1917 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



229 



used for a weak swarm for three weeks. 



K bought 12 colonies of Flynn api- 

 ary. L adjoins K. 



M bought six old hives from N, in- 

 vested in half a dozen ([ueens and 

 started nuclei. Result, his apiary was 

 entirely wiped out in two years. 



R bought a single colony from some- 

 body unknown who left town. 



S loves bees, but thought his district 

 was worthless for honey production, 

 so he provided them with a home. He 

 had hives and boxes stacked up like 

 cordwood, three deep. From him I 

 could not get any definite information, 

 but he was just one mile from the cen- 

 ter of infection. I found here the worst 

 case I ever saw, every frame solid with 

 dead brood and only a few bees alive, 

 yet in the next two seasons the colo- 

 nies that remained seemed to be per- 

 fectly healthy. 



X bought from a man who left town. 

 I learned that W had got part of the 

 same apiary, and on proceeding to his 

 place I found the disease far advanced 

 in two out of his three purchases. The 

 story of the hive is rather interesting. 

 It was of the Gallup pattern, and when 

 bought did not contain a single cell of 

 brood or honey. W thought the con- 

 ditions propitious for transfeiring to a 

 regular hive so he shook the bees on 

 to a set of his own combs and rendered 

 the old ones into wax. Remember, he 

 was not shaking for foulbrood, he was 

 merely transferring to a standard hive. 

 When I called on him a year later he 

 felt confident the colony was clear of 

 the disease, but I found one affected 

 cell. 



V was a beginner; he had bought a 

 colony from some one leaving town. 



y and Z are located about two miles 

 from the A apiary. How the disease 

 got to them I could not trace, but A 

 deals in supplies. The Z apiary is 

 managed by a lady who disobeyed most 

 of the elementary rules of good bee- 

 keeping. She would persist in feeding 

 back most of the season's crop in the 

 open air. Y ran her apiary in 1914, 

 using some of his own extracting su- 

 pers, taking them home to be cleaned 

 up. The owner would not permit him 

 to examine the brood-nests. Holding 

 a demonstration at Y's apiary in the 



spring of 1915, I was horrified to find 

 nearly every colony in awful condition, 

 as the year before the apiary was in 

 fine shape. Everybody present at once 

 cried out " The bee inspector brought 

 the disease the year before." Luckily 

 I was able to show by my notebook 

 that I had had no contact with foul- 

 brood until 14 days after my previous 

 demonstration. Some folks give bee 

 inspectors lots of btame and mighty 

 little credit, if any. 



D in 1915 bought a lot of bees in 

 boxes from a man in the bush, and 

 transferred them to regular hives. Most 

 of his cases in 1916 were of this lot, so 

 I started into the wilds to locate the 

 seller, who is designated as AA in the 

 table. 1 found he had kept bees for 

 many years, but in 1914 he had got a 

 colony that had come from the apiary 

 of I. 



BB bought a colony from G in 1913. 

 Knowing its history I examined it 

 twice in 1914, once in 1915, always find- 

 ing it in good condition. In the spring 

 of 1916 it had shrunk to a handful of 

 bees, with disease in three combs. 



The winter of 1915-10 was the most 

 severe known to the oldest white in- 

 habitants of British Columbia and 

 wiped out at least 40 percent of the 

 bees in the Province. Stores were 

 drawn upon to the last cell, hence any 

 dormant germs were given an oppor- 

 tunity to get in their deadly work. 



Out of my whole experience I think 

 I can draw a few definite conclusions. 



1. It is not proven that the infection 

 can be carried by queens, although at 

 one time I was rather suspicious. 



2. Free movement of hives in ordi- 

 nary commerce is a quick and com- 

 mon way of spreading the disease. 



3. Feeding back honey in the open 

 air is very efficient for disseminating 

 the germs of foulbrood. 



4. It is a rather risky investment to 

 buy up old hives and combs, yet I found 

 one man who had invested $600 in an 

 apiary buying a couple of empty hives 

 in a foulbrood district, even after I had 

 warned him about the region. I burned 

 them on the spot. 



5. Disease germs will lurk in a hive 

 for some time before aflfecting the 

 brood. One of our inspectors had a 



case develop three years after the colo- 

 nies had entered the Province, having 

 come from a foulbrood region in Ore- 

 gon. The case of BB mentioned above 

 seems to conlirm this. 



6. A new hive in contact with a weak 

 swarm for only three weeks can carry 

 the germs and develop the disease 

 when used for another and strong 

 swarm. 



7. Using the most drastic measures 

 we cannot expect to stamp out foul- 

 brood in less than three seasons. In 

 Vancouver I found 38 affected colonies 

 in 1914, 21 in 1915, 9 in 1916; at Esson- 

 daleS in 1914,0 in 191.5, and 1 in 1916; 

 at Chilliwack 5 in 1914, 1 in 1915, in 

 lyiti. All the new cases were very mild, 

 just a few affected cells, so I am in 

 hopes to soon have a clean bill of 

 health. 



8. The bee inspectors must not trust 

 to the average beekeeper finding the 

 disease in his own apiary; only four 

 times in six seasons have I been called 

 to examine suspicious cases. In two 

 instances I found foulbrood, in the 

 other two the brown pollen was the 

 cause of the worry. 



9. The foul smell said to be so char- 

 acteristic of American foulbrood is 

 not always present; in fact, I have 

 never yet had a chance to become ac- 

 quainted with it. Whenever I have 

 found a case of the disease I have tried 

 to get together as many of my people 

 as possible, so that they might become 

 familiar with its appearance. Several 

 times I have had surrounding me as 

 many as a score of both sexes, and 

 even when the case was a very bad one 

 all failed to detect any disagreeable, 

 odor. 



I think it is Cowan who says that 

 another germ must be present to pro- 

 duce the smell, and that the non-smell- 

 ing type of American foulbrood is not 

 nearly so virulent as the stinking 

 variety. The type in Vancouver has 

 been there for at least four years, and 

 if my Chilliwack informant was cor- 

 rect it has been present for nearly a 

 score, yet with apiaries rather closely 

 clustered I found comparatively few 

 cases in proportion to the number of 

 colonies examined, say three percent 

 these being in 12 percent of the apiaries. 

 The percentage of apiaries looks rather 

 high, but the proportion is due to the 

 scattering of the disease by sales from 

 aflfected apiaries. With the educational 

 movement started in 1911, beekeeping 

 in British Columbia is expanding rap- 

 idly, the Department list of beekeepers 

 now containing a total of about 1500 

 names. 



Victoria, B. C. 



Apiary of Sprott & Schow. Burnaby Lake. B. C 40 colonies produced 3500 pounds of 

 extracted honey in 1Q16 



A Beemoth Parasite 



BY FRANK ROTINA. 



DURING the month of August, 1916, 

 several combs in our apiary were 

 destroyed by moths. I laid some 

 of these moth-infected frames aside 

 for demonstration work and put them 

 into one hive in the steam-heated stor- 

 age room. The hive was covered with 

 a bee-escape board. In December I 

 noticed on the window pane behind 

 this hive a large number of small flies 

 (see the picture). I was wondering 

 where they came from. During this 

 investigation I opened the hive with 

 moth frames and found the hive ful. 



