1905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1073' 



romerilla bloom, not only is the honey dark 

 when gathered, but the comb built at that 

 time is yellow. I have seen combs built on 

 the south coast that were a bright-red color 

 (as was the honey that was being gathered 

 at that time. As to queen-excluders, when 

 the extra-fine honey of Cuba is being gath- 

 ered (from the bellflower) there is no need 

 of an excluder to keep the queen from laying 

 in the supers. The trouble is, to get any 

 brood at all. I have gone through colony 

 after colony, and found only three or four 

 frames to the hive that had eggs in them. 



When a colony that is not extra strong has 

 on an excluder, what does it do under those 

 conditions? What happened two years ago 

 was that they blocked up the holes in the 

 excluder and did not worry about going into 

 the super. 



As to his next point, cutting out all of the 

 combs and having them built new, ye bee- 

 keepers of Cuba, cut out all of your super 

 combs just as the white bellflower is at its 

 height (and the nights so cold that the bees 

 can not make comb honey in sections). Just 

 think of all the honey and wax you would 

 get, and such nice honey too! 



Again, as to cutting out the combs and 

 hanging them up in muslin bags, I have un- 

 capped between 9 o'clock and 4:30 enough 

 combs to make 300 gallons of honey. Now, 

 how many muslin bags, and tanks to catch 

 the drip, not counting the room you would 

 need to work in, or the time spent in wait- 

 ing for the honey to drain, would be needed 

 by this method? Say a muslin sack would 

 hold 50 pounds of the mashed combs. There 

 would be needed to handle 300 gallons just 

 about 80 muslin bags. Then what would be 

 the cost of making tanks to catch the drip? 

 Yes, Mr. Morrison, I think it would be best 

 to go clear back to the first principles, and 

 produce your honey, ' ' la Cubana con los 

 cajas creolla. " 



Now for the last statement. Bee- escapes 

 pave the way for easier labors. Perhaps it 

 would be a good thing to ask that practical 

 bee-keeper, W. L. Coggshall, if he had three 

 or four hundred gallons to take oft' a day 

 would he use bee- escapes? 



Casanovia, Cuba, June 26. 



FOUL BROOD IN APIARIES RUN FOR EX- 

 TRACTED HONEY. 



The Use of Queen-excluding Zinc Helps to 

 Keep Down the Disease. 



BY ELMER TODD. 



[In order that the reader may fully understand the 

 article which follows, which is a rejoiner to Mr. J. A. 

 Green, it is, perhaps, well to state that Elmer Todd, on 

 page 140 of the Bee-keepers' Review for May, stated 

 that, in his opinion, it was perfectly safe to extract 

 from the upper story of a colony containing only a few 

 cells of foul brood, providing a perforated zinc separat- 

 ed the upper story from the lower; but he emphasized 

 the importance of using no combs from the lower story 

 of diseased or dead colonies, or such as may contain the 

 dried-down scales of the dead matter. Mr. J. A. Green, 

 in this journal, on page 807, stated that, while it was 

 doubtless true that a large proportion of the honey in 

 the upper story of a diseased colony was not infected, 

 he did not think it would be safe to depend on any of it 



being incapable of conveying disease. He then quoted 

 Doolittle as saying that a good deal of honey in store 

 combs had first been put in brood-combs below and car- 

 ried above; and then added that he was sorry to see 

 such things published, because most ' people were too 

 ready to take chances. Mr. Todd's reply is as follows:] 



I note what J. A. Green has to say, page 

 807, on my foul- brood article in the Bee- 

 keepers' Review. After reading his com- 

 ments I see that he conveys a rather wrong 

 impression, and probably does not under- 

 stand some of the points of the article. 



That article is based on actual practice 

 and experience, without any fine-spun theo- 

 ries that will not admit of proof. 



I would respectfully request him to read 

 it once more, also the editorial that induced 

 me to write it, and then give it the easy 

 proof (if he has the material at hand) as in- 

 dicated in that article before condemning it 

 as impracticable. 



The use of queen-excluding zinc may not 

 be safe in theory; but it is in practice with 

 a colony that is but slightly diseased, as I 

 said in that article. I made no claims in the 

 article referred to, only that, by using a 

 queen-excluding zinc, foul brood could be 

 controlled in a locality where foul brood is 

 rampant as easily while producing extracted 

 as if the apiary were managed for comb 

 honey. This point Mr. Green seems to have 

 entirely overlooked. 



In extracting from combs containing brood 

 taken from a diseased colony, the force nec- 

 essary to throw out the honey is also suflS- 

 cient to throw out the ropy contents of dis- 

 eased cells. My experience is that, in the 

 majority of cases, where the disease was 

 contracted in the spring by a populous colo- 

 ny, the disease will exist in this stage for a 

 comparatively long period, sometimes during 

 the whole summer, by the bees not allowing 

 it to remain long enough in a cell till it has 

 had time to dry down to a scale. The bas- 

 kets and wire netting of the extractor be- 

 come daubed with this ropy contents of dis- 

 eased cells, so it is not necessary to place a 

 comb containing diseased brood into a clean 

 colony to infect it. The extractor will tend 

 to that; and it is an admirable vehicle to 

 convey the disease through an extracting 

 apiary after the disease once gets a start, 

 and it can be depended upon to do the busi- 

 ness quickly and thoroughly if combs con- 

 taining brood are extracted from. 



Now, a queen-excluder positively elimi- 

 nates all that danger, and is a bsolutely certain 

 to lessen greatly, if it does not entirely do 

 away with, all danger — enough so that the 

 disease can be controlled as easily while pro- 

 ducing extracted as if the apiary were run 

 for comb honey. It most certainly removes 

 the certainty of a direct contamination by 

 daubing every comb that may pass through 

 the extractor, with more or less of the con- 

 tents from diseased cells; and the excluder 

 leaves only this indirect chance of contam- 

 ination to be reckoned with, of the bees first 

 storing the honey in diseased cells in the 

 brood-nest, and, later on, transferring it to 

 the supers. But a few careful experiments 

 along this line will show that danger, in the 



