584 



Tmm mimmmioMm mmm jouREiatr. 



soon dwindle down, and become a 

 prey to robbers, or will be ortherwise 

 destroyed. Often if a fertile queen is 

 introduced to such a colony, the laying 

 workers will cease their egg-laying 

 propensities, and will go to work like 

 other bees ; but often such laying 

 workers, imagining themselves to be 

 queens, will kill the newly-introduced 

 queen, and then continue to lay their 

 drone-producing eggs. In this case, it 

 would be well to introduce a queen- 

 cell, and if this is torn down, to intro- 

 duce another, and another, until they 

 accept such a queen-cell. 



They may possibly permit such cells 

 to hatch, and the resulting queen will 

 soon become fecundated and com- 

 mence to lay, and thus the regular 

 order of the colony will be restored. 

 Often, however, they will not allow 

 this, and in such an event there is no 

 alternative but to cage the queen in 

 some other colonj-, and while thus 

 caged, to smoke both lots of bees thor- 

 oughly, and shake the bees from the 

 laying-worker colony in front of the 

 hive in which the queen is caged ; and 

 after they have all united, liberate the 

 queen after thej' have thus been 

 united at least 24 houi's. 



It may be said, however, as regards 

 this trouble, that "an ounce of pre- 

 vention is worth a pound of cure," 

 and hence, extra pains should be 

 taken that no colony should be left 

 without a queen very long at a time, 

 say not longer than three or four days. 

 Bees thus left without a queen will not 

 always become infested with laying 

 workers ; but in many cases thej' will, 

 especially in the brood- rearing season, 

 hence, every colony of bees should be 

 fi-equently looked over to prevent this 

 annoyance, and as soon as a colony is 

 found without a queen, one should be 

 supplied. By being careful in this re- 

 spect, you will avoid the annoyance of 

 ha^dng to deal with these pests. 



HONEY-DEW. 



Is it a Safe Food for Bees in 

 ^Vinter? — Stung by Bees. 



Written for the American Bee Journal 



BY F. GREINER. 



dantly on the chestnut leaves — it even 

 drips from them, covering the grass, 

 etc., with the sweetish substance. A 

 lightrcolored, yellowish, gi-eenish plant- 

 louse, found in great numbers on the 

 underside of the leaves, is probably the 

 cause of the " varnish" on them. 



Our bees pass by the golden-rod 

 (which blossoms profusely now), pre- 

 ferring the plant-louse secretion, and 

 not until the latter is dried up, do they 

 return to the former. 



I never had any experience with 

 honey-dew before, and I would ask, 

 how can we determine whether or not 

 this class of honey in connection with 

 buckwheat and basswood honey will 

 be wholesome for the bees ? Will it 

 insure safe wintei'ing ? Who can tell ? 



Attacked by Bees. 



In the New York Weeklj- Tribune of 

 Aug. 28, page 6, we read the following: 



Attacked by a Swarm of Bees.— At 

 Saratoga, Aug. 2.5, Harry Howlet, a West 

 Milton teamster, met with a terrible experi- 

 ence in Ballston Spa, at a late hour* yester- 

 day. His team and himself were attacked 

 by a large swarm of bees, which stung the 

 horses to death. Howlet, in seeking to 

 rescue his horses, was also attacked and 

 stung into insensibility. At one time it was 

 feared that his injuries would prove fatal, 

 but he had recovered to-day sufficiently to 

 allow of his removal home. 



*Are bees in Saratoga like night- 

 hawks ? 



It would interest us bee-keepers, if 

 one of the readers of the American 

 Bee Journal, residing in that vicinity, 

 would give us more particulars of 

 this very singular case. 



Naples, N. Y., Aug. 31, 1889. 



Buckwheat bloom is now about over, 

 and we have harvested a larger crop of 

 comb honey in sections from this source 

 than usual. But still our bees are 

 booming ; the liuniming that we hear 

 in the morning hours, reminds us of 

 the year 1881, wlien our bees stored 

 so enormously from linden. 



Very few bees come in with pollen 

 in their pollen-baskets, all the many 

 more with distended abdomens,heavily 

 loaded with the sweet found so abun- 



BEE-DISEASE. 



Experience wllli llie " Nameless 

 Bee-Disease." 



Written Jor the American Bee Journal 



BY C. THIELMANN. 



On page 541. Mr. Alonzo Skinner 

 gives a cure for this alarming bee-dis- 

 ease, but in reading carefully what he 

 says, seemingly he contradicts in the 

 last part what he writes in the first, 

 namely : " Two years ago last April 

 I had one colony affected with the dis- 

 ease ; I put about two table-spoonfuls 

 of salt at the entrance, and in a very 

 short time all was right." Then in the 

 last paragraph he writes: "Since 

 that time I have had about 12 colonies 

 affected," etc. 



Now a good many bee-keepers who 

 have that alarming and annoying dis- 

 ease in their apiaries, would like to 

 know whether Mr. Skinner purchased 

 the 12 colonies from some other 

 parties, or did they get the disease 

 I from the first that he cured ? 



I would like to have Mr. S. answer 

 the above question, as it is very im- 

 portant to know if the disease runs in 

 the ' ' blood," or whether it is a para- 

 site ; and whether salt and water will 

 cure it, or only check it for a time, and 

 then break out again more than before. 

 This seems to be the case with Mr. 

 Skinner's bees, and if correct, then 

 salt and water will not cure the dis- 

 ease, but only check it for a time. The 

 latter is my experience. 



Mr. S. speaks of the salt^and-water 

 cure used by queen-breeders. It ap- 

 pears to me that queen-breeders would 

 do the bee-keepers (at least to me) a 

 far greater favor, not to send out 

 queens from such colonies, than to 

 give their " plan " of curing with salt 

 and water. The disease is now spread 

 all over the United States by the un- 

 consciousness of some of our queen- 

 breeders, and no one seems to have 

 courage enough to make it public. But 

 this is a great wrong, and a detriment 

 to the fraternity. It has already done 

 great damage, and no one has yet 

 actually found a cure for it, or even 

 know of what character it is ; at least 

 I have never seen it in print, or heard 

 it privately. 



Now I will give my experiments as 

 I noticed them : About four years ago 

 I got a queen from an Eastern breeder, 

 and the next season I noticed some of 

 the black, shiny bees at the hive-en- 

 trance, where that qneen was intro- 

 duced, but never heard or read about 

 the disease. 



It passed on without fear of anything 

 bad the next seasson. I have seen more 

 of those shiny bees, but I did not think 

 there was any harm. Then a year ago 

 last spring I sold 11 colonies to a man 

 who started in the bee-business ; 

 among them was one colony (unknow- 

 ingly to me, until some time in July) 

 which had some of the diseased bees. 

 When I visited the man in July, he 

 called my attention to it. I then recol- 

 lected that I had seen something in 

 the bee-papers, shortly before, about 

 the " nameless bee-disease ;" and when 

 I got home, I looked over my apiary, 

 and found three diseased colonies. 



From that time on I studied the 

 malady, and made experiments, but to 

 no results of an effective cure. 



Last spring I had at one time 7 col- 

 onies affected ; first I tried salt and 

 water ; next, carbolic acid, and both 

 of these remedies checked it, but did 

 not cure any of them. 



Next I changed frames of brood and 

 bees ; one frame would check it some, 

 but 3, 4 and 5 frames would make the 

 colony well. Then I exchanged 

 queens with healthy colonies, and vice 

 versa, and it took a long time (5 or 6 

 weeks) before I could notice a change 

 where the healthy queens were intro- 



