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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



August, 1922 



Are Honey-houses Ever Bee-tight? 



Not long ago an old German beekeeper 

 was observed sitting motionless on an empty 

 hive, eyeing his bee-house closely while puff- 

 ing at his pipe. When there appeared to be 

 no sign of life in his figure, a friend came 

 up and inquired what he was thinking about. 

 It developed that the building was full of 

 bees and he was trying to see how they 

 were getting in. The storage room had ar- 

 rangements for heating, and it was later 

 discovered that the stovepipe offered so 

 large an entrance that a good-sized honey 

 crop could all have been removed by the 

 bees in a short time if they had found as 

 convenient an exit. 



In some cases there is a missing window 

 pane in the bee-house or a half-inch crack 

 in the siding. Even if the building itself is 

 tight, enough bees can come in with the 

 proprietor, as he carries supplies back and 

 forth, to cause all sorts of trouble. The 

 placing of a few bee-escapes in the corners 

 of the windows is a common arrangement 

 and a good one in the absence of disease. 



In the office we have a proverb which is 

 the basis of one of the ten' commandments 

 of foul brood control. It is, "There is no 

 bee-tight honey-house." Even if we should 

 equip one with a vestibule, arranged so the 

 inner door could not be opened unless the 

 outer one was closed, we should probably 

 neglect an entrance somewhere else, large 

 enough to admit a cat, to say nothing of a 

 few bees. 



The storage of infected material in the 

 honey-house is one of the largest factors in 

 maintaining diseased yards. It provides a 

 source of continuous infection as serious as 

 keeping the carcass of a cholera-killed hog 

 in the barn, or tying a mad dog with a 

 string. As long as diseased honey exists 

 anywhere, it is a menace to every apiary 

 within reach. 



Permitting old comb, on which colonies 

 have died, to remain outdoors for months is 

 another common form of criminal careless- 

 ness. Sometimes the owners are members of 

 beekeepers' societies, readers of bee jour- 

 nals, so experienced in bee-disease control 

 that they had treated infected colonies an- 

 nually for from five to thirty years! This 

 past summer inspectors have cleaned up four 

 such cases, including hundreds of hives and 

 thousands of frames and extracting-combs. 

 Every week the rain would soak up a few 

 scales of American foul brood in the old 

 comb, and a few stray bees, attracted by 

 the odor, would carry a few bacilli to a for- 

 merly healthy colony. Every year some 

 neighbor would try to "keep a hive of bees 

 or two" and would soon give it up "be- 

 cause they didn't do well." 



Tt would be interesting to take a vote of 

 the readers of this paper and ask, "How 

 many have infected material stored in a 

 'bee-tight' honey-house V" "How many 

 have fragments of old comb in the old 

 weathered hives behind the barn?" "How 

 many, last August, had hives containing 



infected comb piled in the woodshed, stand- 

 ing bee-tight until Johnny came in one day 

 and pushed over the pile?" 



If we want to reduce taxes, as we all do, 

 let us first cut off the toll we are paying to 

 the foul brood germ. Bacillus larvae. Twen- 

 ty-seven commercial beekeepers have stop- 

 jjed the payment of that tax in Wisconsin 

 counties by carefully treating the bees and 

 destroying infected material. Forty-seven 

 have accomplished the same result by de- 

 stroying both infected bees and material. 

 But 59 real honey producers are still paying 

 that same tax in those same counties be- 

 cause of the points that are forgotten when 

 treatment is applied, namely (1) that bees 

 like infected honey if they can reach it; (2) 

 that they can crawl through a space a quar- 

 ter of an inch across; or (3) that the cause 

 of di-sease is a germ which may be lurking 

 in the most microscopic drops of honey. 



The Area Clean-up Plan in Wisconsin. 

 Just a word in conclusion in the way of 

 a progress report. The spotted, one-county 

 area campaigns are beginning to take a co- 

 lierent form, and the entire eastern part of 

 the state from Milwaukee and Madison to 

 upper Michigan, except Ozaukee and Wash- 

 ington counties, is now being covered. Six 

 counties in this area seem to have no Ameri- 

 can foul brood at the present time and five 

 more have only an occasional colony show- 

 ing disease. In the remainder, where losses 

 from American foul brood approached the 

 nature of a conflagration three years ago, 

 the problem in all but one or two counties 

 has reduced itself to one of discovering and 

 putting out the remaining sparks. 



Eradicating the last cases is proving a 

 difficult task. When only one colony in two 

 hundred is infected, locating and cleaning 

 it up without causing new infections re- 

 quire careful work. The beekeepers every- 

 where are giving excellent support — particu- 

 larly the one-colony "bee owners" ' — and the 

 unpleasant reception inspectors used to meet 

 from irate housewives has become a rare oc- 

 currence. 



In Fond du Lac and Dodge counties work 

 was begun this year and plenty of infections 

 (472 colonies) found. In Dodge County two- 

 thirds of all the inspected yards showed 

 American foul brood. Neither county was 

 completely covered even once, but the sur- 

 vey will be finished next season.- 



The older clean-up areas are still showing 

 a few cases of disease but they are de- 

 stroyed as fast as discovered. In Jefferson 

 County such was the fate this year of three 

 per cent of the colonies inspected. Some 

 other counties showed the following percent- 

 ages: Langlade 2%%, Sheboygan 5%, 

 Marathon 3/5%, Milwaukee 4%, Winne- 

 bago 3%. 



In all the counties named only the in- 

 fected parts were surveyed and the percent- 

 ages would be much lower if we included all 

 the bees in the county. Over 10% of the 

 colonies in the vicinity of Madison and 



