1902 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



433 



fore is in perfect accord with it, instead of 

 violating- it. 



In the last proposition quoted, I think I 

 can agree with you. "Another principle 

 that has been laid down is that it is a mis- 

 take to give bees too much surplus room at 

 the start.'" That is a principle that tias 

 not yet reached this section of the country'. 

 You can't give them too much room at the 

 start in our section, nor in any other ivarui 

 climate where the surptus-honey flow lasts 

 only ten or twelve days, and bees store from 

 5 to 25 lbs. of honey per da}', average 

 12 lbs. per day, for ten days. Why, I 

 very seldom take off those large stories 

 during winter. Most of my hives have to- 

 day those large stories on them, some of 

 them filled with sections, just as they stood 

 last summer, I alwaj's give my colonies 

 the full 112 sections some four or five weeks 

 ahead of the honey-flow, and often do not 

 have to raise even the loiver section-case, as 

 the bees enter both about tlie same day. Es- 

 pecially is this true if the surplus flow is a 

 little late and heavy. 



In 1898, from a hive having only six L. 

 frames in the brood-chamber and twelve L. 

 frames in the surplus-apartment, I got 71 

 L. frames built out and filled, inside of 16 

 days, with honey — something like 400 lbs. 

 of extracted honey — \iy setting two surplus 

 stories on top of a six-Langstroth-frame 

 brood-chamber. 



The bee-keeper here who uses a 24 or 28 

 section apartment on an eight or ten frame 

 hive gets only about one-third or less of the 

 honey crop as his share of the flow to each 

 colony. I have just had cut 100 of those 

 Jumbo hives, and expect to use the 15,000 

 sections (in addition to a number of Lang- 

 stroth frames this season) I ordered of you 

 in them for comb honey alone. 



Our bees build out bej'ond the brood- 

 chamber when honey is coming in freely. 

 This maj^ not be " long tongue-reach," but 

 it is building out right — don't j'ou see? 

 They seem to have no regard for confining 

 their storage to just the limits of the brood- 

 chamber. 



Our surplus-honey flow doesn't advance. 

 It hops right on, and then, after a few 

 days, it recedes to return another season. 

 Abbott L. Swinson. 



Macon, Ga., April 4. 



[With your conditions of hone3^-flow it is 

 easy to see why your hive is eminently 

 adapted for 3'our locality'. This onl}^ illus- 

 trates the importance of each one studying 

 closely his locality and then adapting him- 

 self to it.— Ed.1 



WAS IT FOUL BROOD? IF NOT, WHAT WAS IT? 



The experiment with foul brood, by T. P. 

 Bingham, calls to mind an experience of my 

 own, except the mode of curing with sul- 

 phur smoke and the discoverj'^ of cure in my 

 own case. About the middle of May, 1901, 

 I discovered a colonj' superseding its queen. 

 At that inspecting I could not detect any 

 thing wrong, but those bees could. Imag- 



ine my consternation, ten days later, on 

 discovering a fully developed case of foul 

 brood, answering in every particular to the 

 description in my text-books. More than 

 half of the brood was dead in difl^erent 

 stages of development, but they had suc- 

 ceeded in hatching a nice young queen, and 

 at the proper time she began to lay, shar- 

 ing the burden of the old queen, both being 

 present and laying. F^rom this time on the 

 percentage of dead brood was not as great — 

 perhaps one in twent}'. About the 15th of 

 Jul}^ they had become quite strong, and I 

 thought I would clip the wing of the young 

 queen. The old one had hers clipped. On 

 putting her down the bees killed her. That 

 left the colony with the old queen, and from 

 this on the malady grew worse. I would 

 say about two-thirds of the brood was dy- 

 ing. This gave me the cue. It was the old 

 queen that was the cause. I supplied them 

 with a new queen, and they cleaned up 

 house and started in with new vigor, and 

 the malady completely disappeared from 

 that colony. I had one other colon _y affected 

 in the same way, but it yielded to the same 

 treatment. 



The question now seems to be, " Did the 

 sulphur smoke have any effect, or was it 

 the new queen that did the work for Mr. 

 Bingham? " Then, again, was it foul 

 brood? I had come to the conclusion that it 

 was not,- and that the defect was with the 

 queens alone. 



The bees have wintered well with me on 

 the summer stands, packed in winter cases. 

 I lost one out of thirty. A. Olson. 



Annis, Idaho, April 22. 



[Your surmise is, I think, correct. The 

 malady, whatever it was, was due to some 

 weakness of the old queen. It could hard- 

 ly have been foul brood, for that disease, as 

 we know, would not disappear on the re- 

 moval of the queen. 



Unless one has seen foul brood so that he 

 is sure he knows it on sight, he might, 

 from the descriptions or symptoms given in 

 the books, mistake pickled or dead brooJ 

 for it; then if he applied some mild reme- 

 dy, conclude that that had cured real foul 

 brood, when the other disease would, in 

 the ordinary course of events, disappear of 

 itself. 



What the particular malady was which 

 your bees above described had I can not 

 say, unless it was pickled brood, and that 

 sometimes disappears right speedily on a 

 change of queens. In the absence of any 

 further facts I should say what your bees 

 had was ai case of pickled brood pure and 

 simple; for that does in fact look like foul 

 brood, but difters in the ropiness of the 

 dead matter. — Ed. J 



WINTERING IN A LARGE CELLAR. 



I followed your plan of wintering in a 

 small compartment within a large cellar. 

 I wintered twelve colonies thus, and they 

 are stronger at this»date than any we win- 

 tered before — not a weak one nor one dead, 



