1885 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



S-53 



loss of queens, some hives being- supplied the Sec- 

 ond or third time, and, what I ara most ashamed 

 of, three colonies were lost by moths before I got 

 them supplied. I might have saved them by timely 

 care. 



The moth is a terror here to native bee keepers 

 who have the common bee in old fashioned hives; 

 but it is a comfort to me to see how quickly the 

 Italians will carry them out by the back of the neck, 

 when I put a frame infested with them in the mid- 

 dle of an upper story of a populous hive. There is 

 no trouble from the moth, with good management. 

 As yet I have found no trouble with any other 

 enemy. 



We finished ( xtracting for this year on the 18th, 

 and find we have taken, all told, 1000 lbs. of honey; 

 about 150 lbs. of this was comb honey, partly in sec- 

 tions. I found great difficulty in getting them to 

 work in sections. They much i)referred storing hon- 

 ey in comb already built. They sent out eight 

 swarms, three of which flew away. One was doub- 

 led up with a quecnless colony, lea\ing, after de- 

 ducting for what was lost, an actual increase of 

 one. The honey is worth about 11 cts. in this mar- 

 ket; 1000 lbs. at $110.00, one new colony *(i.C0, ?116.00. 



I ara very thankful for this much, and am going 

 on ray way rejoicing, and expect to do better next 

 year; and if I don't, 1 still expect to keep bees, for 

 It has paid even this year. 



This country is high dry pine land, no swamps or 

 hammock land nearer than four miles, about as un- 

 inviting bee pasture, it seems to be, as there Is in 

 Florida. It will be much better in a few .jears, 

 when the 40,000 orange-trees within two miles of 

 here are full of bloom. There are many kinds of 

 flowers in the woods and fields, but I am puzzled to 

 know where they get the great (juantities of honey 

 they stored sometimes last year. 



I find a banana-plant makes a ni(;e shade for bee- 

 hives. One plant will shade two or three, by set- 

 ting them at ditlcrent points of tlie compass. The 

 leaves die in the winter, letting the .'iun in when it 

 is cool. When warm weather conies again, and 

 shade is needed, it is ready, with its great broad 

 leaves, to make a refreshing shade. There are 

 many good points in Florida for the bee-keeper, bo- 

 sides where friend Hart lives. There arc many of 

 these places where tlie business is entirely undevel- 

 oped, and a little well-directed energy by men well 

 posted will surely bring its reward. It is no small 

 thing to be entirely clear of the work and loss con- 

 nected with wintering, which our Northern bee- 

 keepers are subject to. Fi{.\ncis Tuuriii-ooi). 



Archer, Florida, Nov. 2T, 18t-T). 



A DISEASE OF THE BROOD THAT IS 

 NOT FOUL BROOD. 



nESllCATED BUOOD; its cause and CITHE. 



fN page 734, Nov. Gleanings, Mr. D wight Fur- 

 ness asks me to " give further light on the 

 subject." The desiccated foul brood that he 

 refers to has two distinct types, or, as may 

 be classed, a contagious and a non-contagious 

 type — that is, so far as I can ascertain from all the 

 investigation that I have been able to make 

 through the seasons, beginning in 1878, up to the 

 present fall. I have not known of a season since 

 my first observation of the plague but that I have 



been able to investigate several cases of either one 

 or both phases of the disease. 



The non-contagious type I have, to my full satisfac- 

 tion, traced to a trouble of the queen, or an hered- 

 itary trouble fi-om the drone raating, as I have 

 found it only in the woi'ker-bi'ood; thus I conclud- 

 ed it was from the deficient vitality of the drone- 

 sperm, as a constitutional weakness. I had once 

 thought that it might be, as inferred by a recent 

 contributor to the pages of Gleanings, a venereal 

 disease; but as such diseases are copulatively con- 

 tagious, I withheld such a decision. Finding the 

 non-contagious type always in a locality where 

 there were plenty of degenerate black or hybrid 

 bees, and quite often it appeared in brood of a mis- 

 mated Italian queen; therefore I attributed it to 

 the drone mating, and I can not see any reason to 

 not credit it to the devitality of the drone sperm; 

 and yet if the drone-brood had been afl'ected in the 

 same way there would not have been a chance to 

 locate it on the vital weakness of the drone; there- 

 fore your decision of the change of the queen is a 

 substantiation of my conclusion, and the success- 

 ful practice shows the theory to be a true one in the 

 case of the non-contagious type, and also the 

 strongest proof to be obtained of the deficient vi- 

 tality of the drone-sperm, which can be in part ac- 

 counted for in two ways, as presenting itself 

 through various observations that also bear on the 

 subject of my article on page 742, same issue of 

 Gleanings, concerning queens, and I will try to 

 make it plain, as I see them, in an article at some 

 future day. 



the contagious desiccated foul brood 

 I found to be contagious, and for three or four years 

 I tried to obtain help from many prominent api- 

 arists to find out something about it, and have 

 never yet received one line of information, either 

 pro or con, except in 187il. two letters from Mr. T. 

 G. Newman, and I had given up all hope of any 

 light from any one. I have kept on nursing two or 

 three colonies for the past seven years, tliinking I 

 might yet find out all about it, and occasionallly I 

 find localities where it has wiped out awholeapiary ; 

 and by putting healthy stocks on to the same 

 ground, the disease always showed itself the second 

 season. That the disease was present, I have prov- 

 ed by the destruction of at least 50 colonies that 1 

 have used of iny own for that purpose, and always 

 taking them from perfectly healthy localities so far 

 as I could learn, and using new hives and virgin 

 combs built on foundation as thoroughly clarified 

 as 1 knew how to do it. 



Another curious fact is, that a thorough scouring 

 of hives and frames and fi.xtures with strong salt 

 and water, just wiped out all contagion when the 

 contagious desiccation has developed into a gen- 

 uine, rotten, stinking muss of the capped brood 

 when carried into strong healtliy stocks at mid- 

 summer, and proves that the caution given, page 

 504, A. B. J., 1883, was not without reason. 



The two phases are so similar in early stages, that 

 the novice would not notice the difference. First 

 an occasional grub, when nearly ready to cap, will 

 turn yellowish, growing darker for two or three 

 days, and perishing against the side of the cell, 

 though not always the lower side. From four to 

 six days arc consumed in the drying-up process^ 

 and then if the comb is held a little slanting in the 

 strong sunshine a dirty sediment will be seen at 

 the lower side of the bottom of the cell, and will 



