276 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



April 30, 1903. 



Certainly the expense will be less. With halt-inch lumber securely 

 fastened at the ends there can be no waiping. 



Twisting is another matter. A large proportion of lumber will 

 twist with suflicient age. Cast-iron cleats holding the ends rigidly 

 will not prevent twisting. But to have the greatest amount of twist- 

 ing in a hive-cover, it must be made of a single board. Suppose a 

 cover made of a single board twists to that extent that at one corner 

 there is a crack of a quarter of an inch. Now make a cover of two 

 boards instead of a single board, and let one of them be of the afore- 

 mentioned twisting board. The craek at the corner will now be only 

 an eighth of an inch, and as it will also be decreased in length it will 

 not let in half as much air as the first crack. The crack will be still 

 further diminished by the fact that the cleat fastened to the other 

 board will have a restraining influence. 



When the cover is made up of four or more narrow boards cleated 

 together, the chance for twisting is reduced to a minimum. Of 

 course, if it should happen that the four boards were of the same 

 relative twist as if made of a single board, the result would be pre- 

 cisely the same as if the single twisting board were used; but a little 

 figuring will show that the chance of such a combination is one in 

 several hundred. 



Formalin Gas as a Cure for Foul Brood is the title of a 

 pamphlet published by C. H. W. Weber. Mr. Weber is very positive 

 that by means of formalin we can be saved the necessity of destroying 

 frames and combs, and full instructions are given as to the use of the 

 drug, with illustrations of the box and generator used. Price of 

 pamphlet, 35 cents. It can be ordered of this office. 



Chicago-Northwestern Convention. 



Report of the Chieago-Northwestepn Bee-Keep- 

 ers' Convention, held in Chicag'o, 

 Dec. 3 and 4, 1902. 



BY OUR OWN SHORTHAND REPORTER. 



(Continued from paffe 262.} 



PICKLED BROOD— BLACK BROOD— FOUL BROOD. 



A Member — If pickled brood is left in the cell vehat 

 would be the condition ? 



Mr. France — Pickled brood is entirely different ; it 

 never gets this ribbed and backbone appearance, flattened 

 down across the sides of the wall ; it seems to hold a round- 

 ness, and will turn up, if you please, very much like foul 

 brood ; they are very hard ; you may sl»^ke the comb and 

 they will rattle ; they are loose ; if you will take a pair of 

 tweezers and press one of those it will come out readily ; 

 not so, however, with black brood ; I had some samples of 

 black brood, and, to my surprise, I was taking- such good 

 care of them they were beginning to mold a little in transit, 

 so I put it in the stove to avoid all danger of getting it in 

 my apiary. The one question I want to bring up now is. 

 How does it look ? Is there a question on that point ? 



A Member — In pickled or black brood won't the cap- 

 pings be sunken and broken the same as foul brood ? 



Mr. France — There is a difference in them ; with old 

 foul brood these sunken cappings frequently have a ten- 

 dency to be a little bit darker, although you would have to 

 have your eye trained to notice the comparative difference; 

 usually pickled brood has not a great deal of capping on it. 



A Member — How long does it take before those cap- 

 pings will shrink? 



Mr. France — About eight days ; about the same time 

 the bees would cap it over naturally. As soon as they get 

 it capped ovei> it begins to shrink, and very soon thereafter 

 there will be broken holes, quite often to the side of the cen- 

 ter. 



Mr. Clarke — When they are perforated that way is that 

 before the larva; begins to sink ? Is it in the gases ? 



Mr. France — Yes, I think it is the gases. This bee will 

 somehow take nourishment and grow. 



Referring again to the case mentioned before, the night 

 I was there the bee-keeper was so intent upon it he went 

 that night ; he was so anxious to get a crop, but had not 

 had one for four years, although he used to get good crops, 

 but when he brought some bees from another locality he 

 had but little honey ; that night he put them in empty 

 boxes without foundation, and to keep any of them from 

 deserting he screened the entrance ; 48 hours afterwards he 

 gave them full sheets of foundation on five frames ; he con- 

 fined them to five frames ; as fast as those were drawn out 

 he put in other three. 



A Member — Why do we starve them for 48 hours ? 



Mr. France — We all know that the bee goes in good con- 

 dition from the hive tp the flowers ; it gathers nectar from 

 the flowers and brings it home in its honey-sac ; if you can 

 get these bees in the hives without filling themselves with 

 disease, they will not take it afterwards. I have sometimes 

 set another new, clean hive in place of the old hive, boring 

 a hole from the top, putting the diseased colony very quietly 

 in the evening, on top without closing the entrance ; 

 you have not disturbed them ; they have to go down and out 

 at the bottom, and when they come back they can not re- 

 turn ; the next day put the queen in, and in three or four 

 days you can take the hive off and they are transferred ; 

 but if I should advocate that, some one would make a blun- 

 der of it. 



A Member — This dried scale that you were speaking of 

 — this turned-up part — suppose now that the colony was 

 affected with foul brood in the fall and we didn't know it, 

 and if that hive — if we happened to examine that hive in 

 the spring — would we still find that scale in the bottom of 

 the cell? 



Mr. France — Yes, last fall, at one of the Farmers' Insti- 

 tutes, a man came to me and said : " I believe I have some- 

 thing I didn't know I had ; I am afraid my bees have foul 

 brood; I didn't notice any odor ; I do know this: I have 

 some brood-combs that have that little, black, turned-up 

 something." He showed me some of the combs at his 

 house — some of those dried-up things ; I could not see the 

 ropy stage ; these bees did have foul brood last summer ; if 

 I should go through your hives now we would see nothing 

 at those stages at this time of the year. You will not find 

 the ropy stage in 90 times out of 100 — only these little black 

 scales. Last spring I wrote him, and he said : " It is just 

 as you said ; when breeding began the next spring, and the3' 

 put honey or larva; into those cells of dried-down scale — 

 that is where the mischief begins and ruins it." As soon 

 as he had brood begin this year it was diseased. I have 

 never seen a case of foul brood that I have not been able to 

 trace to carelessness on the part of the bee-keeper, in almost 

 every case ; we speak about it being contagious, and we are 

 to blame ; our neighbor allows the disease to be out and 

 exposed ; our bees, which we can not fence in like our farm 

 stock, are exposed, and they go out and gather the disease 

 and bring it back again. 



Mr. Moore — What is the point about letting 48 hours 

 elapse before putting them on full sheets ? Is it to allow 

 them to consume diseased honey ? 



Mr. France — That is it ; the moment we disturb the 

 colony of bee-workers they load themselves with honey, 

 and we have no way to get these bees to rid themselves 

 of that honey except to starve them, and put them in the 

 hive with foundation or without ; if we screen the entrance 

 the queen sometimes becomes discouraged and will swarm. 



A Member — Is 4.S hours absolutely safe ? 



Mr. France — I never knew it to fail in the honey-flow 

 season. As to my experience with black brood, I have had 

 but very little ; I found a case in our State and traced it 

 from New York ; I bought it at my own figure and disposed 

 of it rather than to have any experimental work ; there is 

 this difterence — black brood has somewhat of a turned-up 

 appearance, but it relaxes ; it has decidedly a different 

 odor, I would liken it to a carpenter's glue-pot that has be- 

 come spoiled ; it has somewhat the odor of stale furniture 

 glue. Black brood would have more of the odor peculiar to 

 sour apples ; if you have taken some apples and thrown 

 them out in a little bunch and let them lay — it has some- 

 what the odor of those decayed apples. It also has some- 

 what the tendency to dissolve the wax of the side-walls of 

 comb, but I have never known foul brood to injure the 

 comb ; that seems to remain perfect ; again, these little, 

 black, dried-down scales on the lower side-wall, which just 

 the end would show looking in here [indicating], in that 

 stage the comb looks apparently clean, and I fully believe, 

 so long as that comb has not been subjected to heat suffi- 

 cient to kill the germs of life, there it will remain dormant 



