AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



21 



experience has gone to show that Che- 

 shire's conclusions are incorrect, and 

 that the methods of cure advised by 

 him, as well as all similar methods, are 

 inefficient, unsatisfactory, and unre- 

 liable. 



The disease is generally, if not in- 

 variably, transmitted by means which 

 the theorists have considered unlikely to 

 transmit it, while those things they have 

 pronounced most likely to transmit it 

 have utterly failed to do so. Mr. Cornell 

 has spent much argument in the attempt 

 to make bee-keepers believe that wax 

 made from foul-broody combs was dan- 

 gerous, as liable to transmit the infec- 

 tion. Granting his premises to be well- 

 founded, his conclusions, according to 

 bacteriologists, are quite correct. As a 

 matter of fact, though, I have made 

 many hundreds of such combs into foun- 

 dation, the use of which did not cause 

 the disease in a single instance. No evi- 

 dence has ever been brought forward to 

 show that any of the thousands of 

 pounds of such wax used for this pur- 

 pose has ever caused foul brood. 



It may be that the cause of foul brood 

 is a bacillus yet undiscovered, or it may 

 prove that bacillus alvei is really the 

 cause, and that its investigators have 

 simply been mistaken in regard to its 

 manifestations, and the best manner of 

 dealing with it. In either case, I. see no 

 reason to doubt that the disease may 

 have its origin in decaying brood, 

 whether killed by chilling, starving, 

 drowning or suffocation. 



Do not understand me as saying that 

 I believe in the spontaneous generation 

 of life of any kind. The experiments of 

 Tyndall settled this question conclu- 

 sively in the negative. But before he 

 could make these experiments conclu- 

 sive, he had to go to the pure air of the 

 upper Alps, away from the contaminated 

 and germ-laden air of the lower earth. 

 These, and other experiments, have 

 proven that living germs innumerable 

 float in the atmosphere, undeveloped 

 until they fall upon a substance favor- 

 able to their" growth. Some of these 

 germs are exceedingly common, while 

 others are extremely rare. There might 

 be hundreds of square miles, for in- 

 stance, in which none of the germs of 

 foul brood could be found. ■ In such 

 places no case of dead brood could ever 

 develop into foul brood. In other places, 

 the air might be full of its germs, and 

 every case of putrefying brood, occurring 

 under the proper conditions of heat, 

 moisture, etc., furnishing a favorable 

 soil for its growth, might become a start- 



ing-point of infection. However this 

 may be, I doubt very much that the 

 disease is ever communicated to healthy 

 colonies except through the medium of 

 infected honey. 

 Ottawa, Ills. 



LiffM-Coloreil anil Extra-Lane Queens. 



Written for the Ame7ica7i Bee Journal 

 BY DK. E. GALLUP. 



On page 631 of the Bee Journal for 

 1893, Mr. Chas. White seems to be hurt 

 a little, but I guess not badly. If I had 

 not tried the plan I should have so re- 

 ported. I tried the plan in Wisconsin 

 years ago, for my own satisfaction, but 

 I am aware that one swallow does not 

 make a spring, by any means. Our 

 friend can rear qeeens as black as crows 

 from pure Italians, by taking a pint of 

 old bees, put them in a 6-inch square 

 box, give them eggs from an Italian 

 queen, etc. But all that that proves is, 

 that the embryo lacked nourishment 

 warmth, etc. One can rear such queens 

 under such conditions at any season 

 when he can rear queens at all. 



Lots of queen-breeders reared and sent 

 out queens that were entirely worthless, 

 just from the above cause. The first 

 Italian queens that I ever received were 

 reared on the above plan. I discovered 

 by starting in, in that manner, that all 

 was wrong, in short order. Still, one 

 breeder that had been in the business 

 some eight years, argued that for that 

 very reason he always compelled his 

 nuclei to start queens from larvie six or 

 seven days old, in order to get a better 

 size and color. I tried as hard as I 

 knew how to rear light-colored Italians, 

 and keep up their prolificness and extra- 

 working qualities, but failed entirely. 

 Read carefully the article by Chas. 

 Dadant, on page 499 of the Bee Jour- 

 nal for 1893, and also the article on 

 page 437, by Adam Grimm, and see 

 how far we three disagree. Also my 

 last remarks on page 662. Now, un- 

 derstand, I do not say that it cannot be 

 done, by any means. 



Now I wish to tell what I know about 

 bees improving themselves in a state of 

 nature, as it were, and perhaps I may 

 have to make this article quite lengthy. 



Old Mr. Well Huysen (the man that I 

 got my first insight from, as to how to 

 rear bees in box-hive times), held that 

 queens reared under proper conditiocs 

 were long-lived, and that their workers 



