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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



July 2, 



happy." Now, here is a chance for our supply-men to do 

 business. 



Get up a nicely lithographed card, about 12x15 inches — 

 a clump of attractive honey-plants in colors, and a colony of 

 bees in the foreground, apiary in the middle, in the distance 

 a farm house and out-buildings. Have labels for cartons of 

 above landscape reduced. Let the whole work be a fine artis- 

 tic specimen. The placards could be sold at from 10 to 25 

 cents each, while the labels would cost probably 10 cents per 

 hundred. The lettering should be striking, and perhaps read 

 thus : "$1,000 Reward will be paid to any one who can find 

 a pound of artificial comb honey. This honey is warranted 



pure, and is the product of the bees at the apiary of . 



For sale here." 



Last year I bought one colony of Italian bees in a mov- 

 able-frame hive, and divided in May, making two. These 

 produced 98 pounds of nice comb honey. I had two colonies 

 of blacks transferred, and they stored 37 pounds. This was 

 more than we needed, so we asked the groceryman who serves 

 us, if he could sell any honey. He said : " No, wo have a lot 

 on the shelf and can't get rid of it." 



I showed him some of my stock — sections carefully 

 scraped. He said : "Why, what we have isn't like that. I'll 

 try a 12-pound box." Result : He sold 82 pounds, and created 

 a demand that even helped a neighbor to dispose of a lot of 

 dirty, ill-conditioned sections. 



I have a rubber stamp, and print thus my sections on one 

 outside: "The product of Italian bees, from the apiary of 

 B. F. Onderdonk, Mountain View, N. J." This, of itself, is a 

 guarantee of purity. 



Now, I don't like to peddle honey, or anything else, but 

 make your grocer do that — it is a part of his business. 



Advertise in your local paper. Write a neat little article 

 on the habits of the honey-bee— the local editor will gladly 

 publish it. Give him some of the honey if he won't take it in 

 exchange for an advertisement. Give some to your pastor. 

 Take some to a sick friend or e,ne.m,y. Invite a neighbor up to 

 see your bees, provide him or her with a veil, show them the 

 inside of the hives, the brood, honey and queen; get them in- 

 terested. Suppose two or three of your neighbors go into the 

 business, and come to you for instruction, give it freely if 

 they produce honey, and induce them to put out only first- 

 class stock. Competition won't hurt you, it will be one more 

 drummer to extol the merits of honey. 



I did not sell a pound of honey for less than 15 cents, and 

 had 1 fixed the price at 20 cents I believe it would have been 

 paid willingly. Instead of one grocer who "did not sell" 

 honey last year, there are now three who want to handle my 

 product for the coming season. Mountain View, N. J. 



The Disease Called "Bee-Paralysis." 



BY T. 8. FOBD. 



A. C, on page 826, inquires what is the matter with his 

 bees. Having had a four years' experience with the disease, 

 and having lately noticed several inquiries indicating a want 

 of familiarity with the symptoms, I concluded that I would 

 answer A. C.'s question, especially in view of the fact that Dr. 

 Miller does not recognize what the trouble is. 



A. C. has undoubtedly a genuine case of what is very im- 

 properly called bee-paralysis. He describes the symptoms of 

 the disease in its most virulent form, and when it reaches 

 this stage, the result in my experience has been the loss of the 

 colony ; and because the loss is assured, and there is danger 

 that all his bees may become infected, he should at once use 

 the sulphur pit, and destroy the diseased colony. I think that 

 it is hardly necessary to destroy the combs, but that they may 

 be given, after being so disinfected, to another colony. 



The early indications of the presence of the malady are 



as follows: The guards will be seen hustling the infected 

 bee, crawling all over her with abdomen curved in the atti- 

 tude to sting, and furiously gnawing the hair from the sick 

 bee. This continues until the patient and her persecutor 

 tumble off the alighting-board to the ground. This process is 

 continually repeated with every sick bee until after awhile a 

 considerable number of individuals will be noted with all the 

 hair plucked from both abdomen and thorax, and the infected 

 ones will have a sleek, black, shiny look. Soon these bees 

 will be observed slightly staggering and crawling around with 

 quivering motion of the wings, that present an appearance as 

 if the wings were stirred by a breeze. Many of these will 

 soon appear to be emaciated to a very considerable degree. 

 Occasionally during this period a bee will be seen slipping out 

 of the hive, dragging her limbs as though having been stung. 

 In an apiary infected with bee-paralysis, many colonies never 

 get beyond this stage. 



After awhile, however, a colony will be observed which 

 passed into the second stage of the disease, and when this 

 occurs, the guard bees will have ceased to hustle the sick, and 

 their duties in this regard will be only to the dead. Bees with 

 abdomens enormously distended will be seen dragging them- 

 selves about with a staggering, quivering motion, which once 

 seen will be recognized at a glance ever afterwards. Some of 

 these individuals will void a thin yellow discharge, making a 

 yellow splotch on the alighting-board, giving a characteristic 

 appearance, which marks the doom of the colony, as it is ex- 

 ceediugly rare for a colony to survive when the yellow spots 

 are numerous. If one of these swollen bees is gently pressed, 

 the thin yellow excrement will be squirted a distance of sev- 

 eral inches. 



Every morning the melancholy sound of bees flying oft 

 with the dead may be heard. These sometimes accumulate in 

 front of the hive in great numbers, sometimes as many as a 

 gallon of dead bees will be seen. When there are several hives 

 in this condition, the final and worst manifestation of the 

 malady may be witnessed, during which the infection is so 

 virulent that apparently there is not time for the bees to 

 reach the swelled condition, and they will perish by thousands 

 all around the apiary, with no visible signs of the infection. 

 The ground for many yards around will be strewn thickly with 

 the dead, and under the trees where they resort at this period, 

 multitudes of the dead will be seen, some with their pollen- 

 baskets half filled, and some with a heavy load on. I have 

 seen them drop dead as they reached the hive, as though 

 struck by lightniug. Fortunately, it is rare that the malady 

 reaches this stage. I have seen it so only during one spring, 

 and that year there was not an ounce of surplus gathered. 



Generally these symptoms moderate at the approach of 

 warm weather, and those colonies which have reached only 

 the first stage, recover perfectly, or at least appear to do so. 

 Those that have reached the second stage, linger along, and 

 finally perish in most cases. I have never seen them amount 

 to anything afterwards. My opinion is that the queen be- 

 comes diseased, and remains so. 



There is no doubt but that the malady is infectious, and 

 can be conveyed from one sick individual to another, and from 

 a diseased queen to her offspring. Whether the germs lurk in 

 the honey or combs is uncertain. I have never seen it propa- 

 gated from the combs from a diseased colony being introduced 

 into a healthy one. 



I have used all the remedies given in the journals, and I 

 am of the opinion that there is little good to be gotten from 

 any of them. I have used nothing in my apiary for a year, 

 and I have only three colonies that show the disease. Still, 

 from past experience, I am persuaded that the infection is 

 there, and under conditions favorable to its development, is 

 liable to blaze up in all its fury again. 



For the last two years it has done but little harm, and 



