630 AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



To treat this disease the bee-keeper should be a man of rare good sense and 

 intelligence, who has studied the disease until he knows its exact course and nature, 

 like Mr. R. L. Taylor ; or else he should visit some first-class hospital and see with 

 what care the operating surgeon disinfects his hands, his bandages, his instruments, 

 everything he uses, before he commences his surgical operation. The realizing sense 

 that the microbes are infinitesimally small, and that the escape of one from a dis- 

 eased colony to a healthy one as surely carries the malady, will alone insure the 

 caution requisite to treat safely this evil. Unless one will use every caution to pre- 

 vent spread, it is doubtless wisest, as some have advised, to burn up all affected 

 colonies. But this is unnecessary. It is wiser to use all care and precaution, and 

 wipe the disease entirely out, root and branch. 



The method is to drum the bees from the hive into any box, and set them in a 

 cellar or other cool dark place for 48 hours, and then hive in a clean hive on comb 

 foundation. Drumming the bees out causes them to fill with honey, and secures 

 them from the hive without any danger of scattering the honey which must be 

 entirely avoided. This should be done when the bees are busy gathering, so that no 

 robbing will occur, and the bees can get food when hived on the foundation. Else 

 it may be done under a bee tent, or late in tbe day when the bees are not flying, and 

 the transferred colonies must be fed. The old hive must be set aside where no bees 

 can possibly get at it for 25 days, when all the young bees will be developed, when 

 the operation can be repeated and a second colony secured, which will have, of 

 course, a young queen. 



The honey may now be extracted and boiled, the combs melted into wax, and 

 the hive thoroughly burned out by "use of kerosene or straw, or else boiled. In all 

 this, greatcare must be exercised that no bees get to the honey or hive until they are 

 entirely disinfected. Of course there is no great difficulty in this. But it does 

 require a use of the wits and exceeding caution, which many having not used have 

 signally failed, and so have condemned a method instead of their own incautious 

 procedure. 



Mr. Taylor always keeps dilute carbolic acid in a dish ready to wash his hands 

 after handling a colony with "foul brood," before he touches another hive. We 

 have only to remember that the honey and cells of the diseased colony have myriads 

 of the microbes, and that if these gain admittance into another hive, either by our 

 careless handling, or the bees carrying honey, then the disease is spread. Thus, 

 attempting to cure by this method without great caution, only spreads the disease 

 and makes a very bad matter infinitely worse. 



In closing, let me say that Southern California is the bee-keepers' and fruit- 

 growers' paradise. As in balmy Italy, so here, there should be fullest reciprocity 

 between these classes ; each needs the other, and for either to drive the other away 

 Is really killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. Claremont, Calif. 



THE ABSCONDING OF Sl^ARMS. 



BY LEWIS K. SMITH. 



In a recent number of the " American Bee Journal," T. J. Lusk desires the ideas 

 of other bee-keepers about the cause of his numerous swarms leaving. He lives in 

 Louisiana, near an immense swamp where bee-forage is abundant. He thinks they 

 are properly cared for, but that " they want to sWim in the honey in the swamps." 



While my surroundings are not so favorable for honey, and there is no tempting 

 ocean of honey near by, still I think perhaps my experience may be beneficial to Mr. 

 Lusk and others. * 



