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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Jan. 26, 19( 5 



fact of the wide-spread of bee-diseases over the country, 

 and the further fact that most of them are due either 

 to carelessness or ignorance, would it not be a good thing 

 to have a little leaflet issued on the prevention of these 

 diseases? If there is none extant I would move we 

 have a lot of them printed for the purpose of parceling 

 out among our members and distributing, and for our 

 local institutes throughout the country for distribution 

 among the farmer bee-keepers. 



Mr. Lovesy — In my experience I have noticed a 

 number of times that foul brood has turned to black- 

 brood. Just as soon as the bees commence brood-rearing 

 in the spring I go very carefully and look over the brood: 

 pick off the caps of any I have any suspicion of, and I 

 often find the larva; in there. If that is the case I know 

 It is going to be foul brood, pickled brood, or black brood, 

 or something of that nature. Then we transfer them and 

 put them into a box on the old stand and starve them for 

 three or four days and put them on starters and feed 

 them up. In this connection in regard to foul brood 

 laws, have something which affects you. Don't have a 

 State law. There is no State in the Union that has 

 any law at all that suits the other States. Our law reads 

 that any five men in any county where the disease exists 

 may petition the County Commissioners and they shall 

 appomt and pay the inspector for the time he occupies 

 m his actual duties among the bees; and it provides he 

 shall visit all bees. He is required to visit every apiary 

 once a year. If there is anything wrong with the bee's 

 he attends to it, and if any time through the year a 

 bee-keeper suspects anything wrong with the bees he 

 calls on the inspector and the inspector visits them. 



Dr. Bohrer — With regard to getting a new queen in 

 such cases I would deem it entirely unnecessary, because 

 the germ of foul brood is found in the food in the stomach 

 of the bee. and so soon as the food has been disposed of 

 and has passed through the system, the queen is no 

 longer liable to transmit that disease to her progeny. I 

 want to recommend to every bee-keeper with reference to 

 foul brood that his cure be radical and permanent. 



Mr. France— Bearing on this same line of foul brood 

 perhaps I am wrong, but I think not, the father of our 

 authority m the United States from a practical stand- 

 point IS Wilham McEvoy, of Canada. I went down to 

 New York last winter more especially to meet him in 

 counsel on this subject than any other, but Jack Frost 

 beat me out, and I failed to meet him. I said, "Be at 

 this convention," but when the critical hour came he 

 could not come. 



Mr. Reinecke— Could the disease be carried by im- 

 ported queens? 



Mr. France— This is a question of great importance 

 both to queen-breeders and the bee-keeper himself. Is 

 there danger of foul brood by buying queen bees from 

 abroad? Yes, and no? I would not hesitate to buy all 

 the queen-bees a foul-brood apiary had, and introduce 

 them into my hives, provided when they came every 

 queen was taken out of the cage and put into a new, 

 clean cage, and fed sugar syrup forty-eight hours, and 

 then introduced, and then destroy the cage she came in. 

 It IS the food that is in the cage, and not the queen. 



Mr. Taylor — I think it is fourteen or fifteen years 

 since I first had foul brood, and I have been a good 

 deal mterested in it, and have watched it and have not 

 been terribly anxious to get rid of all of it as I like to see 

 what can be done with the thing. At one time I had a 

 good, strong colony of bees that was queenless. I had 

 another colony that had foul brood well developed, and 

 for the purpose of satisfying myself as to whether there 

 was much danger of getting foul brood from a queen, I 

 took the queen out of the foul brood colony and put it 

 directly into the healthy colony. They accepted her 

 at. once— I didn't have to cage her— and no foul brood 

 ever developed from that operation, so that I am tolerably 

 well satisfied that the danger of getting foul brood by 

 means of a new queen is extremely slim. 



Mr. Laws — I would like to ask Mr. France why he 

 wishes to feed sugar syrup to the queen and bees in the 

 cage for forty-eight hours before he introduces them. 



Mr. France— I would rather you would cut that off 

 and not feed the queen and bees, and isolate her from 

 those bees. It is simply to make her first consume what 

 honey she has within her honey-sac, and then give her a 

 good feeding, the same as with farm stock. 



Dr. Bohrer — The disease is no part of her system, but 

 simply what she has been eating? 



Mr. France — That is all. 



Dr. Bohrer — Do you consider salicylic acid as a germ- 

 icide a valuable thing to feed with the syrup? 



Mr. France — I don't know but it would be good, but 

 I have not known any bad results when we didn't use it. 



Mr. Darby — I would like to ask if you don't first in- 

 troduce the queen to a new escort before you do the 

 feeding? ■ „] 



Mr. France — Let her run into a cage alone first with- 

 out those bees, to make sure she is partially starved, 

 to get rid of that honey, then give her escorts and some 

 feed. 



Mr. Hart — I would like to ask if it is not a good idea 

 to feed the queen when you are treating for foul brood 

 at times when the bees are not doing much? 



Mr. France — Yes, a most excellent time. You will 

 accomplish two things at once. Only there is one danger. 

 If you take away the brood it makes them restless and 

 uneasy, unless there is a good deal of feeding done. If 

 there is a little swarming impulse it makes quite a dif- 

 ference. It is difficult to treat foul brood unless there 

 is a natural honey-flow coming in. 



Mr. Hart — I would like to ask again if it would not 

 be a better idea not to extract the honey from these two 

 combs, only at a time when the bees were doing well 

 in the field? 



Mr. Francis — Does the queen-bee ever deposit any 

 honey in the cells? If not, what difference will it make 

 what kind of honey she has, whether foul brood or 

 not? 



Mr. France — I don't think she does, but sometimes 

 she has an overload, and she may feed it to some other 

 bee that would. There is a little risk there. Keep on 

 the cautious side. 



REPORT ON NATIONAL HONEY EXCHANGE. 



Mr. France presented the report on the National 

 Honey Exchange of America. 



Mr. Brown — With regard to this matter I would 

 like to say that, as you see, this is the first step towards 

 our National Commercial Organization, and, as was sug- 

 gested in the paper read, it is to be a market for all of our 

 product; it is hoped to be the place where those who now 

 consume honey and are seeking the produce from you 

 will come to this organization to buy. It is hoped that 

 it will be so organized with such men at the head of it 

 that every producer will have full and complete confidence 

 in their management of it, and will willingly and freely 

 trust and consign their goods thereto, knowing that they 

 will get exact and just weight and exact and just re- 

 turns, knowing too that if there be but one organization 

 in the field which will manage and control and handle all 

 this product, it will forever do away with the competition 

 that now exists between localities, which has a tendency 

 as all other competition does, to bear down the prices. 

 Therefore, we expect through this organization to be able 

 to advance to the producer the price of his product, and 

 not necessarily increase it to the consumer. I don't be- 

 lieve this matter will affect the price to the consumer 

 one particle. It will simply save to ourselves and to 

 those who sell and produce the honey that which now 

 goes into the pockets of people that are making them- 

 selves wealthy out of what we produce. For the induce- 

 ment of those who wish to buy stock, the stock is 

 placed at $25 a share; and we expect, of course, to derive 

 some benefit to be induced to buy stock, outside of this 

 matter of boosting the price of our goods. I can only 

 outline something we are doing in California, having this 

 last winter completed an organization in central Cali- 

 fornia. This organization charges a commission for 

 selling honey — it does not make any difference what that 

 might be — we will say it is five percent — there are our re- 

 sources and the dividends; after the expenses of the Asso- 

 ciation have been paid, whatever is accumulated will be 

 dividends. We place our honey upon the market through 

 this channel because we are members and we pay five 

 percent for marketing our own goods through this chan- 

 nel. It takes two percent of the five percent to meet our 

 expenses, then there will be repaid a dividend of three 

 percent back to ourselves on our stock. It can be pro- 

 portioned to the amount of goods contributed as is done 

 with us in California. Then we do not only get back 

 the dividend or rebate on the goods we contribute but also 

 on the entire gain of the Association. We had put in our 



