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(Entered as second-class matter July 30, 1907, at the Post-Offlce at Chicago, III., under Act of March 3, 1879.) 



Published Monthly at $1.00 a Year, by George W. York & Company, 146 West Superior Street, 



GEORGE W. YORK, Editor. 



DR. C. C. MILLER. Associate Editor. 



CHICAGO, ILL, MARCH, 1910 



Vol. L--No. 3 



editorial ^ofes 

 and Comments 



Blumler in Treating European 

 Foul Brood 



In Gleanings for 190-"), where E. W. 

 Alexander first gave to the public his 

 treatment- for European foul brood, he 

 directs as follows : 



"Go to every diseased colony you have 

 and build it up either by giving frames of 

 maturing brood or uniting two or more until 

 you have them fairly strong. After this, go 

 over every one and remove the queen; then 

 in days go over them again, and be sure to 

 destroy every maturing queen-cell, or virgin 

 if any have hatched. Then go to your breed- 

 ing-queen and take enough of her newly- 

 hatched larv« to rear enough queen-cells 

 from to supply each one of your diseased 

 queenless colonies with a ripe queen-ceil or 

 virgin just hatched. Those are to be intro- 

 duced to your diseased colonies on the 20th 

 day after you have removed their old queen. 

 and not one hour sooner, for upon this very 

 point your whole success depends; for your 

 young queen must not commence to lay until 

 3 or 4 days after the last of the old brood is 

 hatched, or 27 days from the time you re- 

 move the old queen." 



Dr. Miller comments on the fore- 

 going thus, from his own e-xperience : 



Four years later, when I came to tr>- the 

 cure, instead of going back and looking up 

 carefully just what Mr. Alexander had said, 

 I made the inexcusably stupid blunder of 

 understanding that it was a laving instead of 

 A virgin nween. So with no thought of de- 

 parting materially from the Alexander treat- 

 ment, I introduced a virgin 10 days after re- 

 moving the queen, with the idea that she 

 would begin laying at about the time I un- 

 derstood that Mr. Alexander gave a laying 

 queen. The strange part of it is that no one 

 called my attention to the blunder until late 

 in January, loio. 



While I offer my humblest apologies for 

 thus blundering, and for misrepresenting 

 Mr. Alexanders treatment, I may be allowed 

 to say that, after all. the blunder is hardiv 

 regrettable, upon the whole, // it shall turn 

 out. upon further trial, that others find the 

 cure reliable. 



The treatment I used was certainly suc- 

 cessful in most cases, and it is entirely pos- 

 sible that the cases of failure were because 

 the subjects under treatment were not 

 strong enough. For an essential part of 



treatment, as directed by Mr. Alexander, is 

 to make tiie colonies strong. Please notice 

 that it is not to have strong colonies, nor to 

 make strong part of the colonies, but to 

 nuike strong any colony that is to be treated; 

 for it is doubtful if any colony badly affected 

 is ever strong enough to be treated without 

 being strengthened by the addition of brood 

 or young bees, or both. 



A comparison of the two methods will 

 show that if the plan I used proves to be 

 generally successful— always keep that ' if " 

 in mind— it has a very material advantage 

 over the regular --Alexander treatment. .As 

 compared with the regular Alexander plan, 

 the period of queenlessness is cut exactly 

 in two by the Miller plan — if I may be par- 

 doned for thus naming it. not for the sake of 

 taking away any credit due Mr. Alexander, 

 but for the sake of brevity. For small credit 

 is due me for any improvement that may 

 have been made by sheer stupidity. More- 

 over, there is this notable difference: By 

 the Alexander treatment the bees are hope- 

 lessly queenless for 11 days; never for an 

 hour by the Miller treatment. 



Cutting out 10 days of queenlessness. and 

 relieving the bees of 11 days of listlessness 

 when without hope of ever having a queen, 

 with the possibility of laying workers upon 

 the scene, and that in the midst of a harvest, 

 ought to make no little difference in the 

 work of the season; so much difference, in- 

 deed, that it may be well w'orth while to 

 give the plan a fair trial. C. C. Miller. 



Droue-Liaying Queen.s and Lay- 

 ing-Workers 



When the work of egg-laying has 

 gone wrong, and only drone-brood is 

 found, one can tell pretty well by in- 

 spection of the combs whether it is a 

 case of a drone-laying queen or of lay- 

 ing-workers. If there is a drone-laying 

 queen, she seems unconscious that any- 

 thing is wrong with her laying, and 

 lays just as she would if all her eggs 

 produced workers. The eggs are placed 

 compactly in worker-cells, drone-cells 

 generally being avoided, even if drone- 

 cells are plenty. On the other hand, 

 laying-workers make irregular work, 

 skipping some cells and perhaps laying 



more than one egg in each of other 

 cells. If drone-cells are within reach, 

 they are preferred. The most reliable 

 sign, however, is their preference for 

 queen-cells. If you find a queen-cell 

 with more than a single egg in it, you 

 may be pretty certain it is the work of 

 laying-workers. Sometimes you will 

 find half a dozen or a dozen eggs in a 

 queen-cell, some of them generally 

 looking not plump but withered, and 

 perhaps there may be several such 

 queen-cells in the hive. You may be 

 sure no queen was ever guilty of such 

 work. 



Distance for Pure Queen-3Iating 



F. W. L. Sladen says in the British 

 Bee Journal : 



"I would not rely on isolation for pure 

 mating anywhere in Britain, except on an 

 isolated island. Supposing 3 miles were the 

 limit of flight of queens and drones, one 

 would have to ascertain by careful inquiry 

 that no bees were kept within a radius of 

 over 6 miles, and then one could not be sure 

 that no colonies existed in hollow trees or 

 in buildings, or that swarms might not settle 

 in the district," 



On the next page the editor goes still 

 farther: 



"It would be difficult to prevent cross- 

 breeding by removing the bees unless you 

 can make sure that there are no other bees 

 within 10 or 12 miles of you." 



While there may be no entire security 

 except at such distances, some think 

 that the majority of matings occur be- 

 tween queens and drones whose re- 

 spective homes are not more than a 

 mile apart. 



Comb Versus Extractetl Honey 



"Itseemitome that during the last few 

 years many bee-keepers are given over en- 

 tirely to producing extracted honey, and too 

 little is being written on the subject of ex- 

 pertly running apiaries great and small for 

 comb, quantity and quality. I would like to 

 see the bee-papers classify their articles, 

 and have a thorough department each time 

 for comb, and one for extracted honey. We 

 could then read and study all. but quickly 

 consult, if we wished, the portion devoted 

 to that we were chieHy interested in. '—A 

 Correspondent. 



In some respects the interests of bee- 

 keepers are the same everywhere, and 

 in other respects their interests are 

 quite diverse. It is natural and right 

 that each one who subscribes for a 

 bee-paper should desire to have his own 

 interests fairly considered, and the man 



