THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



245 



Explanatory.— The figures before the 

 names indicate the number of years that the 

 person has liept bees. Those after, show 

 the number of colonies the writer had in the 

 previous spring and tall, or fall and spring, 

 as the time of the year may require. 



This mark O indicates that the apiarist is 

 located near the centre of the State named: 

 5 north of the centre ; 9 south ; 0+ east ; 

 ♦Owest; and this 6 northeast; X) northwest; 

 o^ southeast; and ? southwest of the centre 

 of the State mentioned. 



For tne American Bee Journal. 



Methods of Curing Foul Brood. 



16— G. M. DOOLITTLE, (40—80). 



I have been waiting for some time, 

 and anxiously watcliiiig the colimms 

 of the J3ee .Journal, hoping that 

 some of tlie bee-keepers who had more 

 scientilic l<nowIedge tiian myself, 

 would liave something to say regard- 

 ing wliat we find in the articles on 

 pages 644 and 740 of the ]5ee Jour- 

 nal for 1S.S4, relative to foul brood, 

 or what Mr. Cheshire terms " Eacilhts 

 Alvei.^^ While waiting, I have also 

 been wondering if Mr. C. has not in 

 some way made a mistake, or if they 

 did not have a disease of bees in Eng- 

 land, known as foul brood, different 

 from our American foul brood. These 

 words of Mr. Cheshire, found on page 

 646, " tlie popular idea that honey is 

 the means by which it is carried from 

 hive, to hive, and that mainly through 

 robb'ing, is as far in error that only 

 occasionally and casually can honey 

 convey it from colony to colony," are 

 so directly opposed to our much hon- 

 ored (jLiinby's words, " I drew all of 

 the bees from such diseased colonies, 

 strained the honey, and fed it to sev- 

 eral young healthy swarms soon after 

 being hived. When examined a few 

 weeks after, every one, without excep- 

 tion , had caught tlie contagion,^^ tha.t it 

 is not strange that I began to wonder 

 if there was not a mistake somewhere. 

 Again, Mr. I). A. Jones says: "A 

 single drop of honey taken from a 

 diseased colony, if fed to the larvse of 

 a healthy colony, is sufficient to start 

 tlie work, which, if unarrested, is in- 

 evitable destruction." 



While I always prize scientific re- 

 search highly, yet to be valuable to 

 me, such research must not run 

 squarely against facts known to exist 

 from practical experience. As hun- 

 dreds of the practical apiarists of the 

 United States do know that the foul 

 brood of this country is spreading, 

 and is contagious mainly through the 

 honey, the words of ^Ir. C. sound 

 very strangely to me, when applying 

 them to what I know of foul brood. 



My first experience with this disease 

 was in 1872-73. IJeingshort of combs, 

 and the bees not building them (by 

 my method of securing a large yield 

 of comb honey) as fast as I desired, 

 I procured more comb containing a 



little honey, of a man several miles 

 distant during the winter of 1871, and 

 fitted it into frames. These frames 

 were given to a late swarm the fol- 

 lowing summer, to enable it to be in 

 condition for winter. In the fall I 

 noticed a few cells of unhatched 

 brood, but I thought nothing of it 

 as I had at this time but little experi- 

 ence in bee-keeping. During the 

 next spring, combs from this hive 

 were exchanged with other hives, and 

 before I could hardly realize the situa- 

 tion, I found that this hive was almost 

 rotten with foul brood, and 11 others 

 thoroughly inoculated with the dis- 

 ease, caused by the exchange of 

 combs ; first from the colony above- 

 named, and subsequently from those 

 hives into w^hich tlie first conilis were 

 inserted. Becoming alarmed, I rashly 

 resolved that 1 would never under 

 any circumstances, again exchange 

 combs, nor ever take another comb 

 from another apiary, not even as a 

 gift— the folly of which resolve I saw 

 the very next spring, when some of 

 my colonies were starving while 

 others had plenty of honey to spare. 



As the 11 disease! colonies consti- 

 tuted one-third of my apiary at that 

 time, I began to look about to see 

 what could be done to save them. I 

 turned to Quinby's Bee-Keeping, and 

 there found that if the disease had 

 not advanced too far, the colonies 

 would swarm, and if such swarms 

 were hived in empty hives, no disease 

 would follow them, as the honey tak- 

 en with the bees would all be used 

 up in comb-building before any larvw 

 were hatched in the new combs. Ac- 

 cordingly, I hived all the new swarms 

 from these colonies, in empty hives, 

 and 21 days later drove out all the 

 bees from the old hive and hived them 

 the same as were the swarms. The 

 honey was strained and boiled, the 

 combs rendered into wax, and the 

 hives burned. The colony which 

 took the disease from the old comb 

 that I bought, was driven out as they 

 were too weak to swarm. In this way 

 all of the eleven were cured, but in 

 the fall I found two more, that in- 

 vestigation showed that they had had 

 a frame of brood given them from 

 one of the eleven hives, that at first 

 gave no signs of the disease. These 

 two were allowed to go over until 

 1873, when they were treated as were 

 the others and effectually cured, since 

 which time I have had no foul brood 

 in my apiary. 



If I were the only one who had 

 cured foul brood by the above plan, 

 there might be a chance for a mistake 

 on my part, but when hundreds in 

 the United .States and Canada have 

 done the same thing, it seems impos- 

 sible that they should not know 

 whereof they affirm . Therefore, what 

 am I to think when Mr.Cheshire says, 

 on page 741, " There is not one single 

 old idea about this disease which is 

 not incorrect, except that it is con- 

 tagious. Time, I am convinced, will 

 fully prove that the old bees almost 

 invariably are the channels of infec- 

 tion V" If this were so, certainly the 

 above-described process of cure, used 

 with success by so many of our best 

 apiarists during the past 20 years, 



would not have proved effectual in 

 their hands. That it has been ef- 

 fectual but proves that Mr. Cheshire's 

 scientific research is faulty, or else 

 that he is dealing with something else 

 besides American foul brood. 



Again, he tells us that the eggs of 

 the queen contain bacilli, he having 

 counted "no less than nine "in one 

 egg. IJoes not Mr. C. readily see that 

 if this is so, that foul brood must go 

 wherever this queen goes while she 

 liyes, and that his phenol cure must 

 be administered every few weeks so 

 long as such queen lives V If our 

 American foid brood could be carried 

 in the ovaries of the queen, it would 

 place an effectual barrier against our 

 queen-traffic which is assuming great 

 proportions in the United States and 

 Canada ; yea, and which is soon des- 

 tined to extend throughout the whole 

 civilized world. Shall we stop all of 

 this for fear that foul brood will come 

 to us with the queens which we buy ? 

 No ; let us rather hold to the fact ex- 

 pressed by Mr. Quinby when he said 

 20 years ago in his " Bee-Keeping Ex- 

 plained :" "I have never known such 

 a result in a single instance." If it 

 were possible for a queen to carry 

 foul brood, then the plan which I 

 used in my apiary, would not have 

 cured the disease as effectually as it 

 did, and from my experience I am 

 positive that foul brood cannot be 

 developed from any queen or drone 

 in any way, shape or manner. 



While on the subject of foul bi-ood, 

 I wish to notice one point in the 

 method of cure as practiced by Mr. 

 D. A. Jones. He tells us that after 

 causing the bees to fill themselves 

 with honey, he shakes them into a 

 wire-cloth box where they should be 

 left from 3 to 6 days to so nearly 

 starve that some begin to fall to the 

 bottom of the box, when they are to 

 be hived on foundation or empty 

 combs. Now, from my experience I 

 can see no need of this starving pro- 

 cess, for, if swarms from a foul- 

 broody colony placed in an empty 

 hive, do not have any of the disease, 

 driven colonies will not. To some of 

 the latest drummed colonies spoken 

 of in the above, I wished to give 

 combs and brood so as to get them in 

 good condition for winter, so I simply 

 left them in the empty hives until 

 larvse began to hatch, when combs 

 and frames of brood were given, and 

 no signs of the disease appeared after- 

 ward. By this plan I secured a half- 

 dozen frames partly filled with nice 

 worker-comb, which were afterward 

 completed by nuclei, which I would 

 have lost-had I used tlie plan as Mr. 

 Jones uses it. If these combs are not 

 wanted for use in the way I utilized 

 them, they would never come amiss 

 for starters for sections, or even for 

 filling the sections full of such combs. 

 In this way those six days of fasting 

 are made ' to be of value to the un- 

 luckv apiarist. 

 Borodino,© N. Y. 



t^~ The Progressive Bee-Keepers' .Asso- 

 ciation of Western Illinois will meet in Bush- 

 nell, 111., on Thursday. May T, 188.';. Let 

 every bee-keeper who can. be present and 

 enjoy the meeting. J. G. Norton, Sec. 



