first killing frost and the time the weather 

 was too cold for them to take purifying 

 flights ? Two other obstacles are presented 

 to the theory and reasoning of the benefits 

 of purifying flights, and capped or thick 

 honey. We know and assert without fear of 

 successful contradiction, that they died as 

 rapidly when being fed exclusively upon 

 thick, capped honey, gathered in the pre- 

 ceding June and July and with the purify- 

 ing flights of from once in two weeks to 

 every day, from the middle of March to the 

 time of fruit bloom. I am giving facts that 

 occurred under my own observation, at a 

 cost of twenty colonies, strong, well packed 

 with chaff, with proper ventilation, and on 

 their summer stands. 



We, as well as many others have lost as 

 large a proportion of our bees from dysen- 

 tery when housed in perfectly constructed 

 and ventilated depositories, as when left on 

 their summer stands. 



You, no doubt, expected me to give some 

 preventive or remedy for this fearful dis- 

 ease. I cannot. I know of none. I can 

 guess that it is honey-dew ; can guess that 

 to extract all of their honey in the fall, and 

 feed them sufficient of sugar-syrup, they 

 would winter well on it alone, or upon sugar- 

 candy, into which a proper proportion of 

 rye meal or some other substitute for pollen 

 were incorporated. That they will live for 

 at least six weeks upon plain sugar candy, 

 placed in close contact, and at the top of the 

 cluster, 1 know. 



That all honey gathered in the summer 

 months which is thick and capped over is 

 not good to prevent dysentery, I know. 



That the disease is caused by honey-dew, 

 1 suspect ; that it may be caused by a con- 

 dition of the atmosphere as suggested by 

 the American Bee Journal, is possible. 



Permit me to suggest that a committee be 

 appointed from members of this Convention 

 present, to experiment with two or three 

 hives each, first by extracting all the honey 

 and feeding a portion of the colonies with 

 sugar syrup and a portion with sugar candy, 

 either pure or with flour incorporated. I 

 am really in similar darkness to most of the 

 bee-keepers and the enquirer on page 262 of 

 the current volume of the American Bee 

 Journal. I want light and information. 



Wayne, Mich. E. Rood. 



F. F. Collins, Texas, had never seen 

 a case of dysentery in the South. 

 The Secretary then read an essay on 



Fertilization in Confinement. 



I so reduced my bees in the fall of 1878, 

 by rearing successive crops of young queens for 

 experiment, till in November, that I lost all 

 but two colonies during the winter, and it was 

 not till the first of August this year that I had 

 colonies enough, to again continue my trials to 

 work out a practical method of accomplishing 

 the fertilization of a queen in confinement. 



Long before I was ready to begin operations, 

 there was published an article in the Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal written by H. L. Jeffrey, 

 of Woodbury, Conn., stating that he had been 

 able to have queens repeatedly fertilized when 

 shut up closely in a nucleus with drones. He 



remarked that he did not consider it anything 

 that could be made of practical use. If this 

 arrangement would work generally, even if 

 the author could not appreciate it, I thought I 

 could. So the first experiment I tried this 

 year was to shut up half a dozen young queens 

 in nuclei with plenty of drones, and all things 

 fixed as nicely as possible, as far as I could 

 judge, to make a sure thing of it. I did this 

 with great interest and hope, because it seemed 

 to me, that, if this would work, it was the 

 simplest and most practical way of getting 

 queens fertilized in confinement or otherwise. 

 I kept those queens there about a month, and 

 they all had capped brood when I opened the 

 nuclei to let the bees fly out. I think not one 

 of those queens went out to be fertilized, al- 

 though I have kept them standing till the pre- 

 sent, they all went right on laying, but not a 

 single worker-bee ever hatched from their 

 eggs. That settled that theory to my satisfac- 

 tion. 



Well most of these young queens were 

 daughters of a Cyprian — one of two queens 

 imported in June by A. J. King and kindly 

 furnished me for experiment, so I had Cyprian 

 drones in a short time, in abundance. I next 

 went about carrying out some plans I had 

 matured during the winter of arranging two 

 nuclei in the ends of my "long idea" hives 

 to be composed of a comb each of just hatch- 

 ing bees and capped brood, with a virgin queen 

 and a few drones, in a wire-cloth cage which 

 would be kept warm by the heat of the hive, 

 and connected with such small fertilizing 

 cages as I used last season on the outside of 

 the hive. 



I rigged up six such nuclei, and waited and 

 fussed with them till the young bees got old 

 enough to come out into the cages as well as 

 the queens, without getting a single one fertil- 

 ized. Circumstances all seemed favorable, 

 and I could account for the failure only on the 

 supposition that the drones thus reared were 

 good for nothing for fertilization. I rigged up 

 the nuclei again, putting in the same queens 

 and other drones, which I had by this time 

 succeeded in rearing from the old queen, and 

 the first afternoon, had three fertilized, and the 

 next day, a fourth ; and the remaining two had 

 now commenced to lay drone eggs and did not 

 come out again. 



In watching the fertilization of these queens, 

 I concluded that the fertilizing cages needed 

 improvement. The bottom seemed to be too 

 near the top and afforded too convenient a 

 place for both queen and drone to settle and 

 loaf, and this took up so much time as to be 

 always annoying, sometimes causing failure, 

 and making the process impracticable. So I 

 decided to make the box longer from top to 

 bottom, and when I was about it, I thought I 

 would do it thoroughly. I sawed a foot board 

 into two, lengthwise, cut off four pieces reach- 

 ing from the ground to about the height of my 



