436 AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



honey, and there is a greater demand for extracted than comb honey. The price of 

 honey is always a puzzle to me. The Wellington traveler of a large firm tells me he 

 gets all he requires at 3 cents, and yet grocers in the same town pay me 4J^ cents, 

 and in Dunedin I sometimes get 5 cents in 60-pound tins. I consider 4 cents a fair 

 price, and am contented, if it gets no lower. 



It is difficult to arrive at any conclusion as to the prevalency of foul brood in 

 New Zealand. There is a bee-column in the New Zealand Farmer, but bee-keepers 

 never write in it, and it mainly consists of clippings. There is a bee-journal in 

 Australia, and there are many extensive bee-keepers in that country. Our honey is 

 thought more of in London than theirs, which is chiefly gathered from gum trees. 



I shall look forward to the arrival of your kind gift of Dr. Howard's book. I 

 hope it will be in time for next spring's operations. Again thanking you for your 

 letter, I am. Yours very truly, George Stevenson. 



Mr. Stevenson failed, like all others in the world, when he followed the Cheshire 

 method, and tried to cure his apiary of foul brood by spraying and medicating the 

 combs in foul-broody colonies. The germs of foul brood are very hard to kill, and 

 any drugs that would be used strong enough to destroy them, would kill all the bees 

 and all the good brood in the unsealed cells, and then leave the disease just as bad 

 as ever in the sealed brood and capped honey. No foul-broody apiary was ever 

 cured, or ever can be cured, of that disease by drugs of any kind. 



When Mr. Stevenson's colonies swarmed, if he had shaken the bees remaining 

 in the hive into the swarm, and destroyed the old combs, then hived each swarm on 

 comb foundation starters, his bees would have drawn out the starters in four days, 

 and stored the most of the diseased honey which they took with them from the old 

 combs. Then by removing the new combs made out of the starters, the fourth even- 

 ing, and giving full sheets of foundation, he would have made a perfect cure in every 

 case so treated. 



In the honey season, when the bees are gathering honey freely, any apiary can 

 easily be cured of foul brood by removing the combs in the evening, shaking the bees 

 back into their own hives, and giving them comb foundation starters for four days 

 to work out, and store the diseased honey in, which they took from the old combs. 

 Then in the evening of the fourth day, by removing the new combs made out of the 

 starters, and giving full sheets of foundation, the cure will be complete in every 

 case. 



When the honey-flow stops, this same method of curing can be continued right 

 along by feeding plenty of sugar syrup in the evenings. All the old combs must be 

 burned, or made into wax, and all of the combs made out of the starters during the 

 four days must be made into wax also or burned. All the work should be done in 

 the evenings, so as to have no confusion, mixing of bees, or robbing done to spread 

 the disease. 



I feel certain that if Mr. Stevenson, who is a good bee-keeper, had known of 

 my methods of curing foul brood at the time he was trying other plans to cure, and 

 had carried out my methods of curing the disease, he would have cured every colony 

 in his large apiary, and secured more than the nine tons of honey the following year. 



Mr. Stevenson, of New Zealand, is one of the leading bee-keepers of the world, 

 and being a man of so much push, pluck and energy, I would be very much pleased 

 to have my method of curing foul brood thoroughly tested by him. 



Woodburn, Ont., Canada, August, 1894. Wm. McEvoy. 



[The major portion of the foregoing article appeared in the Canadian Bee Jour- 

 nal for September. Mr. McEvoy, after making some alterations, desired its pub- 

 cation in the Amekican Bee Journal also. — Editor.] 



