GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



with perhaps some to sell in almost any 

 year, and when the extra good seasons come 

 he will profit aocordinglj'. One item to be 

 considered is the increase in the number of 

 colonies. In an ordinary year each strong 

 colony will usually produce a swarm, or it 

 can be divided, thus making an extra colony, 

 which, in a good hive, will soon be worth 

 from five to eight dollars. 



Decide now that you will keep a few 

 colonies at least. If you have had no pre- 

 vious experience, do not start on too big a 

 scale, but let the increase of your bees and 

 your knowledge of them go hand in hand. 

 Many a promising beekeeper has made a 

 failure by yielding to the temptation to 

 l^urchase a good-sized apiary at a bargain 

 when he knew little or nothing about the 

 management of it. Five or six colonies will 

 usually be sufficient to begin with, and after 



experience is acquired, more bees can be 

 purcliased if the original stock does not 

 increase fast enough. 



Above all things, use only good, factory- 

 made hives of a standard size and style. A 

 miscellaneous lot of hives is considerable of 

 a nuisance in an apiary. Uniform liives will 

 be interchangeable, which is a great advan- 

 tage, as it frequently becomes necessary to 

 move them from one bottom-board to an- 

 other, or to sliift supers from one hive to 

 another. There is no economy in making 

 your own hives unless you are skilled in the 

 use of tools, and can get lumber cheaply, 

 and even then it will be better to buy the 

 fixtures required for the inside of the liives, 

 as they are made by machinery, and can be 

 produced in a factoi-y more cheaply than by 

 hand. 



San Antonio, Texas. 



HELPS AND HINDRANCES IN DEALING WITH FOUL BROOD 



BY J. W. STINE 



Read before the Iowa State Beekeepers' Association at Des Moines, Iowa, December 11 and 12. 



From the standpoint of a foul-brood 

 inspector I will try to line up briefly the 

 helps on one side in dealing with disease, 

 and the hindrances on the other, and to 

 come to some practical conclusion as to the 

 situation in southeastern Iowa the past sea- 

 son. The Bible says, " No man liveth to 

 himself, and no man dieth to himself." This 

 is as true in beekeeping as in any other line 

 of work. We are either a help or a hin- 

 drance to one another. This leads me to say 

 that I believe the beekeeper himself can be 

 either the greatest help or the greatest hin- 

 drance pertaining to the foul-brood situa- 

 tion. I quite agree with Mr. Pellett in what 

 he says in his article, page 856, Dec. 1. 



It is surprising how many we find Avho 

 know little about the inside of a hive, and 

 nothing at all of bee diseases. Tlien there 

 is the man who thinks he knows all there is 

 to be known about bees and is not willing 

 to learn. He is the hardest to convince. 

 One man whose bees we inspected last sum- 

 mer said he had known about foul brood for 

 25 or 30 years. But he let three colonies 

 die that we had marked diseased, failing to 

 treat them as we had requested. We had to 

 take extreme measures, much as we were 

 loath to do so, and burn one weak colony 

 that we knew would not winter, before he 

 would believe we meant to carr>' out the 

 letter of the law. This is the most extreme 

 case we have found, and as a rule we find 

 the beekeepers ready to get all the informa- 

 tion and help they can. 



We recall one other instance when we did 

 not see the owner, but the boys tried to pilot 

 us around through the blackberry bushes 

 and underbrush in the back yard and show 

 us the bees. The boys Avatched at a safe 

 distance, saying those Avere the Grossest and 

 blackest bees in nine counties. I proceeded 

 to give the bees a good smoking; and the 

 poor things, so unaccustomed to such a 

 thing as being handled at all, scurried up 

 among the combs in the old box, glad to find 

 a place of refuge in the furthest corner. I 

 lifted the box from its bottom-board and 

 found it had been placed on top of bees and 

 evergreen brush, and the poor little fellows 

 had to make their way through that brush 

 all summer to gain the inside of their home. 

 I gladly removed the brush, and placed the 

 box back on the bottom-board, and not one 

 of those little blacks offered any resistance — 

 but such a way to keep bees ! It is just 

 keeping them — it isn't caring for them. Not 

 a frame hive was in the whole bunch, and 

 the only way I could get a peep at their 

 brood was to tip the boxes up or break a 

 piece of comb out of the hive to examine it; 

 It is nearly impossible to do even this in 

 some cases, as the hives or boxes are nailed 

 to bottoms, and some are so badly decayed 

 that it is nearly impossible to handle. Thus 

 we find in this case, as in many others, the 

 man, the bees, and the hives are the gi'eatest 

 liindrances. 



One of the greatest helps we have found 

 is good foul-brood and quarantine laws 



