598 AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Hutchinson prefaces his recommendation of 8-frame hives with the words, "When 

 the flow is early and short." That condition, or an equivalent, should never be 

 omitted. 



To put a home question — if you are selling hives to a customer living in a re- 

 gion of protracted flow, would you advise him to take 8-frame hives ? But that, in 

 effect, is just what the catalogues of supply dealers usually do; and that is the 

 conclusion a beginner would probably come to, no matter where he lived, if after 

 reading the recent discussion the 8-frame arguments seemed to him to prevail. 

 Harm has already been done in this way. Arvada, Colo. 



BBBS AND FRUIX-BEE-DISEASES. 



BY PROF. A. J. COOK. 

 (A.n essay read at the recent Farmers' Institute, in Santa Barbara, Calif.) 



There are a few facts regarding bees which are not generally known, and which 

 ought to bo understood and appreciated by all, especially in a region where fruit- 

 growing is the leading industry. 



Bees never injure plants while in bloom ; indeed, the blossoms exist for the very 

 pr.rpose of attracting the bees, and without the bees or other sweets-loving insects 

 to pollinate the flowers, many of our most valued fruits would fail to produce. I 

 have proved conclusively the present season that some varieties of plums, cherries, 

 pears, oranges and olives are wholly sterile to their own pollen, or to pollen of the 

 same variety of fruit, while other varieties are largely so. Apricots and navel 

 oranges alone, of all the fruits I have experimented with, were entirely fertile with 

 their own pollen. 



It is true that other insects than bees will do this work of pollination ; but no 

 other insects can be depended upon. Seasonal peculiarities and insect or fungoid 

 enemies may so deplete — often will so deplete — the numbers of other sweets-loving 

 insects that they will be wholly inadequate to this great accomplishment. Bees, if 

 in the region, can be surely counted on to effect pollination, in all such countries of 

 genial sunshine as California. 



Again, it is just as positive that bees never attack or pierce sound fruit. If 

 over-ripe fruit bursts, or if wasp or bird break the skin, than the bees are quick to 

 sip the oozing juice. Thus the honey-bee is not the first aggressor, but the waiting 

 sentinel to discover the leak and prevent waste. 



There should be no quarrel between fruit and bee men. Each is a genuine and 

 substantial aid to the other. The apiarist needs the nectar-secreting bloom of the 

 orchard, and the pomologist must have the pollinating bees to secure the largest 

 fruitage. 



Fortunately, the diseases of bees are not very numerous or very serious. In 

 California there are only three, and probably none of these need be at all disastrous 

 to the well-informed bee-keeper. 



A New Bee-Disease. — The present season a new malady was discovered In our 

 apiaries in Southern California and several other States. The brood died in the 

 cells in all stages of growth. The black or discolored Jarvas of all sizes and the dead 

 pupae were found scattered, often thickly, throughout the maturing brood. I 

 secured several colonies, all showing the disease to a greater or less degree, and fed 

 them honey or syrup, variously medicated, and also that which was not medicated. 

 All recovered wholly in a few weeks. Other colonies in the same apiary, where I 



