1900 



GLEANINGS IN BEK CULTURE. 



605 



treated to the side apartment at the outset, 

 and there taken her abode with but a few of 

 the bees. But she was welcomed in the main 

 building when put there. Is it not strange 

 how soon queens may be accepted, even when 

 disturbed at times when we would expect them 

 to be killed? 



Anent your answer to " British Columbia," 

 on p. 151 of American Bee Journal, I have 

 tried similar methods, but have found them too 

 cumbersome. Once I caged a queen that way 

 with her attendant bees and hatching brood in 

 a colony just queenless. I put wire cloth over 

 a closed-end frame, making it bee proof; hence 

 it was practically the same way that B. C. de- 

 scribes. The next day I found that the queen, 

 like a little simpleton, had been too sociable 

 and confiding with the outside bees. She had 

 got on to the wire cloth facing them, and they 

 had dragged her legs through between the 

 meshes, and had held her in the grip of death- 

 ly determination till she was so exhausted and 

 devoid of vitalitj' that I had to kill her. 

 Would not such an experience have caused 

 some modification of your answer to B C, or 

 would you consider it only an exceptional 

 case ? 



I had an experience with bee-paralysis last 

 summer. The previous year a colony had it 

 badly, and it lasted through the winter and 

 spring, but disappeared in time for sage har- 

 vest in May, so they made some surplus. It 

 did not reappear with those bees, but else- 

 where. Colony No. 1, as I will call it, came 

 down with paralysis in July with a young 

 queen of their own rearing. The disease made 

 much headway. Colony No 2 began to show 

 slight signs of it considerably later. They 

 were not near each other. I destroyed the 

 queen of No. 1 and gave them one I had got 

 by mt il. She never laid an e^g, having prob- 

 ably been injured in the mails. After a time, 

 No. 2 becoming steadily worse, I transferred 

 queen from No. 2 to No. 1 , to give a queen to 

 No. 2 when she should arrive. But No. 1 con- 

 tinued to get worse. After some weeks I tried 

 the experiment of putting chloride of lime in 

 No. 1. It did no good, but two days later I 

 found the queen dead in front of the hive, 

 whether from paralysis or chloride of lime I 

 did not know. When a new queen from else- 

 where had been given No. 2, and her bees 

 were beginning to hatch, the disease among 

 the old ones had become so disastrous that I 

 felt something must be done. I put an empty 

 hive down on the stand, removing the old 

 hive so that only such bees as could fly should 

 get back to the stand. I took the hive with 

 the weak bees thus separated, and fumigated 

 it with sulphur. I then carefully hand-pick- 

 ed all that showed any signs of disease in the 

 colony that had got back to the old stand, and 

 put the remaining well ones back into the 

 original hive. For a while I thought I had 

 found the royal way to cure the trouble, but 

 before long it was as bad as ever. Then, as I 

 could not afford to risk the queen I had there- 

 in, I took all the combs out and again sulphur- 

 smoked them, and gave them with the queen 

 to a made up colony of healthy bees. I found 

 that the smoking didn't hurt the young bees 



in the capped cells a particle. I also united 

 the diseased bees of No. 2 and No. 1 in hive 

 No. 1, and gave them a hybrid queen I didn't 

 care about, just to experiment. The new col- 

 ony in hive No. 2 never showed a trace of dis- 

 ease. The united ones continued to tremble 

 and die off^ till the young bees had populated 

 the hive. At this time they have been long 

 free from any trace of trouble. Does this in- 

 dicate that queens free from disease will clear 

 a hive of trouble ? Does it also indicate that 

 a queen is not necessarily the one that perpet- 

 uates the trouble, since it disappeared from a 

 hive with the old queen and appeared in two 

 hives with 3'oung ones of their own rearing? 

 Do you think it was necessary to have fumi- 

 gated hive No. 2 before giving it and the queen 

 to a made-up colony of healthy bees? 

 Monterey, Cal., Mar. 14. 



[Dr. Miller replies :] 



My first experience with the Jones plan of 

 clipping was much like yours. I feared the 

 queen would twist off a leg. You used more 

 fingers, and succeeded ; I used no more fin- 

 gers, but more legs. I clipped a number in 

 that w-ay, and had no trouble so long as I held 

 two legs between the thumb and finger. 



Yes, I've tried clipping a wing while the 

 queen was on the comb, but it was never a 



USING THE COGGSHALL BEE-BRUSH. 



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