84 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



W. A. Grove's apiary and honey-house, New Haven, Vt. 



EXPERIENCES OF A FOUL-BROOD INSPECTOR 



The Value of Vigorous Italians in a Diseased Lo- 

 cality 



BY J. E. CRANE 



Continued from page 5S, Jan. 15. 



One gentleman, whose reputation as an 

 intelligent beekeeper was known to me, in- 

 vited me to visit him, and I anticii^ated a 

 treat. Almost all his bees were Italians, 

 and he told me he had no fear of foul 

 brood. I was rather surprised, because 1 

 had seen its deadly work in other places. 

 But he stated (hat at one time he bought a 

 lot of bees and transferred them into his 

 hives and put the odds and ends of wax and 

 honey out in the open for his bees to clean 

 up, after which he learned that the colonies 

 he had bought had foul brood. Almost 

 every one of his black colonies was ruined, 

 while his Italian stock remained uninjured. 

 This made him wise, and he has since kept 

 his stock well bred with Italian queens, and 

 he has had little trouble with foul brood. 



Last winter he went over to a town some 

 miles away and bought eight or ten hives of 

 black bees that were represented as being 

 free from disease. But when spring came, 

 European foul brood developed. " Now 

 look at that one," said he. I looked, and 

 found the bees black and in an advanced 

 stage of foul brood. " Now look at this 

 one," said he. " It was bad in the spring, 

 but I put in an Italian queen." I looked 

 very carefully, but not a trace of disease 

 could I find. This beekeeper had no use for 



'■ goldens," but wanted dark or leather-col- 

 ored Italians. The fact that he has kept up 

 his stock and had 160 colonies in one yard, 

 while his neighbors that stuck to black bees 

 had nearly all gone out of business, would 

 indicate that there is much in his views and 

 method of combating and curing foul brood. 



I found another very progressive bee- 

 keeper trying to cure disease by using gold- 

 en Italians ; but I believe that where colo- 

 nies were very bad, he destroyed the old 

 combs. He has been fighting it for years, 

 and feels that, with the assistance of Italian 

 strains of bees, he has succeeded very well. 

 The last time I saw him he thought his bees 

 were entirely free from it, while most of 

 the black bees in hundreds of colonies in 

 his neighborhood are dead as a result of the 

 ravages of foul brood. He told me one 

 thing of great interest. He said that he 

 had never been able to rear a queen in a 

 foul-broody hive that proved to be of any 

 ^"alue in combating the disease, and that to 

 cure a colony the queen must be I'eared in 

 a hive of healthy bees. It sounds reason- 

 able. 



I met another extensive beekeeper who 

 was preparing to rear queens. He had 

 about 200 colonies in one yard. He had 

 had some trouble with foul brood, but 

 thought he had it all cleaned out ; but just 

 as I was leaving I opened a colony of most 

 beautiful golden Italians, and, much to his 

 surprise, showed him some diseased brood. 

 " There it is again. I supposed that, the 

 yellower the bees were, the better they 

 would resist disease," said he. I gave him 



