JUNE 15, 1916 



4l9 



the major part of Pennsylvania show a 

 deficiency of lime. This is also (rue of 

 Massachusetts where very little white-clover 

 honey is produced. Progressive farmers are 

 learning that by applying lime they can 

 grow white clover and produce honey to 

 the same extent as did their grandfathers. 



There is no more important or interesting 

 subject to the beekeepers of " the white- 

 clover belt " than the life history of white 

 clover and its problems. The plant is prop- 

 agated both by seeds and runners which 

 root at the nodes and finally become inde- 

 pendent stocks. As in the case of the straw- 

 berry, a single plant may in a favorable 

 season cover with its runners a circle of 

 ground one or two feet in diameter. If 

 these new plants winter uninjured they will 



bloom the following season in the same 

 manner as strawberry-runners. The older 

 plants, as is again true of the strawberry, 

 exhausted by multiplying both sexually and 

 vegetatively, are easily killed by drouth or 

 cold. When the ground is densely covered 

 with an old gi'owth there will be little op- 

 portunity for runners to root or seed to 

 germinate; hence there may come years 

 when there are few new plants to bloom. 



White clover seeded in the spring will 

 produce, if there is sufficient rain, a heavy 

 crop of bloom in July and a fair amount of 

 seed. Much depends upon locality. Clover 

 raised from seed is more valuable for nectar 

 the second season than during the first, but 

 after that it begins to decline in vigor and 

 to yield less honey. 



EUROPEAN FOUL BROOD; PREVENTION AND CURE 



Why Italians are Practically Immune. A Lemonade Cure 



BY ALLEN LATHAM 



European foul brood is caused by a germ ; 

 but this germ is not spread, as most people 

 tliink, by its presence in honey, but rather 

 by the bees themselves. Such a statement 

 is difficult to prove, but no other theory, so 

 far as the writer knows, will account for 

 facts observed. 



A colony may contract the disease thru 

 contaminated honey, and possibly a great 

 many cases arise thru this cause. If a colo- 

 ny dies of this disease, and is then robbed 

 out, there is little doubt that the robber- 

 colony may contract the disease. But after 

 the disease once gets a footing in an apiary, 

 its spread there is due to other causes. 



An inspector once told the writer that, 

 because of the congested condition of his 

 apiary, he would have the time of his life if 

 foul brood once got a footing. In clearer 

 words, he gave me to understand that if one 

 colony got it the adjacent colonies would 

 soon get it, and that it would spread thus 

 thru the entire apiary. When the disease 

 did come the results were peculiarly con- 

 trary. My colonies are in pairs, and the 

 pairs are scarcely two feet apart; but there 

 were comparatively few instances in Avhich 

 both colonies of a pair had the disease, and 

 there was absolutely no indication that the 

 disease had spread bv moving from colony 

 to colony. Instead new cases would spring 

 up in entirely different parts of the apiary. 



This fact gave rise to tlie following rea- 

 soning: Since the disease does not travel by 

 mixing of bees, nor by robbing, how can it 

 travel? At just this point a happening 



brought the explanation. At that time there 

 were three or four cases in the apiary, well 

 under conti'ol. For several days the bees 

 had been kept in by cold winds and cloudy 

 weather. The weather cleared in the night, 

 and there came a heavy dew with fog. As 

 the fog in the morning hours cleared, the 

 bees flew by thousands, all eager for water. 

 One could scarcely step on the grass with- 

 out killing a bee, for they were sucking up 

 the dew at a rate I never observed before. 

 Within a fortnight European foul brood 

 appeared in about a dozen more colonies. 

 I could see but one explanation — namely, 

 in sucking up the dew, the germs of the 

 disease, there from the droppings of nurse- 

 bees, found their way into several colonies. 



This conclusion immediately suggested 

 the advisability of sprinkling the grass in 

 the immediate vicinity of the apiary with a 

 weak solution of carbolic acid in oi'der to 

 repel the bees while in search of water. If 

 made to go further in their quest for water, 

 there would be a greath' lessened likelihood 

 that disease germs would be gathered up 

 with the water. I would urge every one 

 this spring who finds an outbreak of this 

 disease in his apiary to practice this control 

 measure and report results. 



From this the writer was led to study the 

 spread of the disease in the colony itself. 

 Incidentally he found why Italians are 

 practically immune while blacks are not. 

 At first in a colony only one larva (or at 

 least a very few) is diseased. It is perfectly 

 reasonable to assume that a single germ 



