Aug. 23, 1906 



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American Ttee Journal 



I have had 7 swarms from a6 many cl.seased 

 colonies, and the swarms do not show the 

 trouble, and I think the old colonic do not 

 seem quite so bad; but there are -till too 

 many 6ick bees coming from those hives. 



I am led to believe that sulphur is the surest 

 cure. 



There is one thing which makes me doubt- 

 ful about the trouble being paralysis. All the 

 literature I can find on the subject says that 

 it will disappear with the good honey-Mow, 

 but in my case the thing increased with the 

 honey-llow. 



The first colony affected also seemed differ- 

 ent from the rest, in that the bees crawled 

 very slowly and seemed to have lost the power 

 of their hind legs; but the bees of the other 

 colonies 6eem to be in a great hurry, aud ap- 

 parently have no trouble with their legs. 

 Their wings stick up just the same, however, 

 and their bodies are black and shiny, f may 

 report again if anything new develops. 



Palermo, Ont., July 2. H. A. Smith. 



P. S — I may be mistaken, but I will give 

 my opinion on the cause of this trouble. The 

 bee6 were packed very warm and snug against 

 the honey-house last winter. They had a 

 great many flights during the latter part of 

 the winter, and fearing they would mark 

 their locations I put them on the summer 

 stands on a very cool and cloudy day. Wa 

 had about 3 weeks of hard weather after that, 

 and I believe the brood suffered, and has de- 

 veloped in the matured bees in this way. 



H. A. S. 



Mr. Smith's explanation is not "or- 

 thodox," and there is probably nothing 

 in it. I would be pleased to have the 

 opinion and experience of others. I am 

 glad to be able to publish the following 

 valuable letter from Mr. Philbrook, 

 who has had a wide experience with 

 this malady : 



Sulphur Treatment a Success. 



Mr. Morley Pettit :— On page 59S, I no- 

 tice you request experience with bee-paralysis, 

 and 1 refer you to my quite extensive expe- 

 rience and remedy published in the American 

 Bee Journal, page 6G4, 1905, as follows: 



" I reasoned that the disease was a microbe 

 or germ disease, and it must enter the hive at 



the en trance I reasoned that the diseased 



bees being the adult ones, by covering the en- 

 trance boards with the sulphur (Poppleton's 

 remedy), and throwing it well back into the 

 hive, the adult bees would come very much 

 in iimtacc with it in trying to keep it up 

 [out?], as the disease seemed to attack them 

 on the tongue, and thence enter their bodies. 

 So I treated every colony in the apiary to a 

 do6e of sulphur, by throwing it well into the 

 hive-entrance in the evening when all bses 

 were in. At first the results scared me, for 



the quantities of dead bees increased but 



there were scarcely any dead bees carried out 

 the next morning; and after 4 days I treated 

 the entire yard to another dose of 6ulphur, 

 and very few dead bees appeared. My yard 



was free from disease It appeared later 



in the 6eason, but I promptly dosed with 

 sulphur, when it vanished once more, and I 

 have seen no further signsof it." 



And I would further say, I have seen this 

 work as perfectly in two instances since then, 

 but neither with the same apiary. I consider 

 sulphur a perfect remedy and complete cure 

 for this malady Where used below the 

 brood it is perfectly harmless. But it should 

 never be used on worker-brood, nor on drone- 

 brood above worker-brood, as it will sprinkle 

 down over the worker-brood and ruin it, and 

 make the combs unfit for the queen to use for 

 a long time afterwards. Bat fear nothing 

 from its use on the bottom-board. Throw it 

 in at the entrance with great force, and drive 

 it well back on the bottom-board; repeat in 4 

 days, and then again in days, and it is done, 

 and no harm to the colony. I hope this may 

 help your correspondent. 



H. S. Philbrook. 



Oxnard, Calif., July 24. 



Qi 



fBee -Keeping ";m 



--V 



Conducted by Emma M. Wilson, Marengo, 111. 



" Bee-Keeping a Specialty " 



Under this heading a very interest- 

 ing article appears in Poultry Hus- 

 bandry, written by MissF. E. Wheeler, 

 the sister who has won distinction ty 

 her successful labors with ducks and 

 other two-winged members of the ani- 

 mal creation, as well as with the 

 smaller four-winged navigators of the 

 air with which the readers of the 

 American Bee Journal are so familiar. 



After saying that one who makes a 

 business of poultry-raising can not 

 follow the happy-go-lucky plans of one 

 who has only a few fowls, Miss Whee- 

 ler says : 



The same may be said of bee-keeping. It is 

 a specialty and has a science of its own. 

 There is no feature of rural life that has ab- 

 sorbed the attention of so large and intel- 

 lectual a class of men for so many years. 



Our greatest writers have made the bee a 



subject of much study and research, and have 

 used their knowledge of its ways to point 

 many a warning and a moral to humanity. 



Among the multitude of references to bees 

 and their habits that Shakespeare has, here is 

 one that seems specially applicable to U6 who 

 are under the stress of battle, making a good 

 tight for our independence: 



" Let come what will, I mean to bear it out, 

 And either live with glorious victory 

 < >r die with fame, renowned for chivalry. 

 He is not worthy of the honey-comb 

 That shuns the hives because the bees have 

 stings." 



Among so much that is good, it 

 would not be strange to find one or two 

 things that some of the sisters of ex- 

 perience might question. Here is one 

 paragraph : 



"Emergency Cells" in Rearing 



Queens 

 It has been pretty well tested and proved 

 that 'emergency cells" do not, as a rule, 



produce so good queens as those built in a 

 leisurely way In- the bees, say during swarm- 

 ing, when they have plenty of time to shape 

 them in tine style. So, for best results, we 

 mu6t either procure our queens from a re- 

 liable party, or by our own selection and 

 manipulation produce them from our own 

 coloties. 



Emergency cells are generally un- 

 derstood to be those reared by bees, 

 which have been made queenless, from 

 larvae in worker-cells, as distinguished 

 from swarming-cells or supersedure- 

 cells, in which the bees of their own 

 initiative have started with the egg in 

 a previously constructed queen-cell. 

 The mention of cells " built in a lei- 

 surely way " probably has reference to 

 the tradition still somewhat in vogue 

 that when bees are made queenless 

 they are in such haste to supply the 

 deficiency that they select for the pro- 

 duction of their future queen a larva 

 of such advanced age that the result is 

 something that is not "every inch a 

 queen," but having to some degree the 

 characteristics of a worker. Like many 

 another error, this libel upon the in- 

 telligence of our pets dies hard. 



It does not require a scientist to 

 prove the falsity of the tradition ; any 

 one of the sisters is equal to the task. 

 It is known that during the first 3 days 

 of the life of a larva in a worker-cell 

 the feeding is the same as that of a 

 larva in a queen-cell. Then the worker- 

 larva is "weaned," as it is called, and 

 fed on coarser food, while the more 

 costly food is continued to the royal 

 larva throughout its entire feeding 

 period as a larva. The doctrine of the 

 tradition is that when the bees are 

 suddenly made queenless they are in 

 such haste to rear a queen, and so lack- 

 ing in good judgment, that the candi- 

 date for future royalty is chosen from 

 among the larva- that are "weaned," 

 or more than 3 days old. 



The requisite proceeding in the case 

 is very simple, costing little trouble to 

 the operator, and little hindrance to 

 the work of the bees. All that is nec- 

 essary is to remove the queen of a 

 colony with 2 or 3 frames of brood and 

 adhering bees, putting the same in a 

 nucleus, aud then a day or so later to 

 look and see the size of the larvae in 

 the queen-cells that are started, when 

 the queen can be returned. It will be 

 found that not only are the chosen 

 larvae not over 3 days old, but that 

 they are considerably under. From 

 that it would appear that the bees 

 seem to know that although a 3-days- 

 old larva may not be weaned, it is not 

 as good for their purpose as something 

 younger. 



Heather Not a Mint 



In the article on " Mints as Honey- 

 Plants," by Prof. Cook (page S30), he 

 classes " the famous heather of Scot- 

 land as one of the mints." That is a 

 mistake, and leads me to infer that 

 Prof. Cook has not seen heather. 



I have gathered heather in its native 

 habitat— on the moors of "Bonnie 

 Scotland," and I have pressed speci- 

 mens now in my possession. I was 

 not a botanist then, nor am I much of 

 one now, yet enough to be able to con- 

 sult "Gray's Manual of Botan "for 



