58 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUKE 



with intelligent care?" No domestic animal 

 would live with such treatment as bees re- 

 ceive. It is a great pleasure, after visiting 

 such beekeepers, to meet intelligent apia- 

 rists who are readers of bee journals. They 

 know who the inspector is, what he has 

 called for, and are ready to give him any 

 assistance in their power. They don't need 

 an inspector, for they have been doing their 

 own insiDection, and can tell to a dot just 

 the condition of their bees, and whether 

 they have any contagious disease or not. 



I called on one of this class; and after I 

 had looked into a good many liives he said, 

 '' The colonies in that row of hives have 

 Doolittle queens ; in that row, Moore queens ; 

 and in that row Hand queens," and I en- 

 vied him the fun of watching the ditferences 

 in these three strains of Italian bees, for 

 he had enough to give him a pretty good 

 idea of their relative value. The inspector 

 would like to stop to visit a long time with 

 such ; but " beesness is beesness," and he 

 must move on. 



SOME OBSERVATIONS ON EUROPEAN FOUL 

 BROOD. 



European foul brood in an apiai*y is 

 always an interesting study. If the disease 

 has not made great headway, I have found 

 from one to thi-ee colonies very bad, and 

 between a dozen and twenty in the earlier 

 stages of the disease. There seems to be 

 some relation between the very bad and 

 those in which the disease has only begam 

 its deadly work. 



I visited a yard the latter part of the 

 summer whei'e I found the disease well ad- 

 vanced and in all stages. In this yard the 

 whole process of ruin could be observed. 

 The first colonies that came down had 

 reached the last stage, and Avere a mass of 

 woims, filth, and cocoons. Only one out 

 of twenty-four colonies was still healthy, 

 while the rest were in all stages of foul 

 brood. 



When the first colonies that come down 

 become weakened, robbing sets in and dis- 

 ease is carried to the other hives. As soon 

 as the bees become too weak to protect 

 themselves against moths the one happy 

 home is soon clianged into a mass of ruins, 

 and the beekeeper vainly believes that the 

 moths are at the bottom of his trouble, 

 while they are only the scavengers that 

 have consumed what was left by disease 

 and the robber bees. 



QUESTIONS ASKED. 



The questions that are asked an inspector 

 are often amusing. For instance, " How 

 long does it take to learn beekeeping?" 

 To this I reply, " I have been at work 

 learning for more than forty years, and 



haven't it all learned yet." Or a more fre- 

 quent question is, "Do bees ever sting you ?" 

 " Yes," I tell them, " I suppose I have been 

 stung more than seven or eight times in the 

 past forty years," and likely I may hear 

 their exclamations of surj^rise that I should 

 continue the business and take such risks. 



THE RIGHT WAY TO MANAGE. 



It is a great relief to me when I get sucli 

 a letter as I received last summer from a 

 woman in a neighboring town. She said 

 she was afraid that they had foul brood 

 among their bees, so she had sent a sample 

 to Washington. Later she wrote me that it 

 proved to be genuine European foul brood. 

 I was not surprised, a little later, when 1 

 called, to find Gleanings on the table. Now, 

 how sensible ! She had inspected her bees 

 and had observed sometliing wrong, and 

 had done just the right thing in sending a 

 sample of the brood to the Department of 

 Agriculture at Washington instead of wait- 

 ing until her own yard was ruined and her 

 neighbors' yards exjiosed. If all who keep 

 bees were as prompt, the disease would 

 soon be stamped out. 



wasteful negligence. 



In opening hives I have been surprised 

 at the great amount of drone comb I find 

 near the center where brood-rearing begins 

 in early spring, and where worker comb is 

 to the last degree necessary. 



I often find combs lying around on the 

 ground and going to waste that might be 

 saved and made into wax. I have often 

 thought it Avould be money well spent to 

 send an inspector around among beekeep- 

 ers to instruct them, even if there were no 

 such thing as disease. I wonder if they 

 would take the lessons to heart, and prac- 

 tice what they were taught. 



Middlebury, Vt. 



To be continued. 



THE TREATMENT OF EMPLOYEES ON A BEE- 

 RANCH 



BY SUBSCRIBER 



My own experience in California was 

 something after the same style as the ex- 

 perience given on page 350, June 1, so it 

 may interest some of your readers. 



The majority of ranchers in this State, 

 including the beekeepers, appear oblivious 

 of the fact that their hired help are of the 

 same flesh and blood as themselves, and 

 that, possibly, may account for the treat- 

 ment meted out to them by their employers. 



I answered an advertisement for help on 

 a bee-ranch, not because I knew any tiling 

 about bees, but simply that I was out of 

 employment and needed the money. I was 



