226 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



CONVERSATIONS with DOOLITTLE 



At Borodino, New York, 



THE FOUL BROODS ! 



" Have you read what Orel L. 

 Hershiser has to say about Euro- 

 pean and American foul brood, p. 

 11, January 1? If I understand 

 Mr. Hershiser he classes the Euro- 

 pean as the worse. I have not 

 found this to be so. To be sure, this disease 

 will spread in a colony more rapidly than 

 the American. But with two or three foul 

 cells of the American in any colony, that 

 colony is as surely doomed as if the num- 

 ber were five thousand. But I have had many 

 colonies with from 500 to 5000 foul cells of 

 the European kind that got entirely well 

 without any treatment whatever — not even 

 a change of queens. Then I claim that this 

 type of disease travels in a sort of epidemic 

 fashion like scarlet fever, measles, etc.; and 

 after it has once gone thru any section of 

 country that section is nearly or quite free 

 from this disease for quite a term of years." 

 I should hardly wish to lock horns with 

 so good an authority as 0. L. Hershiser; 

 but he seems to be uncertain of his ground 

 himself, in view of the testimony given by 

 the Dadants and Dr. Miller. He says that 

 if the Dadants are right " we are wasting 

 valuable time by employing the shaking and 

 brushing methods." And we are so wast- 

 ing, as well, if Dr. Miller is right. Right 

 here is something I have tried to get before 

 the beekeeping world for a long time. The 

 older readers of our bee-papers will remem- 

 ber that, thru the columns of the American 

 Bee Journal about a score of years ago, Mr. 

 Cheshire, a noted scientist in bee matters in 

 Europe, said that foul brood is not spread 

 thru the honey, as he had been unable to 

 find the bacilli of foul brood in the honey 

 of badly diseased colonies, but that such 

 bacilli are plentiful in the bodies of the 

 workers, and to quite an extent in the 

 queen. This was so contrary to the teach- 

 ings of our beloved Moses Quinby, and to 

 my experience also in curing my own api- 

 ary of foul brood in the '70s, that I wrote 

 an article for the American Bee Journal to 

 prove Cheshire wrong. 



Later on, our beekeepers in the eastern 

 part of this state were reporting a bee dis- 

 ease around Albany that they called " black 

 brood," and those ordering queens from 

 these parts would have nothing to do with 

 us unless we could prove that such disease 

 could not be found in our apiaries. I was 

 entirely ignorant in regard to this disease 

 until the A. T. Root Co. had their great 

 field meeting at Jenkintown. Then I learn- 



ed that black brood, now called European 

 foul brood, was Mr. Cheshire's foul brood. 

 Had Mr. Cheshire lived I would have gladly 

 made him an apology for writing as 1 did 

 in the American Bee Journal, as his foul 

 brood was not the kind Quinby and we 

 Americans had known. And now, after 

 many years of experimenting, I am just as 

 sure that Cheshire was right regarding 

 European foul brood as I have always been 

 that Mr. Quinby was right in saying that 

 American foul brood was spread thru the 

 honey. Therefore it has seemed little less 

 than "wicked to insist that the correct treat- 

 ment for European foul brood is the Quin- 

 by-McEvoy plan of shaking the bees and 

 confining them three days, then hiving them 

 on frames of comb foundation, thus bring- 

 ing a " mountain " of wasted labor on thou- 

 sands of apiarists. Scores of colonies hav- 

 ing European foul brood (some so bad that 

 half or more of the larvae were dead) get- 

 ting entirely well without any effort being 

 put forth toward curing them confirmed my 

 belief that the disease is not in the honey. 



To be absolutely sure, I conducted one 

 more experiment. Two years ago last spring 

 I got some bees ready for shipment that 

 were being sold to settle up an estate, and 

 in fixing them I found one colony that had 

 a large amount of honey left over in a 

 twelve-frame hive with six combs of brood, 

 two-thirds of which was dead and more or 

 less rotten from European foul brood. We 

 nevertheless had none of this disease in our 

 apiaries. I brought home the six combs of 

 honey from this colony and put them in a 

 hive with four empty combs from our store- 

 room. Then I shook a fairly good colony 

 on them. This was about May 20 — a time 

 when the European disease takes hold the 

 most rapidly. There was no sign of the 

 disease that season nor since. 



Now, Mr. Hershiser, please do not insist 

 that this disease is disseminated thru bees 

 having occasional access to honey shipped 

 to city markets; particles sticking to con- 

 tainers; garbage-cans or pieces thrown out 

 of car-windows, and diseased honey used 

 for queen-mailing cages. This is all right 

 for American foul brood, but cannot apply 

 to the European. 



Now about the epidemic matter : The fact 

 that this disease first obtained a foothold in 

 this locality about twelve years ago, no one 

 knowing whence it came, attained its height 

 about five years later, grew less during the 

 next three or four years, and then disap- 

 peared, makes this seem reasonable. 



