828 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 15. 



vested with less labor and expense ; 2. Better 

 prices in proportion to those obtained for comb 

 honey ; 3. Not so liable to deteriorate ; 4. Can 

 be handled better, and shipped to foreign mar- 

 kets without risk of damage ; 5. Less expense 

 for market packages ; 6. The market is not so 

 easily glutted with extracted honey. 

 U, 

 To keep sections of honey nice and clean, 

 Binni adopted the following plan : He pur- 

 chased at the printer's some common white 

 news paper. He had it cut into pieces 12)4 X 

 8 inches. In these papers he had his sections 

 wrapped. As fast as one assistant took a sec- 

 tion out of the super and scraped the propolis 

 off it carefully, another would wrap it in one 

 of those papers and place it in a box made to 

 hold a certain number exactly. He had these 

 cases made to hold 1 dozen, 2 dozen, 6 dozen, 

 and a gross. When the lids were screwed 

 down the sections were safe, he thought, till 

 doomsday. 



FOUL AND OTHER FORMS OF DISEASED BROOD 

 IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 



BY N. D. WEST. 



Mr. Root: — I believe you are taking the 

 right view of the matter pertaining to our dis- 

 eased brood which has caused us so much 

 trouble. We have, I think, more than one 

 kind of disease on the ground, arid yet there 

 seems to be a tracing from what I have called 

 pickled brood, all the way along from bad to 

 worse, and in different stages, until at last it 

 so closely resembles foul brood that it is diffi- 

 cult to draw the line between this and the 

 genuine foul brood, although some of the 

 dead brood will be found, at times, to be 

 flattened down into the cell, and will be about 

 the color of white glue, and will, when a 

 toothpick is placed in it, draw out from its 

 cell from )4 to % of an inch. But you have 

 to hold the toothpick with an object in view, 

 and try to get it to string out or it will not 

 follow the toothpick at all. Some of this be- 

 comes coffee-colored, and is rotten in the cell, 

 and will string out some, but it will not break 

 and spring back like rubber ; neither do the 

 combs, when held close to the nose, give off 

 that offensive and sickening odor that I get 

 from what I call the old-time foul brood. The 

 hive, when opened, or a comb held close to 

 one's nose, will give a kind of sour smell, or 

 odor ; but one of these coffee-colored, rotten 

 brood, when removed from the cell and held 

 close to the nose, will have a sort of rotten 

 smell only. But take a hive full of brood, 

 three-fourths of it good brood and one fourth 

 of it bad brood, as described above, and place 

 it on top of a pretty good swarm to hatch ; 

 place a queen-excluding zinc between the 

 hives, and keep the queen below, and in due 



time the brood above the excluder will all be 

 hatched out, and all of the bad brood will be 

 cleaned out of the combs, and no more trace 

 of the bad brood is seen in these hives that 

 season. This has been my own experience in 

 my own apiaries this season, and these col- 

 onies in the lower hives were slightly affected, 

 as well as the brood placed on top of the col- 

 onies. 



Take notice that these colonies are all made 

 very strong, and now have a good lot of young 

 bees as well as old ones ; and remember that 

 the hatching of so many of these young bees 

 seems to encourage and give more energy to 

 the bees. They go right to work and clean 

 house. I remember that, after this, we had 

 some honey in the field, and somehow these 

 colonies have kept their combs clear from dis- 

 eased brood, and were the first ones to clean 

 up of themselves. 



Again, I have noticed that, in apiaries where 

 large hives are used, and plenty of honey was 

 in the hives at all times, the bees suffer less 

 than those in smaller hives, and which are 

 rather short of honey. 



Again, not. until about the middle of our 

 fruit-bloom did the bees show so very much 

 of the diseased brood ; and at this time, and 

 after this up to the time that the red raspber- 

 ry was ripe, it seemed as if whole apiaries in 

 some places were struck with this disease al- 

 most like a potato-blight, and yet I could 

 generally trace some reason why it might oc- 

 cur by being carried by bees in robbing col- 

 onies, and in mixing up in the same yard, etc. 

 All yards were not affected alike, while some 

 were slightly or badly affected in each hive in 

 the yard. In other yards, only a few, swarms 

 would be affected, all sitting in one row, or at 

 one end or corner of the yard only. So far as 

 I have observed, where I have reason to be- 

 lieve apiaries have not been affected until the 

 past season, they did not show very much 

 dead, rotten, coffee-colored brood until the 

 first of July, and more of it later in the same 

 month. 



In half of the cases where bees have been 

 shaken by the McEvoy plan, which seems to 

 be the most reliable method I know of, the 

 disease has started up again ; but where the 

 colonies have been strong, and the work done 

 when there was a fresh supply of honey com- 

 ing in from the field, the results have been 

 very good. Colonies that have passed a cer- 

 tain medium in the early season, and nothing 

 done to help them, went from bad to worse ; 

 but I did notice that, when we had a t"ree- 

 days' basswood flow of honey, although but 

 very little was gathered, the bees commenced 

 to clean the dead brood from their combs, and 

 I believe that this new honey is what helped 

 the bees to hatch more good brood again. 

 But after this there appeared to be a scarcity 

 of honey in the field again, and diseased 

 brood again became more prevalent. 



But, again, when buckwheat began to blos- 

 so"-, the bees again commenced to clean up 

 their combs, and the stronger colonies gave 

 more good brood again ; and from that time 

 until now there is but very little if any of the 

 diseased brood that can be found only in 



