June 18, 1903. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



391 



because he makes more profit on it. The thing to do is to 

 brand our goods, and educate the consumer to ask for them, 

 for just the moment they find out there is a bee-keeper's 

 brand they won't have any other kind. My wife buys 

 baking- powder, and she wants either Dr. Price's or Royal, 

 and she won't have any other kind. The people have been 

 drilled into this. 



Mr. Niver— I had a little experience. I was in Niagara 

 Falls selling extracted honey to private houses, canvassing 

 to see if I could raise the consumption in that way and I 

 sold a big lot of honey, and the stores were full of glucose 

 honey and nothing else, and there is a law in the State of 

 New York which makes a possible fine of $200 a day, and 

 each day is a separate offense. I did not go for the grocery 

 man. I am willing they should have that trade if tliey will 

 leave me the honey-trade. That may be selfish, but that's 

 the way I look at it. The people gave me their honey- 

 trade, and it was a big one. As Mr. Moore says, the liquid 

 honey trade for the grocer is nothing at all. Nobody 

 bought any honey there, or pretended to, because they be- 

 lieved it adulterated, but they would buy it from me, and 

 continued to buy it week after week. There is one way 

 that we can increase the sale of liquid honey. 

 (Continued next week. ) 





Contributed Articles 





The Question of Foul Brood— Cause, Etc. 



BV C. P. DADANT. 



THE apprehension of bee-keepers has been very much in- 

 creased lately, on both continents, by the assertions of 

 Dr. Lambotte, concerning its idenity with a common 

 bacillus known as Bacillus mesentericus vulgatus, which it 

 appears exists very plentifully everywhere. These asser- 

 tions, however, are very likely to prove erroneous, as a 

 number of microscopists have taken issue with Ivambotte 

 and affirm that in spite of the similarity, the bacilli are 

 different. Prof. F. C. Harrison and Thos. W. Cowan both 

 raise objections, and the former shows by comparative 

 tables that slight difl'erences exist. In a matter of this kind 

 it is very much as if we were to compare two snakes, the 

 one poisonous, the other inoffensive. Differences which in 

 a snake are easily noticed become much more difficult to de- 

 tect in a microscopic organism. But we find those differ- 

 ences between dapgerous and harmless diseases all around 

 us. Is there anything more dangerous than diphtheria, or 

 less so than an ordinary sore throat ? 



We can not be too cautious as to the spread of foul brood, 

 and it is better to mistrust all appearances of diseased 

 brood than be over-confident, but I believe there are many 

 instances when foul brood is suspected where it does not 

 exist. We are not as yet sufficiently informed on those dis- 

 eases commonly known as pickled brood and black brood. 



I had never seen foul brood until my trip to Colorado 

 last fall, when I was given an opportunity of seeing it in 

 three different places. It is quite prevalent in some spots, 

 probably owing to the great number of bees kept in limited 

 areas on a large scale, and in many cases by incompetent 

 farmers as well as by practical apiarists. In one apiary of 

 a very large honey-producer I was shown a colony which 

 had been treated, being the sole colony in which he had 

 found the disease, and we saw only one solitary cell of the 

 disease. In other places it was more perceptible. But in 

 each case the diagnosis was the same, the dark coffee- 

 colored appearance, the glue-pot smell, the ropiness, the 

 settling of the mass to the bottom of the cell, deeper at the 

 rear than at the front, owing to the slight slant of the cells 

 towards the rear — those well diagnosed indications were in 

 each case the same. In each case the disease was well un- 

 der control, but they showed me also in the dried-up combs, 

 the brown scales of dried foul-brood quite perceptible to a 

 searching eye. I came home very mucli impressed with the 

 necessity of severe measures against the disease. 



Several times during the fall and once this spring I 

 have been asked about instances of dead brood, and in three 

 cases samples were mailed me by apiarists in different local- 

 ities of Missouri and Illinois. In neither of these cases did 

 I see symptoms similar to those mentioned above. There 



was dead brood, dead larva- in different stages, sunken 

 cappings, but neither the glue-pot smell nor the ropiness 

 were to be detected. An occasional larva iiad dried up and 

 shrunk so that it was loose from the cell-walls, and could be 

 dropped out by inverting the comb; others were stuck fast 

 to the walls. One man reported that the disease had ap- 

 peared in two or three colonies. He said : 



" After a few days I went to examine the hive that had 

 the dead brood. To my surprise I did not find a sign of it, 

 but I found others that had it. Might not the bad weather 

 be the cause of this ? " 



I wrote this man again in April to find about the condi- 

 tion of those hives. He replied, a few days ago : 



"I received your letter. I don't think it was foul- 

 brood, as the colony that had it worst got completely over 

 it before the end of the season and harvested some honey. 

 I am unable to find any signs of decayed brood in the hives 

 this spring." 



I really do not believe that disease was caused by the 

 chilling of the brood (although we have had more than 

 usually cool weather both in the fall of 1902 and in the 

 spring), because, if the brood had been chilled, whole patches 

 of it would be dead. We had entire combs of chilled brood, 

 years ago, when we were practicing the spreading of the 

 brood to induce prompt breeding in the spring. In such 

 cases the brood was all dead, and the one or two instances 

 that we saw, cured us thoroughly of the practice of incon- 

 siderate spreading of combs. 



From the descriptions Mr. France gave of pickled brood 

 at the Chicago meeting, I would be tempted to decide that 

 all those instances brought to my knowledge were of that 

 kind. Now, will this pickled brood cure itself, or pass 

 away ? I would like to have Mr. France to tell us what he 

 knows. I remember that when I was in Paris, in 1900, an 

 old bee-keeper who was in charge of the Luxembourg 

 apiary, in the heart of Paris, told me, with a shrug of his 

 shoulders, that they had had foul brood in that apiary, but 

 that it had become cured without doing anything for it. 

 From what I have seen and heard about foul brood, this 

 seemed rather odd, and I acknowledge that it did not give 

 me a very exalted opinion of the bee-knowledge of the man 

 who said it. I do /lot believe that foul brood will cure, of 

 itself, without treatment ; and wherever a disease of the 

 brood has disappeared of its own accord, I am very much 

 tempted to put it among the benign diseases. Very prob- 

 ably in such cases the bacillus is different. Might it not be 

 that Bacillus Alvei is the true disease, while Mesentericus 

 is a milder form ? There is room for further scientific re- 

 search on those points. 



Whatevermay be the case, we feel the need of compe- 

 tent and lively action on this matter in Illinois as in other 

 States. I see by the American Bee Journal that the appro- 

 priation of i$l,000 each year for two years in Illinois has be- 

 come a law, and I believe it is time to act. It will be quite 

 a relief to our bee-keepers to know that in case of diseases 

 among their bees they can command the services of some 

 one who will make these matters a constant study. 



Hancock Co., 111. 



Thirty Years Ago and Now— Historical. 



BY DR. G. BOHRER. 



AFTER an absence of 30 years from the field of practical 

 bee-keeping, I again have become the owner of some 

 bees, and have renewed my subscription to the Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal. Samuel Wagner was its editor and pub- 

 lisher at Washington, D. C, when I first began to read it 

 and contribute to its columns. 



In 186+ I purchased and introduced my first Italian 

 queen, being then a resident of Indiana. I paid Rev. L. It. 

 Langstroth SIO for her, and was declared by some people as 

 being mentally out of balance for having paid such a price 

 for one " bug," and it a " hum-bug," at that, so they said. 

 But I successfully introduced her to a large colony of black 

 bees that I had' transferred from a box-hive to one of Mr. 

 Langstroth's 16-frame observing hives, which I constructed 

 under instructions found in his book ( " Langstroth on the 

 Hive and Honey-Bee" ). Inside of eight weeks after the 

 introduction of the queen but few bees other than three- 

 banded Italians could be seen. From this beginning I in- 

 creased my stock to more than 100 colonies, all of which I 

 sold in 1873 and located in Rice Co., Kan., where I still re- 

 side on a farm that I located upon, and I improved as a 

 soldier's homestead. This country not being at all adapted 



