134 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Feb. 15. 



tent observer, where the progeny of one queen, 

 after she had raised one litter of bees, so to 

 speak, would be changed in the next or any 

 subsequent litter. I do not believe it has ever 

 happened ; that is to say, when the act of 

 copulation has been fully accomplished, and 

 the queen begins laying, she does not, in my 

 humble opinion, ever meet the drone again. 

 —Ed.] 



««»»« 



INSPECTOR'S OF APIARIES REPORT. 



Foul Brood in Canada Nine Years Ago and Now; 

 Good Work Done. 



BY WM. m'evoy. 



During 1899 I visited bee-yards in the coun- 

 ties of Haldimand, Norfolk, Middlesex, Ox- 

 ford, Brant, Wentworth, Lincoln, Wellington, 

 Halton, Peel, York, Ontario, and Simcoe. I 

 inspected 126 apiaries, and found foul brood 

 in 47 of ihem. 



In places where I had never been before is 

 where I found nine-tenths of the foul-broody 

 apiaries the past season, and over three-fourths 

 of the owners of these diseased apiaries did 

 not know that their colonies had foul brood 

 when I first visited them. 



I took the greatest of pains to explain to the 

 bee-keepers how to manage the business so as 

 to have every colony a good strong one, and 

 in fine condition when they were cured of the 

 disease. 



In looking back over the nine years that I 

 have inspected the apiaries in the Province of 

 Ontario I noticed that I had found foul brood 

 very widely spread through 30 counties. I 

 succeeded in getting thousands of foul-broody 

 colonies cured and the disease driven out by 

 wholesale, and peaceful settlements made in 

 every case where diseased stocks were sold 

 through mistakes of the parties selling, not 

 knowing of their colonies being diseased at the 

 time of sale. 



Nine years ago very few among those who 

 kept bees then were able to tell the disease 

 from other kinds of dead brood, and not over 

 half a dozen men in Ontario could cure an api- 

 ary of foul brood, and end the season with 

 every colony in first class order. The instruc- 

 tions that I gave while on my rounds through 

 the Province, and the driving-out of the dis- 

 ease by wholesale, will make Ontario one of 

 the safest places in the world to keep bees in. 



Mr. F. A. Gemmill, of S'ratford, Ont., isthe 

 man who deserves the credit for all the work 

 that I have done, and the government of our 

 country that has paid for it. 



In 1890 Mr. Gemmill took hold and worked 

 hard until he got the foul-brood act passed 

 which has proved to be a great benefit to hun- 

 dreds of bee-keepers. 



I am greatly pleased with the way the bee- 

 keepers took hold in the past season and cured 

 these apiaries of foul brood. 



Where I found a few worthless colonies al- 

 most dead from the disease late in the fall 

 (and near fine sound apiaries) I burned them. 



The total number that I burned in the Prov- 

 ince was 20 colonies, after the owners and I 

 had reasoned out things nicely together. 



For the courteous and very generous way 

 that I have been treated by the bee-keepers of 

 every locality that I went into I return to 

 them my most heartfelt thanks. 



Woodburn, Ont., Can., Dec. 4. 



[If it had not been for the foul-brood law 

 that was enacted some time ago in Canada, 

 and for an efficient foul-brood inspector to 

 carry out its provisions, there is a possibility 

 that bee-keeping in Canada might have been 

 almost entirely wiped out. But how did foul 

 brood get so fearful a start ? I have been told 

 that a bee-keeper who conducted quite a large 

 business in selling bees years ago said that 

 foul brood was not to be feared, and was not 

 as careful as he might have been to ship en- 

 tirely healthy stock. The result was, that the 

 disease got scattered all over the country. 

 However that may be, not only the bee-keep- 

 ers of Canada but of the United States owe 

 Wm. McEvoy a vote of thanks, even if he has 

 been paid for doing his work ; for one less 

 tactful and less skillful than he would have 

 been able to accomplish much less than he has 

 done.— Ed.] 



?^nV?«5 



SMAI^L BROOD-CHAMBERS. 



A reader of Gleanings, living at Miami, 

 Ohio, seems to have some trouble in grasping 

 the thoughts I put on paper on page 49 of the 

 January 15tli issue, so with the permission of 

 the editor I propose to have a little conversa- 

 tion with him by formulating what apparent- 

 ly is in his mind into questions, and have a lit- 

 tle talk with him, just as I should expect we 

 would talk were he here before me, and we 

 talking face to face. 



" Mr. Doolittle, ycju say on page 49 that you 

 started with the Gallup hive holding 12 frames 

 and changed to one holding but 9 frames. 

 What were the first things that led you to make 

 this change? " 



" I hived first or prime swarms in these 

 hives, waited a week or so, as the books told 

 me to do, and then put on the surplus arrange- 

 ment for comb honey. At the end of the 

 white-honey harvest I had little honey in the 

 sections, but found three or four of the out- 

 side combs on each side of the hive nearly 

 solid full of sealed honey, one or two of out- 

 side ones on either side showing, by looking 

 through them, that they had never had even 

 one cell of brood in tbem, and very little pol- 

 len." 



"Well, was not that a good condition for 

 the colony to be in at the close of the harvest ? 

 Mr. Aikin and others are telling us that such 

 a state of affairs insures good conditions dur- 

 ing the winter, and is just the thing for large 

 quantities of brood in the spring, as, with 

 plenty of honey in the hive, the bees will not 

 restrict brood-rearing from fear of running 

 short of stores." 



