480 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 1. 



May. There were many hatching bees, and 

 brood in three to five combs. The bees just 

 vanished, and were nowhere to be seen. If 

 they had died in or about the hive, possibly we 

 might have found out what was the matter; 

 but they seemed to evaporate, hence I have 

 called it " evaporation." The trouble this time 

 was more sweeping and disastrous than in my 

 experience in the spring of 1891. The loss of 

 bees was so complete that many colonies had 

 not half a teacupful of bees left, where, less 

 than a week before, they covered brood in three 

 combs and upward. The queens, it seems, 

 were always left; but the workers so complete- 

 ly evaporated that the brood perished. The 

 Rauchfuss Brothers reported they had over 300 

 colonies, and there were not enough bees left to 

 make 25 good ones. All apiaries were not alike 

 affected — that is, to the same extent. I saw 

 but one of the apiaries affected (the malady did 

 not extend to my territory), and that was a few 

 colonies that Mr. W. L. Porter had in North 

 Denver. Those few colonies had three to five 

 times more brood than they could care for. In 

 fact, they were so very weak that it was only 

 the most favorable weather that would enable 

 them to pull through, and this was about the 

 second week of June. 



As I said of the experience I had in 1891, 

 many said it was high winds. Others said it 

 was the smelter smoke that killed them. It 

 was just as windy at Loveland, and in badly 

 affected districts protected apiaries were as bad 

 off as unprotected ones. Then, too, it hit hard 

 where the smelter smoke did not go, and places 

 it did go were "O. K." It seems that it could 

 not be accounted for by fruit-bloom spraying, 

 either, though it occurred about that time. It 

 remains yet a complete mystery. Should it 

 strike a whole State as-it struck Denver last 

 year, the consequences would be almost anni- 

 hilation of the bee-business. I hope our Colo- 

 rado apiarists will be on the lookout this year 

 to watch the trouble if it should appear. 



Later. — Since writing the above the Colorado 

 State Association has had another meeting. I 

 understand the new disease, or whatever it is, 

 was largely discussed, but I believe without 

 any definite results. Paralysis has been more or 

 less in Colorado, but I can not think this trouble 

 is the same. I have several times had some 

 loss of bees in May, especially if there came a 

 cold rainstorm. Bees would bloat, and crawl 

 out and die about the yard, many getting from 

 twenty to thirty feet from the hive, jumping 

 and hopping in their effort to fly. Some call 

 this " May sickness." It comes about the time 

 of apple-bloom. I had one colony that was 

 afflicted in this way last year, and it did not 

 get over it for a number of weeks. 



Before this is published I may possibly learn 

 more of these matters. I hope to see many of 

 the apiarists in Colorado in April and May— at 



least by May; and as I shall be going by wagon 

 I shall have some opportunity to gather in- 

 formation. 

 Loveland, Colo. 



[What you have described does indeed seem 

 to be a new sort of disease— at least I never 

 heard of it before, or at all events where the 

 malady seemed to be so destructive and far- 

 reaching. At two different seasons in our own 

 apiary we noted quite a loss of the workers. 

 Examination of the grounds showed that hun- 

 dreds and almost thousands of workers with 

 defective wings were flying about, and crawl- 

 ing up blades of grass. The bees were not 

 bloated nor distended, and were apparently per- 

 fect in every respect save the wings. I believe 

 I am quite familiar with bee-paralysis, and I 

 feel very certain that it is nothing of this or- 

 der. It is possible that what I have described 

 was a milder form of what appeared about 

 Denver. In our own case we could scarcely ac- 

 count for the trouble— at least, why the wings 

 of the bees should be defective. It is possible 

 that a peculiar kind of flora tore the wings as 

 the bees went in and out of the blossom in quest 

 of honey or pollen. I should be glad to have 

 our readers report any similar cases that may 

 have come under their notice. By comparing 

 notes we may be able to determine what the 

 trouble is.— Ed.] 



RULES FOR GRADING HONEY. 



the impeefections of the accepted gbad- 

 ing; criticisms and suggestions. 



By J. K. Crane. 



On page 157 of Gleanings, W. A. H. Gilstrap 

 says, '"I never heard of a half-crop of honey in 

 this valley that was actually water-white, or 

 that had sections actually unsoiled by bees. I 

 hope grading-rules will not be among the im- 

 possibilities next season." I have underscored 

 the !last 'sentence in this quotation, fiand will 

 use it asoa text for a short discussion of^ that 

 already much-discussed subject, Orading.\ 

 nThe bee-keeperscof this country were two or 

 moreryears' in discussing and making rules for 

 grading; and now we have had two or more 

 years in which to practice these rules; and our 

 bee-journals have certainly done their duty in 

 trying to enforce them or bring them into gen- 

 eral use. May it not be well, before another 

 crop is gathered, to inquire what have been the 

 results, what the advantages to bee-keepers, 

 what the defects, if any, in those rules? And 

 yet very few, I fear, will care to stand up and 

 express their dissatisfaction, however they may 

 feel, with these rules adopted by the assembled 

 wisdom of the American International Bee- 

 keepers' Association; yet Mr. Gilstrap gives us 

 to understand that those grading-rules are 

 among the impossibilities. He does not say 

 they are impossibilities, but hopes rules will be 

 adopted that are not impossibilities. 



For one I should like to know how many bee- 

 keepers have tried to grade exactly by those 

 rules, and their success. How many dealers 



