1905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



77 



driving of snow will be reduced to a mini- 

 mum, is universal in its adjustments. 

 Buffalo, N. Y. 



[Mr. Hershiser showed me this combined 

 bottom-board and hive-stand at the St. Louis 

 convention. I was convinced then, and am 

 still of the opinion, that there are some good 

 features about it. Whether bee-keepers will 

 be willing to pay the extra expense of a de- 

 vice of this kind I can not say. Mr. Her- 

 shiser feels that it will more than make up 

 for the extra cost in the saving of bees in 

 the cellar, besides the general convenience 

 in outdoor manipulations. He may be right. 

 Besides the question of expense there is one 

 objection, and I am afraid it is a serious one; 

 and that is, the movable floor-board. Two 

 years ago we put out the Danzenbaker bot- 

 tom-board that had a floor that was tilting. 

 It could be lowered much the same as the 

 floor in the Hershiser device, except that it 

 did not have the same range of movement. 

 We were compelled to take the device off 

 the market, for the reason that the bees 

 would propolize the points of contact, mak- 

 ing it almost impossible to move the board 

 up and down; and I see no reason why Mr. 

 Hershiser would not have just the same 

 trouble that some of our customers had. 

 The Root Co. received, and justly, too, more 

 or less complaints that the bottom-board 

 was not movable. The boards would swell 

 so tight as to render the floor as fast and se- 

 cure as if it had been nailed. To overcome 

 this objection we made new floor-boards 

 with the grain running crosswise, in such a 

 way that the expansion and contraction of 

 the wood would not interfere with the up- 

 and-down movement of the board. While 

 that overcomes this trouble of shrinking and 

 swelling, we could not surmount the difficul- 

 ty of propolis gluing the board fast, or so 

 securely as to make its movement up and 

 down very difficult and unsatisfactory. 



I feel sure of this : That the boards in the 

 floor will have to be run the other way to. 

 Then the only difficulty will be that of 

 propolis, providing always that the work- 

 rnanship is perfect. Aside from this one 

 difficulty there are features about this bot- 

 tom-board that we feel sure are good, un- 

 less, perchance, it is bad practice to shut 

 bees within a hive. It used to be said that 

 they should never be shut in. I presume 

 that is true with the ordinary entrance and 

 bottom-board; but in the case of the Her- 

 shiser the matter may be very different.— 

 Ed.] 



»««« 



THE FOUL-BROOD PLAGUE. 



The Five-banders Much More Subject to the 

 Disease. 



BY C. E. WOODWARD. 



I have read and reread Mr. C. F. Bender's 

 article on page 1110, Dec. 1, concerning the 

 foul-brood plague, with much interest ; and 

 while I have had much experience with the 

 disease here in the tropics, although I have 



never found out or heard that the introduc- 

 tion of new queens does ever effect a cure, 

 it is a fact that the yellow beauties, or, as 

 some call them, five-banders, are very much 

 more subject to all diseases than are the 

 blacks or three-banded Italians. Three 

 years ago I found in my home apiary, con- 

 sisting of 400 colonies, in every case when a 

 colony was struck with this plague it was. 

 sure to be one of my very yellow stocks. 

 Now, there never was and never will be an 

 effect without a cause. I know the doctor 

 will scratch his head, and say, "Look out, 

 young man, or I will trip you up with one of 

 my Stray Straws." But, doctor, I'm on ta 

 you as big as a cart-wheel. All who have had 

 experience with this yellow strain of bees 

 know very well what their propensity is to 

 rob; hence the rapid increase of the disease. 



I confess I like and prefer those yellow 

 beauties; but to tell the truth I've had to 

 dispose of them for this one fault. An old 

 priest told me, while he was at my apiary, 

 that he kept bees long before the war, and 

 he sent to a queen-breeder in the United 

 States and bought some Italians, and after 

 a while they all got sick and died. I am 

 pretty sure that it was the foul-brood plague 

 that killed the old man's bees, as the natives 

 here in Cuba at that time did not understand 

 the treatment of the disease, and, in fact, 

 they do not understand it very much better 

 at the present day. 



Mr. Bender seems to think that the plague 

 generated in his own apiary. But I feel 

 sure it did not, nor will he effect a perma- 

 nent cure by introduction of new queens. I 

 have cured a good many cases by taking 

 away all the brood and leaving all the rest 

 of the combs with the bees, but not in all 

 cases does this work ; neither do I trust to 

 fumigating with formaldehyde or drugs of 

 any kind. 



I condemned medicated syrups and all the 

 drugs a long time ago. The treatment of 

 foul brood is no drama. But let me say to 

 Mr. Bender that simply keeping pure Ital- 

 ians will not by any means avert further 

 destruction. If the cause has not been re- 

 moved, and all infection from said colonies, 

 the disease will in due time reappear. 



HOW THE DISEASE IS SPREAD. 



I had noticed that, whenever a colony had 

 become diseased with this plague, there 

 were sure to be three or four colonies very 

 near this one diseased colony; and then, 

 perhaps, away back somewhere in the apiary 

 there would be five or six more diseased. 

 This I found to be brought about by the 

 field workers from the diseased colonies 

 coming in loaded with honey, which were 

 quite apt to make a mistake and get into 

 the neighbors' hives, and, of course, there 

 would be no kick on the part of the diseased 

 bee from the other hive, because it had a 

 load of honey with it, so it was permitted 

 to come in and give the new honey to the 

 young brood, and, of course, in due time 

 disease was completing its work. Here in 

 the tropics the apiaries should be requeened 

 and recombed every three years to insure 



