1900 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



111 



ment at a hospital, for heart 

 trouble. "Too much bicycle," Mr. 

 Howe says, was the immediate 

 cause of his indisposition. While 

 at the hospital Mr. Howe was at 

 times able to exercise moderately, 

 and availed himself of the privilege 

 of using the laboratory of the insti- 

 tution in investigating the nature 

 of "black brood," from which dis- 

 ease, he says, very few apiaries in 

 that part of Cuba are free. 



FOUL BROOD IN CUBA. 



Commenting on our editorial, 

 page 54, "Foul Brood in Cuba," 

 the Atnericati Bee Journal asks : ' 'If 

 Mr. Rockenback's testimony is 

 thought hardly reliable, what will 

 Mr. Hill do with Harry Howe's, 

 which was given on page 185 last 

 week? Mr. Howe's simply corrob- 

 orates Mr. Rockenbeck's, or is even 

 stronger." In order that the reader 

 may judge for himself how badly 

 Mr. Howe is discouraged we here 

 give his comments entirely. This 

 is what he says: 



Bees are swarmhig here now. Foul 

 brood is really much worse than has 

 been described in the papers. Nearly 

 every apiary in Cuba has it. I have 

 gone into partnership with a Cuban who 

 owns about seven thousand acres of fine 

 honey country, to put in bee ranches to 

 the tune of two thousand colonies. This 

 gives me entire control of my bee range. 

 ^Harry Howe. 



We have no iiiclinatiou to "do" 

 anything with Mr. Howe's testi- 

 mony ; but anyone ordinarily astute 

 might have read enough between 

 the lines of the articles in question 

 to have realized the impertinence of 

 such a comment. We have, for the 

 past fifteen years, been intensely 

 interested in Cuba's apicultural ad- 

 vancement, have very closely ob- 

 served everything coming before 

 our notice pertaining to the matter, 

 and, during the greater part of that 

 time have been more or less closely 



in touch with problems with which 

 it might be affected. That a malig- 

 nant form of foul brood is prevalent 

 in portions of Cuba at this time, no 

 well-informed person will question. 

 Neither will any one conversant 

 with the general situation there 

 believe that the whole island is 

 rotten from end to end. 



Since the expression of our doubts 

 as to the validity of such a sweeping 

 report, we have received a private 

 letter from Colonel Viete, whose 

 picture appears in this number of 

 The Bee-keeper, from which we 

 will take the liberty of quoting. "I 

 am surprised to hear so much about 

 foul brood ; in this part of the island 

 we have none, and my bees are do- 

 ing beautifully." Will the Journal 

 regard this as tending to justify a 

 degree of incredulity? 



AETER THE ADULTERATORS. 



The work cf ferreting out and 

 punishing adulterators of honey, by 

 the National Bee-keepers' Associa- 

 tion, has begun in earnest, and 

 some developments of a sensational 

 character may come to pass. As 

 every bee-keeper is interested in 

 maintaining the purity of, and 

 thereby establishing remunerative 

 prices and a greater demand for, 

 our product, we have, after some 

 deliberation, decided that readers of 

 The Bee-keeper would be sufficient- 

 ly interested in the details of one 

 case to justify its entire publication. 

 A conception of the extent of the 

 undertL.king to suppress the adult- 

 eration of honey, may be somewhat 

 aided by a study of the complex 

 situation revealed in the following 

 case, in which the crime of adulter- 

 ation is laid at the door of a bee- 

 keeper whose name is a household 

 word throughout beedom — known 

 and respected wherever modern 

 methods are practiced in the art of 



