THIRTIETH REPORT OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST 25 
persons who own small numbers of bee colonies and engage in 
very limited operations, and a professional group of about 75 
individuals who own and operate commercial establishments. The 
latter group is here spoken of as the "bee industry". 
Beekeeping has expanded in Montana from a total of 30,000 
colonies operated in 1941 to 44,000 in 1944. However, the last two 
years have shown a distinct drop in production per colony with 
the result that Montana's crop the last two years has been lower 
than that of 1942. The present expansion is largely accounted for 
by movement of apiaries from other states, and in lesser part by 
the expansion of existing establishments within the State. There 
has not been a corresponding expansion in the number and size 
of amateur-operated apiaries. Hence, the bee industry operates an 
even larger proportion of the bees in the State than the 93 percent 
reported in 1942. 
AMERICAN FOULBROOD CONTROL 
Inspection of apiaries for control of American foulbrood has 
been limited by available funds and personnel. Hence, it has been 
necessary to set up limited objectives. Briefly, the objective has 
been to eliminate sources of disease which are not being adequate- 
ly controlled. This has meant the inspection of amateur-operated 
bees and such limited supervision of the bee industry as seemed 
both necessary and possible. It has been impossible to embark on a 
program of uniform inspection and uniform control. As will be 
shown it appears that control, such as the burning of all diseased 
bees, would not be so effective in Montana as it has been in most 
parts of the country. Inspection results for 1943 and 1944 are 
presented in table 4. 
It is clear from the data reported that progress has been 
made over the area where control has been attempted. Both the 
incidence and distribution of the disease is being cut down. It is 
also clear that the totals are small and easily influenced by any 
class represented. 
Table 5 indicates that there exists a small group of operations 
which reflect unfavorably upon the total results. The 11 apiaries 
selected for removal from the 1943 total and 17 from that of 1944 
were commercially operated apiaries which had not been pre- 
viously inspected. They were in no case disease or hospital api- 
aries into which diseased colonies had been moved for operation 
or treatment. The above apiaries are certainly not representative 
of commercial operations in general. However, they do indicate 
that a serious disease problem still exists within the commercial 
bee industry. If progress is to continue, the commercial industry 
must be brought under closer surveillance than has been possible 
with the present program. 
