1298 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. 15 



honey came from some source with a special 

 tendency to sour, it may be that a part, at 

 least, of the trouble is due to his method of 

 handling it. He says that he wraps each sec- 

 tion separately in paper, and that the frames 

 are covered thoroughly, top and bottom, in 

 the supers, with paper. That is to say, he has 

 shut them up as nearly air-tight as possible, 

 while still in a comparatively thin and un- 

 ripened condition, and then wonders why they 

 should sour. Why is it that so many people, 

 bee-keepers included, think that honey must 

 be kept cool and away from the air? I re- 

 ceived a letter some months ago from a bee- 

 keeper, asking how he could ripen his ex- 

 tracted honey into a more satisfactory condi- 

 tion. He had extracted it rather thin, and 

 stored it in a large tank where it had dete- 

 riorated rather than improved, as he had been 

 told it would. He said he was sure it had not 

 been injured by the heat of summer, as his 

 honey house was built with double walls and 

 roof, with packing between the walls, while 

 the doors and windows were as tight as a 

 carpenter could make them. In other words, 

 he had made a building after the fashion of 

 an ice-house or refrigerator, when what he 

 really needed was an evaporator. The place 

 where honey keeps best is in the hive, where 

 the bees can keep it always warm, where the 

 door is open at all times, and where a num- 

 ber of ventilators are ready to set to work to 

 increase the circulation of air at any time it 

 may be needed. 



The ripening process of honey is not ordi- 

 narily complete when the comb is sealed, and 

 both comb and extracted honey are improved 

 by further ripening. This may be accom- 

 pli.shed by leaving it a long time on the hive; 

 but in the case of comb honey this results in 

 a deterioration of its appearance, and, conse- 

 quently, its market value. The same result 

 may be accomplished without this deteriora- 

 tion in appearance by storing the honey in a 

 dry, hot, well-ventilated room, the honey 

 being so arranged that the^^air will have free 

 access to it. 



FOUL BROOD IN APIARIES RUN FOR EXTRACT- 

 ED HONEY. 



Elmer Todd, in his article on page 1073, 

 appears to think that I have conveyed a 

 wrong impression of what he wrote for the 

 Bee-keepers' Review on the above subiect, 

 and that I have not understood some of the 

 points of the article. He also appears to 

 think that my objections to the plan he pro- 

 poses are based on theory rather than on 

 actual practice. 



I have carefully re-read his article and I 

 fail to see that I have misrepresented it in 

 any way or that there is any part of it that 

 I do not understand. As to theory vs. prac- 

 tice, I will say that I have had full experience 

 with foul brood in an extracting apiary, hav- 

 ing been through that mill thoroughly some 

 fifteen years or so ago. In my experience as 

 Bee Inspector here during the past three 

 years, I have handled and observed a very 

 large number of cases of foul brood in hun- 



dreds of apiaries and have had abundant op- 

 portunity to note the ways in which it is 

 propagated and spread. I have also made 

 some experiments in feeding healthy colonies 

 with honey from various parts of a diseased 

 hive. It is not from fine-spun theories, as he 

 intimates, but from the knowledge gained by 

 experience and particularly from that gained 

 by observing the disease in the hands of a 

 great many different men, that I have ob- 

 jected to his conclusions and especially to 

 their publication. 



1 do not doubt at all that one might in 

 most cases safely extract the honey from a 

 super separated by queen-excluding zinc from 

 a brood-chamber containing only a few cells 

 of foul brood. I feel sure, though, that such 

 a practice would, with most men, result^ in 

 disaster sooner or later out of all proportion 

 to the possible gain. 



It is doubtless true that the use of exclud- 

 ing zinc very greatly lessens the danger of 

 spreading the disease through the medium 

 of the extractor and this is another very good 

 reason, added to several others, why it should 

 always be used. Mr. Todd deserves credit 

 for calling attention to this, though in my 

 opinmn he goes entirely too far in claiming 

 that foul brood can be controlled as easily in 

 an extracting apiary as in one run for comb 

 honey. For in most cases there is never any 

 exchange of honey in sections from one hive 

 to another, and when there is any such ex- 

 change, it is only of unfinished sections to 

 which the bees simply add honey and from 

 which they very rarely use any honey to feed 

 brood. With extracted honey it is very dif- 

 ferent. All combs go into the comb-basket of 

 the extractor; and even if all combs are re- 

 turned to the hive from which they came 

 ("which is inconvenient and very rarely prac- 

 ticed), they are brought into contact with the 

 honey from the combs that preceded them, 

 which may contain the germs of the disease. 



It is unquestionable that diseased honey is 

 frequently stored in the supers. For instance, 

 when a colony has swarmed the bees usually 

 fill the brood combs more or less completely 

 with honey. Though bees dislike to do any- 

 thing with cells that have contained foul 

 brood, under the pressure of a good honey 

 flow they will fill them with honey. This 

 honey is certainly infected. When the young 

 queen begins to lay, this honey is moved up 

 into the super. When the combs containing 

 this are extracted, they are liable to infect 

 others, even if they are not themselves trans- 

 ferred to other hives. When the bees receive 

 a set of freshly extracted combs, they pro- 

 ceed at once to clean them up and the honey 

 taken from them is used the same as any 

 other honey that comes into the hive. If it 

 is infected and is used then to feed brood, 

 or is stored away where it will be used to 

 feed brood, it will start the disease. This 

 will happen sooner or later. I have known 

 cases where bees that obtained infected honey 

 showed no trace of the disease for nearly a 

 year, the honey evidently having been stored 



