Amorican Hee Journal 



appointment there can be no rude 

 awakening, for there has been no fall- 

 ing to sleep in the comfortable assur- 

 ance that no return of the enemy was 

 possible. Indeed, there can be scarcely 

 any disappointment, for under all the 

 circumstances the return of the dis- 

 ease is not unexpected. In the first 

 place, the treatment was in part of the 

 cases e.xperimental, with no certainty 

 as to its success. In the second place, 

 there being in the State of Illinois no 

 law to prevent a man from cherishing 

 foul brood if he so desires, and dis- 

 eased colonies in all direction being 

 conveniently near to supply fresh in- 

 fection, it will be a surprise if there 

 shall not be fresh cases. 



But if every colony in the apiary 

 should become infected, it will be no 

 proof that the fault lay in not disinfect- 

 ing the hives. Indeed, it may not be 

 easy, if at all possible, to tell anything 

 about it. In default of anything better, 

 however, one may be allowed to fall 

 back upon the testimony of the many 

 experienced foul-brood inspectors of 

 this country who claim that thousands 

 of hives not disinfected have been used 

 with no bad results. If any consider- 

 able number of these inspectors are 

 strongly impressed with the idea that 

 disinfection of hives is necessary, they 

 are certainly not making any great 

 noise in making that belief known. 



Is there any positive proof that foul 

 brood was ever conveyed by a hive 

 that had contained a diseased colony? 

 Please remember that the occurrence 

 of foul brood in such a hive is not sat- 

 isfactory proof that the hive was the 

 disease-carrier unless all other sources 

 of infection are entirely eliminated. It 

 is not denied that the disease has arisen 

 in foul-broody hives that have not been 

 disinfected, but it is equally true that it 

 has arisen or returned iii hives that 

 have been disinfected. Neither is it 

 denied that it is an entirely safe thing 

 to disinfect hives, but the likelihood is 

 that until there is positive proof that a 

 reasonable percentage of foul-broody 

 hives will carry the disease, a good 

 niany will continue to believe that dis- 

 infecting hives does not pay. 



Blendel's Law of Hreediiig^ 



T. W. Ramm sends a clipping relat- 

 ing to this matter which he thinks of 

 interest to bee-keepers. George Men- 

 del, an Austrian monk, made experi- 

 ments -jO years ago in breeding plants, 

 and claimed to have discovered a law 

 relating to crossing that could be re- 

 lied on : 



" Mendel lieUl that where two strongly 

 contrastiiiK strains wert- cros.sod. one would 

 be likely to prove itself dominant. The re- 

 sulting first generation of ofT.ii;r:"" would 

 all be like the dominant s'rain. .Members 

 of this generation would beget offspring 

 three-fourths of which would follow the 

 dominant strain; but one-fourth would re- 

 act to the weaker grandparent i;nd show the 

 characteristics of that member that had ap- 

 peared absolutely absent in the ti.'st genera- 

 tion. In the third generation these charar- 

 aeristicsof the weaker meuiber would re- 

 tpp i-ar in the descendants of those that had 

 shown It in (he second. c;//(/ remain tireil re- 

 producing themselves indelinitely. So would 

 tlie characteristics of 2S percent of the 

 dominant strain in this generation become 

 hxed. I his would leave an unfixed 50 per- 

 cent that would breed another generation 

 with the characteristics iiartly unfixed and 

 in the same proportion as the previous gen- 

 eration. All the generations that followed 



from this unfixed division would be like the 

 third generation in the characteristics and 

 their proportions." 



For some time not very much atten- 

 tion was given to this, but of late years 

 the Government has taken it up. At 

 Bethesda, in the outskirts of Washing- 

 ton, is located an experiment stadon of 

 the Bureau of .Animal Industry, Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, and experiments 

 made here, not upon plants but upon 

 rats, have established the correctness 

 of Mendel's law, an entire buHding 

 being filled with cages of rats. 



While of exceeding importance to 

 the stock-raiser, it is not so certain 

 that bee-keepers will be benefited by 

 Mendel's law so long as fertilization is 

 not at all under control in the breed- 

 ing of bees. 



Hear or Bii> tiueeiis— Which ? 



It is a question sometimes whether it 

 is better for the honey-producer to buy 

 queens or to rear them. Probably the 

 same rule does not hold good for all. 

 The great majority, no doubt, rear 

 their own queens, but it may be a ques- 

 tion whether some large producers 

 might not do better to buy. So good a 

 bee-keeper as M. A. Gill, after trying 

 both ways, says he cannot afford to 

 rear his own queens. Having over 

 1000 colonies, he can spend his time 

 more profitably at other things, and 

 pay some one else for rearing his 

 queens. 



The amateur with only 2 or 3 colo- 

 nies is often in need of a queen — some- 

 times he has scant notice of the need — 

 and he may save money by buying. 

 But the amateur will tell you that he is 

 not in the business for the money so 

 much as the pleasure, and as queen- 

 rearing is "the poetry of bee-keeping," 

 he does not want to be deprived of that 

 pleasure. 



Returning to the large-producer, it 

 ought to be true that he cannot pro- 

 duce queens so cheaply as the man 

 who makes a specialty of queen-rear- 

 ing. Another locality may be more 

 favorable for queen-rearing than the 

 one occupied by the honey-producer. 

 The queen-rearer has everything ar- 

 ranged for the business. In short, it is 



like any other business — a man can 

 buy from the large manufacturer for 

 less money than it costs him to pro- 

 duce his own goods. 



To this the honey-producer may re- 

 ply, "Yes, it costs me twice as much to 

 rear my own queens, and they are 

 worth three times as much as those I 

 can buy from Tom, Dick, and Harry. 

 By breeding always from my best stock 

 I can increase my crop of honey to I 

 such an extent that it will pay, many 

 times over, the extra cost. If I buy 

 from Tom, Dick, aod Harry, about all I 

 know of the queens is their looks, and 

 while I like pretty bees, I care more for 

 those that will ' deliver the goods.' " 



All this must be admitted. Moreover, 

 it is true that only the man who pro- 

 duces honey can really tell what is best 

 stock. A man may rear a million of 

 queens, but if he never does anything 

 but rear queens, he knows nothing 

 about their worker-progeny as honey- 

 gatherers. 



While all this may be true, it is not 

 the whole of the story. One does not 

 need to buy of Tom, Dick, and Harry. 

 One may buy of a queen-rearer who is 

 thoroughly reliable. Suppose A is such 

 a man, and B a honey-producer. It will 

 not cost B -5 cents to send his best 

 queen to A, and why may not A rear 

 from her just as good queens as B 

 would, and for less money? There is 

 no law against doing even better than 

 that. If B sends his best queen to A 

 to have his young queens reared from, 

 so may C and E, and a dozen others. 

 Having all these choice queens on 

 hand, what is to hinder A from pitting 

 them against each other, and finding 

 out which is the best of the lot as a 

 houcy-frodnccr ? And, in general, what 

 is to hinder A from skirmishing about 

 and getting from men who are reliable 

 as honey-producers their best stock, 

 and then selecting again the best of 

 the best? And if A is honest and intel- 

 ligent, something of that sort is ex- 

 actly what he will do. 



There is still room for improvement 

 in stock, and if the land is to be stocked 

 with the very best, there must be intel- 

 ligent co-operation between queen- 

 rearers and honey-producers. 



Schroeder's Aniericaii Viisit 



Alexander Schroeder gives in Illus- 

 trierte Monatsblaetter a pleasant de- 

 tailed account of his visit to the apiary 

 of W. H. Horstmann, Chicago, a pic- 

 ture of the apiary accompanying. Such 

 men as Mr. Schroeder help to lessen 

 the distance between the two countries. 



Time to Spray Fruit 



The Journal of Agriculture, of Vic- 

 toria, contains some " Orchard Notes," 

 by J. Cronin, Principal of the School 

 of Horticlulture, which it would be 

 well if every fruit-grower could read. 

 It is shown that it is a serious mistake 



to suppose that ir\\\^-l>lossoms should fK 

 be sprayed. Mr. Cronin says: 'M 



The codlin-moth is popularly supposed to 

 develop into the perfect egg-laying stage 

 about the blossoming period, and it lays its 

 eggs in the calyx or eye of the young fruit, 

 or as some few people assert in the blos- 

 soms. 'Ihe practice of people holding this 

 belief is to try and till the eye of the fruit 

 with the poison, \\hate\er it may be. and tti 

 depend largely, if not ;iltogetlier, upon the 

 one application. The facts are that few eggs 

 are laid during the blooming time, except in 

 case of late-flowering varieties that arc not 

 specially attacked in the eye on account of 

 being in flower when the moths are plentiful. 

 and the majority of the eggs, at least, are not 

 laid in the calyx, or even near it. Also, the 

 calyx is often closed, and the fruit fairly 

 large, before any evidence of codlin-moth is 

 present, and the first trace is the eggiv/Mc 

 liiiil, and the young insect attacking from 



