BEEKEEPING IX THE SOUTH 



85 



often get ten times the amount of their average annual yield by 

 modern methods, when their average annual yield is frequently 

 less than twenty pounds to the colony. Custom plays an im- 

 portant part with some of these mountain people, too, for ex- 

 cessive swarming is undoubtedly due, among other causes, to 

 the habit in some localities of ''robbing" the bees but once in a 

 season . 



Diseases Are Endemic. 

 Happily American foulbrood has not yet found its way into 

 many of the localities mentioned, in the mountains of the 

 South. European foulbrood is endemic to this territory and 

 epidemics of the disease frequently devastate large areas. A 

 glance at the census figures for 1910, shows a depreciation in the 

 number of colonies, from the previous year. It has come to 

 light that hundreds of colonies were lost that year from Euro- 

 pean foulbrood. Among these box hive beekeepers European 

 foulbrood is seldom recognized and never treated. Yet it exists 

 throughout their territory. The writer remembers one Spring 

 trip through Virginia, where not a single county of the two 

 dozen or more \-isited failed to show evidence of European foul- 



Fig. 39. Apiary of a Georgia farmer who is an up-to-date beekeeper. 



