GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 15 



two look very much alike— so much so that, 

 in some cases, I find it necessary to submit 

 it to a bacteriolog-ist for determination. 

 Both black and pickled brood have a sort of 

 sour smell, more particularly the former, as 

 if it were a sort of ferment. Foul brood 

 shows the most marked symptoms of any 

 of the brood diseases. Thp cappings have 

 an appearance, in the adv^anced stages, 

 like that shown in Fig. 2. If a pinhead be 

 dipped in the dead matter, and drawn slowly 

 away, it will string out an inch or two from 

 the cells. I have known it to stretch two 

 or three inches, but rarely over one inch. 

 The odor is very much like that from a 

 cabinet-maker's glue- pot or a lot of dead 

 bees. Indeed, the stench from dead bees is 

 so nearly like that from foul brood that on 

 several occasions I have hunted around until 

 I found the source of the smell to be dead 

 bees and not that from the dreaded disease. 

 But not all dead bees will give off this stench. 

 Dry ones will not, while those in a warm 

 damp place will give off the sickening odor. 

 The color of the dead matter of foul brnod 

 varies all the way from a dark coffee color 

 without milk in it to a light coffee color 

 with milk in it. It may be dried like so 

 much glue, or in a gluey stringy state on one 

 side of the cell. It will not generally be 

 found in the bottom of the cell, as many 

 suppose. It looks very much like a cabinet- 

 maker's glue, and strings out in much the 

 same way when some object is dipped in it 

 and drawn slowly away from it. 



SWARMS OF BEES TAKING POSSESSION 

 OF BUILDINGS. 



How to Get them Out. 



BY E. R. ROOT. 



Every now and then I get a letter inquir- 

 ing how to get bees out from between the 

 clapboarding and plaster of a dwelling- 

 house. Sometimes the bees locate between 

 the two walls of pubHc buildings. Nay, 

 further, they even go so far as to domicil in 

 church steeples. Some days ago Mr. M. E. 

 Tribble, of Marshall, Mo., sent us a photo 

 of a swarm that had entered a cornice and 

 occupied the space between the rafters, the 

 plastering, and the shingles of a stone 

 church. The picture is here reproduced. 



That the colony was an enormous one is 

 shown by the two tubs of comb and honey. 

 From the looks of the roof that had been 

 torn away, the bees must have occupied 

 some six feet of one section of rafter, and 

 some two or three feet of the adjoining sec- 

 tions It was imDossible for them to get 

 into the stone wall and so they occupied the 

 next best place— the space immediately un- 

 der the shingles. Whether the trustees or 

 board of directors of the church authorized 

 some bee-keeper to go and tear away the 

 roof, taking out the bees, or not. is not told; 

 but in the absence of any specific statement 

 it may be assumed that some local bee- 

 keeper was engaged for such service. The 



A SWARM OF BEES THAT TOOK POSSESSION OF A CHURCH. 



