468 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



fraternity, to give some proof of what 

 you call facts, if you have any. 



Six or eight years, I think, have 

 passed since you published as a fact that 

 bees smooth and polish the surface of 

 their cappings with their stings. I think 

 you have never furnished a word of 

 proof for what you say is a fact. The 

 case would be a little different if you had 

 said that you had seen the bees using 

 their stings as trowels. I think you 

 have never said that you had seen any- 

 thing of the kind. I think no one has 

 ever pretended to see anything of the 

 kind, although the work of finishing up 

 cells is not a hard thing to see any sum- 

 mer. Will it be asking too much for me 

 to ask that you will kindly tell us how 

 you know it is a fact, that the sting is 

 used as a trowel ? 



NEWS FROM 



THE LAND OF DZIERZON. 



I am glad to see so well-informed a 

 correspondent from the "land of Dzier- 

 zon" taking a place in the columns of 

 " the old reliable." He has for a long 

 time conducted an exceedingly interest- 

 ing department in that excellent German 

 bee-journal, the Centralblatt, giving a 

 condensed extract of wisdom from all 

 sources. 



I wonder if there is any danger of get- 

 ting his " Dutch up," if I enter a very 

 mild protest against one of his state- 

 ments. On page 330 he speaks of the 

 Metzger theory as a " fact." Would it 

 not be better to call it a theory until 

 opposition to it has been somewhat 

 silenced ? The great Dzierzon called his 

 belief a "theory" even after it was well 

 established in the minds of the majority 

 of intelligent bee-keepers. Still, I'll not 

 be too particular about the names he 

 uses, if he'll only keep us well posted as 

 to what is going on in the "Fatherland." 



Marengo, Ills. 



i^-»- 



The «« Namelesi Bee-Di§ea§e " in 

 California. 



Written for the American Bee Journal 



BY FRED M. HART. 



I have never seen anything that an- 

 swered so closely to the description of the 

 disease of my bees as the one on pages 

 141 and 142. Below I will try to tell 

 how my sick bees turned out, after what 

 I wrote on July 21st, and was published 

 on Aug. 11, 1892. 



On July 24th they stopped dying all 

 at once. I gave them the medicine I 

 spoke of at that time, by taking a broom 

 and sprinkling the liquid all over the 



bees, comb, brood, and everywhere Inside 

 of the hive. I can't tell whether It did 

 any good or not. I have 165 colonies at 

 the home apiary, and in June and to 

 July 20th, I took out every two weeks 

 3,800 pounds of extracted honey, and 

 when about 50 colonies took sick be- 

 tween the 21st to the 24th, they stop- 

 ped gathering honey, but the rest gath- 

 ered about the same amount of honey in 

 the next two weeks, or two months, as 

 they had before July 21st. Those that 

 were sick July 21st lost more than those 

 that were taken sick on July 22nd or 

 23rd, but they stopped dying about the 

 same time; but not one colony died out 

 entirely. 



Some colonies with queens hatched in 

 May, died, while others with queens a 

 year old, did not die. Some of those 

 colonies built themselves up ; others I 

 helped either by giving them a laying 

 queen or hatching brood. 



I have noticed that it is seldom that a 

 colony of blacks are bothered, while any 

 colony that shows a trace of yellow, will 

 take the disease, and a very strong col- 

 ony is apt to show the disease first. 

 When they are afflicted, they die faster 

 in the night than any other time, so in 

 the morning the colony has the appear- 

 ance of having been robbed, or of a col- 

 ony having lost its queen while swarm- 

 ing. 



When they first took the disease, I 

 noticed about a dozen bees in front of 

 the hive dead, and some more that had 

 crawled up in front of the hive were 

 trembling, weak, and discouraged; others 

 with abdomens swollen, and when I 

 touched them they raised their heads 

 and then fell to the ground. The next 

 morning much worse, probably a pint of 

 dead bees would be in front of the hive. 

 The whole colony would be out of order. 



When the first day they had brought 

 in 3 pounds of honey, the second day 

 they did not bring in anything, the third 

 day the same, and the fourth day stop- 

 ped dying, I opened the hive, and could 

 notice a peculiar sour smell. The colony 

 would be very weak, with more young 

 bees in the hive than anything else ; the 

 brood all out of order, and in two, 

 three or four days I would see the bees 

 dragging out larvae. The eggs were all 

 right. 



Another thing, if the disease should 

 strike the apiary in two or three weeks, 

 these colonies are just as apt to take it 

 as any others in the apiary, and have 

 several spells during the season, and 

 then go into winter, and I will not see 

 anything wrong in November, Decem- 

 ber or January. On Feb. 8th I had 9 



