Feb. 26, 1903. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



135 



eases amongst every live creature under the sun. Those 

 are the men that this law is aimed against. Not at tin- 

 bee-keeper who is here. They come to the convention, thi y 

 get all the information and are informed. 



Dr. Miller — These five or six men that raised their 

 hands are not the ones who need the foul-brood law. The 

 rest of us are the ones that need that law and want to have 

 it. If I had foul brood in my apiary to-day I wouldn't give 

 much whether you had a law or not. I haven't got it, and 

 don't want it, and want things in shape so that I can fight 

 it off. 



Mr. Wilcox — I don't want to say anything in favor of a 

 foul-brood law particular!}-, but I do want to say something. 

 We, in Wisconsin, have one. Our State Association made 

 the start. It is satisfactory to us. We hardly see how we 

 can improve it except that we want two or three hundred 

 dollars a j-ear more to pay our foul-brood inspector. With 

 that -exception we think we are satisfied. I think I can 

 speak the sentiment of every bee-keeper in Wisconsin when 

 I say that we almost demand of you that you proceed to get 

 the foul-brood law enacted in Illinois, and attempt to sup- 

 press the disease in this State so that it may not be trans- 

 ported continually into ours. We are continually in dan- 

 ger in buying queens or honey from your State, and if you 

 go before your Legislature with a committee and Bill 

 drafted to suit you, you will have no difficulty in getting it 

 enacted. We had no difficulty when they saw that we were 

 in earnest, and knew what we wanted, and how we wanted 

 it, and you can do the same. I believe you can, and I know 

 that you will be fortunate if you get as good an inspector 

 as we did ; but j-ou need two of them, for your State is 

 large enough to need it, and you will be completely success- 

 ful in getting the disease so under subjection that it will 

 not be spread. You will cure every case almost as quickly 

 as it shows in any locality, and you will be proud to think 

 that you have done it. 



Mr. Kluck — If the beekeepers of Illinois can only get a 

 foul-brood law by coming' together h^re and at other places 

 this winter, it will be the end of their troubles. It is the 

 men that keep bees that expect to get a crop next year 

 who think it is a whole lot like finding money. They are 

 the ones that do the most harm. If they have foul brood 

 they say, " Well, bee-keeping doesn't pay very well ; I will 

 let that go. If the bees live they will live, and if they don't 

 they will die." If we had a foul-brood law we could send 

 the inspector there ; he would condemn the apiary, and the 

 man would either have to clean it up or destroy it. The 

 most danger that we have from foul brood is from this man 

 who keeps bees in anything from a nail-keg up to a dry- 

 goods box, and they are in such shape that you can't do 

 anything with them but destroy them. They are like a 

 man that has horses that have distemper. After his horses 

 have it he doesn't care whose get it. If we can only get a 

 foul-brood law, and go before the Legislature and see our 

 representatives in our different districts and tell them, 

 " Now, you be sure and vote for this foul-brood law," why, 

 we would have accomplished a great deal for Illinois. 



Mr. Thompson — I don't think, like Dr. Miller, that the 

 five or six gentlemen here who have foul brood don't need 

 the law. I haven't foul brood in my own apiary, but I dis- 

 covered it about half a mile from me, and I think I am in 

 need of a law as much as any man in Illinois. I have to 

 watch very closely now so that it doesn't get in mine. I 

 was fortunate in finding a man who was willing to destroy 

 it, as far as I know. All foul brood that was discovered is 

 now in ashes. 



Mr. Wilcox — How can you prevent it getting in yours, 

 if it is within half a mile of you ? 



Mr. Thompson — The State law will help. 



Dr. Miller — I believe that this organization can do more 

 than any other agency in the State towards securing a foul- 

 brood law. I very much doubt whether any of you would 

 dispute that. I believe that if the whole time of this con- 

 vention from now until the final adjournment should be 

 taken up in discussing this, and then action should be taken 

 resulting in getting a foul-brood law, it would be time well 

 spent. I am not advising that, but only to show the im- 

 portance I think attaches to this subject. 

 (Continued next n-eek.) 



Please send us Names of Bee-Keepers who do not now 



get the American Bee Journal, and we will send them s.am- 

 ple copies. Then you can very likely afterward get them 

 subscriptions, for which work we offer valuable premiums 

 in nearly every number of this journal. You can aid much 

 by sending in the names and addresses when writing us on 

 other matters. 



Bees and Pear-Blight— Some Information. 



BY J. E. JOHNSON. 



ON page 77, Mr. Mitchell seems to doubt the truthfulness 

 concerning my having 900 pear-trees free from blight, 

 and prefers affidavits from disinterested neighbors. 

 Now, my neighbors are all pratty much interested, but if 

 he will write to the bank of Williatnsfield, 111., or C. C. 

 Davis it Co., grain merchants, or the postmaster at the 

 same place (enclosing a stamp for return postage), they 

 will enlighten him. 



I have also 900 other trees — peaches, apricots, Japan 

 plums — and will plant more pears this year. I am, how- 

 ever, a very small orchardist compared with many others. 

 W. S. Mounts, of this State, has 11,000 pear-trees, and is a 

 successful grower, and bees spreading blight does not worry 

 him much. 



It is not my intention to misrepresent, or boast of my 

 ability, but I have very carefully studied the success as well 

 as failure of other growers, have also studied somewhat 

 about chemical physiology and pathology, and have a 

 microscope strong enough to reveal the blight bacteria and 

 some other agents of the plant-life called bacteria or 

 microbes, but it does not make them as large and plain as I 

 should wish. For the benefit of some let me say that the 

 bacteria family are vegetable organisms, and do not belong 

 to the animal kingdo^n ; their mode of propagation is by a 

 process of budding, and they increase very rapidly only in 

 the elements favorable to their propagation, and no blight 

 could exist except as the result of a microbe; and if we 

 care for our trees as Nature has intended, they will not be- 

 come favorable to the propagation of said organism, hence 

 they would be blight-proof. 



I do not wonder that my article on page 77 was crit- 

 cised, as I did not write it for publication. I'll tell you how 

 it was. At the Chicago convention Dr. Miller asked me to 

 write to him and explain certain things in which we were 

 both interested. The article was extracts from that letter. 

 The Doctor has been patiently answering so many of our 

 questions, and helping us out of our many troubles that I 

 think he has begun to rejoice in our tribulations, and as I 

 did not have any particular trouble he thought he would 

 hunt me up a little, so he sent it to the American Bee Jour- 

 nal for publication. 



Well, criticism taken in moderate doses is very health- 

 ful, and I am thankful for it. 



Now, from what investigations I've made, and from 

 what experience I've had, and I might say from many other 

 fool notions, I'll try and tell you my opinion of pear-blight. 



The natural home of the pear is in temperate Europe and 

 Asia. Pear-blight is a thing unknown except in America ; 

 bees are known nearly the world over. In central France 

 a pear-tree that was over 600 years old was destroyed a few 

 years ago by storm. It was known as the Oueen Anne 

 pear-tree. In the suburbs of Boston are French seedling 

 pear-trees nearly 200 years old, free from blight. In Illinois 

 are pear-trees from 60 to 80 years old bearing regular crops, 

 and have never had blight : these are French seedlings, 

 and have been neither fertilized nor cultivated. 



Almost any pear-tree will grow rapidly in soil poor 

 enough to starve an apple-tree to death. Their roots pene- 

 trate the earth deeper than any other fruit-tree, which 

 shows plainly it reaches some element not abundant near 

 the surface. And I claim that when a tree is heavily fer- 

 tilized with nitrogenous manure the growth is forced un- 

 naturally, and will cause too abundant a flow of sap to the 

 buds or blossoms, or any part of its new growth, and that 

 the super-abundant supply of sap becomes favorable to the 

 propagation of the blight bacteria, which is one of the 

 agents of fermentation, plainly distinguished by the odor. 

 I think the blight bacteria can and does live in the air, 

 especially when moist and warm. Natural warm air is 

 always moist, and contains more water than cold air, and 

 moist, warm weather is very well known to be very favor- 

 able to the spreading of blight, in my opinion, from two 

 causes, viz.: First, by causing abundant sap in the tree ; 

 second, by being favorable to the blight-germ. 



There are hosts of different kinds of disease-germs in 



