April, 1910. 



American Hee Journal 



Contributed Articles 



Bee-Keeping as a Business 



BY F. GREINER. 



A writer in Centralblatt has the fol- 

 lowing to say in regard to the reliability 

 of bee-keeping now as conpared to years 

 ago: 



"Some 250 years ago quite a few people 

 discovered that bee-keeping was a better pay- 

 ing business than many other enterprises, but 

 conditions have changed considerably since 

 then. Every business, every enterprise, _ if 

 carried on at all, has to return a larger divi- 

 dend than formerly, or it is found to be neg- 

 lected. Even ordinary agriculture, with its 

 more intense culture and use of machinery, 

 is prominent as a well-paying business. It 

 pays much better than bee-keeping. It is 

 therefore not astonishing that bee-keeping and 

 iioney-production have slightly been retrograd- 

 ing. It must be acknowledged that apicul- 

 ture has not kept pace with other enterprises 

 when considered from the dollar-and-cent 

 standpoint." 



Whether all the above can be en- 

 dorsed and subscribed to by us here in 

 America is questionable. Can it be said 

 that the business here has come to a 

 stand-still? Do we produce less honey? 

 Does it not pay us well to keep bees? 



It appears to me that the bee-keepers 

 in the United States turn out a great deal 

 more honey than formerly. 1 have been 

 in the busineses 35 years. At the begin- 

 ning of this period we found no honey 

 in our common groceries. It is now 

 offered in almost every little store in the 

 country in both forms — comb-honey and 

 extracted. Judging from this, it seems 

 that the output is proportionately larger 

 than it was 35 years ago, saying nothing 

 of 250 years ago. It is to be regretted 

 that no reliable data are at hand for 

 comparison. We haven't anything tangi- 

 ble even as to the amount tliat we pro- 

 duce today. Uucle Sam will tell us, I 

 suppose, after the next census, just how 

 many colonies of bees we have or had in 

 the United States on April 15, 1910; 

 what their value is; how many pounds 

 of honey was produced in 1909; how 

 much wa.x ; and the value of these pro- 

 ducts. It is gratifying to know that, 

 sooner or later we will be in posession 

 of these figures. As to former years, of 

 course we are depending only on guesses. 



Our methods have advanced over 

 former practices, as may be said of ag- 

 riculture and manufacture. Even with 

 the poorer bee-pasturage the bee-keeper 

 is enabled to produce more honey, by 3 

 or 4 times, than he could years ago — not 

 per hive perhaps, but with the amount of 

 labor he puts into the business; and the 

 prospect, it seems to me, is in no way 

 discouraging. 



I am not sure that we have as many 

 bee-keepers, proportionately, as former- 

 ly, but many more of them keep larger 

 and more apiaries. The business has 

 really become a business, while it was 

 formerly carried on as a side-'ssue of 

 minor importance: The honey produced 

 was almost wholly consumed at home — 

 none entered into commerce. 



Personally, I have the greatest con- 



fidence in the bee-business — more than 

 I ever had. Considering the capital in- 

 vested, and the labor required to con- 

 duct it, the returns (rom it are greater 

 than from keeping poultry and growing 

 fruit — at least it pays me better — and 

 better than general farming does the av- 

 erage tiller of the soil. 

 Naples, N. Y. 



Black or European Foul Brood 



BY G. M. DOOLITTLF,. 



By turning to pages 644 and 648 of 

 the American Bee Journal for the year 



1884, a full and exhaustive treatise of 

 foul brood may be found over the signa- 

 ture of Frank R. Cheshire, of London, 

 England, who dug down into the matter 

 more deeply than any, unless perchance, 

 Drs. Phillips and White are excepted, 

 ever found time to do. He there, and 

 on pages 740 to 742 of the same volume, 

 (more than 25 years ago,) calls this dis- 

 ease "bacillus alvei," and said so many 

 things which were entirely foreign to 

 our practical and lamented Moses Quin- 

 by of those days, that in absence of any 

 reply from any of our (in those days) 

 scientists, I ventured a reply on page 

 24s of the American Bee Journal for 



1885. In this reply I said : 



"These words of Mr. Cheshire, found on 

 page 646, 'the popular idea that honey is the 

 means by which it is carried from hive to 

 hive, and that mainly through robbing, is as 

 far in error that only occasionally and casually 

 can honey convey it from colony to colony,' 

 are so directly opposed to our much honored 

 Quinby's words, 'I drew all the bees from 

 such diseased colonies, strained the honey, and 

 fed it to several young, healthy swarms soon 

 after being hived. When examined a few 

 weeks after, every one, without exception, had 

 caught the contagion,* that it is not strange 

 that I began to wonder if here was not a 

 mistake somewhere. 



"Again, Mr. D. A. Jones says, 'A single 

 drop of lioney taken from a diseased colony, 

 is sufficient to start the work,' which, if ar- 

 rested, is inevitable destruction.' While I 

 always prize scientific research highly, yet to 

 be valuable to me, such research must not 

 run squarley against facts known to exist from 

 practical experience. As hundreds of the 

 practical apiarists of the United States do 

 knozu that the foul brood of this country is 

 spreading, and contagious mainly through the 

 honey, the words of Mr. Cheshire sound very 

 strangely to me when applying them to what 

 I know of foul brood." 



I have quoted thus largely, so that 

 those of the younger members of our 

 American Bee Journal family who may 

 not be able to turn to the pages referred 

 to above, may get a fair understanding 

 of the case. And yet, right on page 644, 

 Mr. Cheshire gives a description of 

 black brood, now known as foul brood, 

 that is more perfect in conciseness than 

 any description which has yet appeared, 

 no matter whether the writer be from 

 this or any other part of the world. If 

 Mr. h'rank R. Chesliire were alive today, 

 I should feel it a great privilege to ask 

 his pardon for what I wrote in 1885, and 

 confess to him that I was that "pig-head- 

 ed" that the words "foul brood" got so 



near my eyes that I could not read 

 "BLACK BROOD" in his description. 

 And, right here I wish to say that by 

 calling both of these diseases /ok/ 

 brood, it is exceedingly misleading 

 at the present time, as many thus write 

 and speak, without qualifying by using 

 the words ".American" or "European" 

 before the kind meant. It would seem 

 far preferable to have stuck to the old 

 "black brood," for the European, even 

 did it not "just suit the occasion," than ^y| 

 to be inixed, as very many are when ^^ 

 trying to express themselves in the mat- 

 ter. But to return. 



The first I fully realized that Mr. 

 Cheshire's "bacillus alvei" was our 

 black brood, was at a bee-meeting 3 or 4 

 years ago, when Dr. Phillips told us that 

 it had now come to light that the foul 

 brood of Europe was not the foul brood 

 of our American fathers, but what we 

 had termed "black brood." Then the 

 whole matter opened up to me, and I 

 readily saw that when I was opposing 

 Mr. Cheshire, for asserting that no 

 bacillus or spores could be found in the 

 honey of diseased colonies, he was right 

 and I was wrong; the confusion coming 

 about by our using the words foul brood 

 as representing two almost, if not entire- 

 ly, different diseases. / know that just 

 ONE drop of American foul-broody 

 honey going into a healthy colony will 

 surely bring disease and death to that 

 colony, as it is taken therein ; and I am 

 A'OIV as fully pursuaded that all the 

 honey in a score of European foul 

 broody hives will not carry the disease 

 to ONE single colony, no matter if all 

 the colonies in a large apiary partake of 

 it; as was Mr. Cheshire when he said 

 bacillus alvei (the same being European 

 foul brood) could not be conveyed by 

 the honey. 



Now let me come back to Dr. Miller's 

 article, found on pages 394-5 of the Am- 

 ican Bee Journal for Deceinber, 1909, of 

 which I spoke in my article last month. 

 Dr. Miller says, "The regular thing is 

 to shake on foundation or starters in 

 the evening — that, probably, because 

 safer from starting robbing." Just so. 

 And I have been asking, "What is the 

 use of shaking at all, if, as proven by 

 Mr. Cheshire, Mr. E. W. Alexander, Mr. 

 J. A. Green. Dr. C.C. Miller and myself, 

 and manv others, that European foul 

 brood is NOT INFECTIOUS through 

 the honey? 



But one of our New York foul brood 

 inspectors thinks it would be a danger- 

 ous thing to take the stand that the dis- 

 ease cannot be carried in the honey; and 

 so this trutli, as so fully brought out 

 by Mr. Cheshire, has been kept hid from # 

 the public, to the vexatious toil, sweat * 

 and trouble of the hundreds and thous- 

 ands of bee-keepers jf the world, for 

 fear some would Ijecome too lax in this 

 matter, and thereby spread the disease. 



Now, the disease is IN the honey, or 

 it is NOT. Mr. Cheshire's pronuncia- 

 tion that it is NOT, has never been over- 

 thrown, not even by Doolittle (in his 

 ignorance), and until it has been over- 

 thrown by positive proof, it seems wick- 

 ed to keep the apiarists of the world 

 laboring on that which amounts to 

 nothing. 



Dr. Miller tells us how some of the 

 colonies which he shook deserted be- 



