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AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL-. 



colonies were so bad with foul brood that 

 he failed to cure them by putting them 

 on starters, foundation, or giving them 

 a partial starvation before he gave them 

 foundation. At last he resorted to 

 almost starving the bees to death before 

 putting them on foundation, and then 

 succeeded in curing. After that Mr. 

 Jones became an advocate of a thorough 

 starvation of the bees before putting 

 them on foundation. 



Where colonies are not bad with foul 

 brood, and there is little or no unsealed 

 honey in the brood-combs, they can be 

 cured at once by removing the diseased 

 combs and giving them full sheets of 

 comb foundation. I don't remember 

 ever finding one foul-broody apiary in 

 all my experience where every colony 

 could be cured by 'putting the bees on 

 foundation at once in the time of a honey- 

 flow. If all the hundreds of hives that 

 I have handled in my time, that once 

 had foul brood in, had been boiled or 

 scalded, what a lot of valuable wood 

 would have been burned, time wasted, 

 and much curing delayed through time 

 taken up in boiling and fussing with 

 empty hives, at a busy season when 

 work of all kinds was pressing. But the 

 worst of all would have been — the most 

 of this sort of work would have fallen 

 on the women, the ones least able to 

 bear it. 



I linew that the empty hives that foul 

 brood had been in, never did give the dis- 

 ease, and could not cause it. Knowing 

 all this, I thought it would be a very un- 

 just thing in me not to warn against the 

 boiling of hives as a waste of time. 



REPLY TO MR. GRADEN'S CRITICISMS. 



In the American Bee Journal for 

 Jan. 11, 1894, page 51, I read a long 

 article from Mr. Randolph Graden, of 

 Taylor Centre, Mich. Mr. Graden says 

 he has " evidence which proves beyond 

 a doubt that bees in robbing a foul- 

 broody colony do not carry the disease 

 to their hives in honey." Mr. Graden is 

 very much mistaken in supposing that 

 bees can rob a foul-broody colony of its 

 honey and not carry the disease home to 

 their own hives In the honey. Dr. 

 Howard's test cases will forever settle 

 this question about the honey in foul- 

 broody colonies not being diseased. Dr. 

 Howard uncapped the sealed honey in 

 combs I sent him, and with the micro- 

 scope he examined the honey that he 

 dipped out of the cells without disturb- 

 ing the cell walls, and found the spores 

 of foul brood suspended in the cells of 

 honey that were sealed. 



If I am to judge by all the letters and 

 postal cards that I have received from 

 the best bee-keepers of Ontario, since 

 Dr. Howard's article appeared in the 

 American and Canadian Bee Jour- 

 nals, I should say that nearly all the 

 bee-keepers are convinced now that the 

 honey in foul-broody hives is badly dis- 

 eased. 



Mr. Graden doesn't believe that foul 

 brood is spread in any apiary by robber- 

 bees, and tries to show that the disease 

 is spread about from one colony to 

 another in and by the winds, and says 

 "that it depends entirely upon what 

 kind of weather we have, when the dis- 



Mr. Wm. McEvoy, Woodburn, Ont. 



ease is in the apiary, as the odor, which 

 is nothing more than small particles of 

 the substance from which it arises, 

 which is driven out of the hive by the 

 bees fanning at the entrance, it simply 

 floats around, and woe be to the hive or 

 colony that chances to be in its way." 



Now, my dear boy, you will pardon 

 me when I tell you that you are very 

 much mistaken ; because, if your theory 

 was a fact, no apiary in the world could 

 ever be cured of foul brood, when it once 

 got a fair start in it. Come now, Mr. 

 Graden, "hold your horses" until I ex- 

 plain this a little : 



If the air in foul-broody colonies was 

 so full of foul germs that the bees could 



