(Entered at, the Posl-OCQce at Chicago as Second-Class Mall-Matter.) 

 Published Weekly at $1.00 a Year, by Ut'orge \V. York & Co., 118 W. Jackson Blvd. 



GEOKGK \V. YORK, Editor 



CHICAGO, ILL,, JUNE 27, 1907 



Vol. XLVn— No, 26 



diforiaf ^otes 

 and fommenfs 



Bees Building Up in Spite of Weather 



The following was written June 11, at 

 Marengo, III. : 



Mr. Editor: — On page 430 is a note from 

 me, written May 16, in whiich I mentioned 

 the deplorable weather, and said, "No matter 

 how good the season, it will hardly be possi- 

 ble for colonies to build up in time to do 

 good work on clover." Well, I didn't know 

 as much as I thought I did. At that date I 

 had not opened a hive for a number of days, 

 but I thought I knew enough about bees on 

 general principles to know that when the 

 weather was so cold right along that seldom 

 a bee could leave the hive, increase would be 

 very slow if it did not cease altogether. But 

 when I opened the hives a few days later I 

 was agreeably surprised to find that to all 

 appearance matters had been progressing just 

 as if the bees had been hard at work on the 

 flowers every day. 8o my humble apologies 

 are hereby tendered the bees for underesti- 

 mating their ability to withstand adversity. 



Surprise No. 2 came when 1 found at this 

 later opening that some colonies were about 

 destitute of honey, although they had gone 

 into winter quarters heavy — very heavy — and 

 I had counted them safe till clover. Assuredly 

 they would have starved before that time if I 

 had not come to their assistance with solid 

 combs of honey, of which I had a good store. 

 C. C. Miller. 



The moral of all this is that bees will build 

 up under quite adverse conditions, if they 

 7iave tut abundant amount of stores in sight. 

 Something like this seems to be the case: 

 Take 3 colonies of equal strength in early 

 spring, the first with enough stores to last, if 

 economically used, till clover bloom, and the 

 second with 10 pounds more honey than the 

 first. At the opening of the clover harvest, 

 the one may be found just as much reduced 

 in stores as the other. But while alike in the 

 amount of stores, they are greatly different in 

 strength. The one has turned its extra 10 

 pounds of honey into bees, while the other 

 has seemed to feel it could not indulge in 



such expansion. Of course, the figures in 

 this supposed ease may never occur in actual 

 practise, but the principle illustrated is not 

 easy to dispute. 



The; Isle of Wight Bee-Disease 



The following note has been received at this 

 office, dated at Chicago, on June 10: 



Editor American Bee Journal; — I en- 

 close a cutting from a recent issue of the 

 London Daily Mail, describing a peculiar dis- 

 ease which has attacked bees in Great Britain, 

 as perhaps you may not have seen it; and I 

 should be glad to know if yOu have iiad any 

 experience with any such disease and can 

 account for it. Thomas Erskine, 



British Viee-ContncL 



The clipping is in part as follows: 



The ravages of the bee-disease in the Isle 

 of Wight are much worse than at first re- 

 ported, for among over 30 bee-keepers in dif- 

 ferent parts of the island, which a special 

 correspondent of the Daily Mail has inter- 

 viewed, he finds that 3 years ago they had an 

 average aggregate of :3'26 colonies, which are 

 now reduced to 2ii, while 14 of these are more 

 or less affected and are not expected to sur- 

 vive many weeks. In 15 cases the bee-keep- 

 ers have lost all their bees, and the array of 

 empty hives tells its own melancholy tale. 



The symptoms are that the bees in hun- 

 dreds — and where several colonies are kepi in 

 thousands — are found on a warm summer day 

 crawling upon the ground unable to fly. 

 When examined and dissected the intestine is 

 full of a bright yellow pollen, moist and 

 sticky. When the diseased bees sting, some 

 of this yellow matter is deposited with the 

 sting, and after the swelling has subsided the 

 flesh is stained yellow, as in yellow jaundice; 

 but in the case of a healthy bee the sting is 

 white, and the effect on the flesh is red. 



The article goes on to say that the sugges. 

 lions of the Board of Agriculture, " such as 

 requeening, disinfecting, spraying and feed- 

 ing, have already been tried without any 



beneficial effect," and then gives, as the best 

 treatment, the treatment for foul brood with 

 the addition of feeding salicylic acid and 

 boracic acid for two weeks. 



Considerable has been said in the Britieb 

 bee-papers about the matter, and at least one 

 continental bee-paper has called the disease 

 bee-paralysis. 



The case is no doubt bad enough, although 

 the newspaper account, as in most newspaper 

 accounts when bees are under discussion, 

 may not be entirely reliable. It is hard to 

 believe that a bee with life enough to sting 

 would deposit ''yellow matter" with the 

 sting, and a bee-keeper is somewhat puzzled 

 to be told that " in the case of a healthy bee 

 the sting is white." After reading that, he 

 is likely to have some question as to the rest 

 that may be said. 



However serious the case may have been, 

 no further loss can occur, since only 29 colo- 

 nies are left on the island, and one would 

 think that the surest way out would be to 

 destroy the 39 and begin again with a clean 

 bill of health. Little interest has been mani- 

 fested in the matter on this side, partly be- 

 cause so far away, and partly because of the 

 limited extent of the disease, the Isle of 

 Wight being less than a third as large as an 

 average county in Illinois. Yet if it should 

 turn out to be a new disease, more terrible 

 than any other yet known, it is well that we 

 should be informed about it in advance, for 

 bee-diseases have an insidious way of invad- 

 ing quite distant territory, no matter how 

 small the area originally affected. 



Does the Queen Consciously Fertilize 



Eggs? 



As a contribution to this unsettled problem 

 the following Stray Straw is given in Glean- 

 ings in Bee-Culture, page 754 ; 



I don't know whether worker-eggs are fer- 

 tilized by the will of the queen or automat- 

 ically. But I want to enter a protest against 

 what is generally considered as a knock- 

 down argument against the automatic theory. 

 It's given something like this : 



" The claim that the smaller size of the 

 worker-cell compresses the abdomen of the 

 queen, automatically fertilizing the eggs, is 

 shown to be groundless by the fact that, 

 when a queen lays eggs in worker-cells not 

 more than i,-inch deep, there can be no com- 



