396 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Dr. C. C. Miller, Marengo, 111. 



June 14, instead of supers being now 

 filled, no supers are on, and bees are not get- 

 ting their daily bread. 



Queen culture is the poetry of bee cul- 

 ture; and he who is not a queen-rearer has 

 not yet enjoyed the beauties of beekeeping. 

 Deutsche Bzchi. [Very true. — Ed.] 



NosEiMA APIS has not been taken very 

 seriously on this side the water, although it 

 has in Germany; and now comes a report of 

 investigations by Dr. Graham-Smith, G. W. 

 Bullamore, and others, that points strongly 

 to nosema as the cause of the Isle-of- Wight 

 disease. 



Dr. G. F. White has finally cornered the 

 culprit that causes European foul brood, 

 and christened him Bacillus pluton. We 

 noAv know that our old acquaintance. Bacil- 

 lus alvei, is innocent of causing any bee dis- 

 ease, that IJarillus larvae is responsible for 

 American foul brood, and I suppose Dr. 

 White is hot foot after the fellow that gets 

 up pickled brood. [See editorial comment 

 on his bulletin last issue, page .360. — Ed.] 



Walter S. Pouder, you seem to think 

 Texas beekeepers will not ship bulk comb 

 honey out of the State. I wonder, now, if 

 you should advertise for a carload how long 

 you would have to wait for it, and after you 

 got it I wonder how much of it you could 

 sell. A grand success in Texas may not 

 succeed everywhere. [As a matter of fact, 

 Texas bulk honey does not come up to the 

 North. Northern consumers would not buy 

 it, for the simple reason that they are not 

 "educated" to it. If we can imagine that 

 50 or 7.5 per cent of the Texas population 

 were to move up into New York, it is very 

 probable that there would be a carload, or 

 several of them, of Texas bulk honey ship- 

 ped into York State. — Ed.] 



Frank-Kleist colored the thorax of some 

 80 bees. He found them scattered all over 

 the apiary, only a few remaining at their 

 own home. ]\'ore than that, a neighbor 

 found two of the marked bees making them- 

 selves at home in his apiary an eighth of a 

 mile distant. — Leipzg. Bztg., 66. One may 

 be easily deceived into thinking that an Ital- 

 ian queen is impurely mated because dark 

 bees are found in the liive. Look on the 

 combs for the downy little fellows that have 

 just hatched. If they're all right the older 

 ones don't count. [We have known that the 

 bees of neighboring colonies will intermingle 

 to some extent. Where young bees by mistake 



get into the wrong hive they are accepted 

 witliout any hesitation ; and it may be that 

 old bees would be received in like manner. 

 It is because of this intermingling that we 

 have always advised treating the colonies 

 neighboring to as well as the one affected 

 with foul brood. Years ago, when we had 

 disease in one of our yards, we would be 

 pretty certain that the two or three colonies 

 facing in the same direction, and right near 

 the affected ones, would show up the disease 

 sooner or later, simply because the bees of 

 tlie diseased hive would carry the infection 

 into the hives near by. — Ed.] 



"Alius^^ quotes the "renowned American 

 Root" as recommending zinc vessels for 

 honey, and is severe uj^on such teaching. 

 The first honey he ever extracted he allowed 

 to stand over night in a zinc (galvanized 

 iron) extractor, in a damp kitchen, and 

 next day the surface of the honey for an 

 inch in depth was thin, black as ink, and 

 tasted abominably. Three-fourths of it had 

 to be thrown away. — III. Monatsh., 68, [We 

 do not know where Alius got the impres- 

 sion that we recommend zinc or galvanized 

 iron unqualifiedly for the storage of honey. 

 We do know this : that 'galvanized iron is 

 used very extensively by the California bee- 

 keej^ers in their mammoth storage tanks, 

 which are large enough to hold from ten to 

 twenty tons of honey. In these large tanks 

 the exposure of the zinc to the honey is rel- 

 atively small. We use galvanized iron and 

 tin in our honey-extractors because it is not 

 supposed that the honey is to be kept stored 

 in such machines. The honey-gate should 

 be left wide open always, so that the honey 

 can run into some other container. We ad- 

 mit that, if an inch or so of honey were left 

 standing in the bottom of a galvanized-iron 

 extracting can for a considerable length of 

 time, the honey might absorb enough of the 

 zinc so it could be tasted. Whether it would 

 be poisonous or not we have our doubts. If 

 "Alius" will point out the place, either in 

 Gleanings or in the ABC and X Y Z of 

 Bee Culture, where we distinctly recommend 

 galvanized iron for making up honey-stor- 

 age tanks Ave shall be glad to have him do 

 so. The fact is, our literature is supposed 

 to show what is being used for the storage 

 of honey with perfect safety. Some of our 

 foreign readers, probably from their in- 

 ability to understand properly our lan- 

 guage, appear to misread and therefore mis- 

 quote. — Ed.] 



