot be said 

 to have been a commercial possibility 

 for more tlian a half century. Under 

 these circumstances, it is not sur- 

 prising that we still have much to 

 learn about bees and it is fortunate 



what results are likely to come from 

 future activities. 



The results already accomplished 

 are of far-reaching value. We often 

 hear beekeepers remark that scientists 

 are not practical. While in a sense 

 this is true, every scientific discovery 

 has a practical application and even 

 'practical subjects must be stiudied 

 scientifically. Franklin was supposed 



George S. Demuth 



nient. But there was no definite way 

 of determining the exact nature of the 

 disease. Dr. E. F. Phillips took 

 charge of the work. The first thing 

 was to learn the distribution of the 

 diseases, which he undertook in per- 

 son. While American foulbrood was 

 known to be widely spread, European 

 foulbrood, then called "black brood," 

 was known in only a few localities. The 



