]905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1299 



away so that it was not used for brood rear- 

 ing sooner. At other times I have known a 

 bad case to develop within a month after the 

 infected honey was taken into the hive. 



The greatest trouble with the plan advo- 

 cated by yir. Todd is that many, instead of 

 extracting from hives that contain but a few 

 cells, and with therefore but a slight proba- 

 bility of conveying the disease, will, either 

 from carelessness or the willingness to take 

 chances, extract and interchange combs from 

 those in v.'hich the disease has progressed so 

 far that infection is extremely probable. 



The safest way to handle an extracting 

 apiary where foul brood exists is to use 

 queen excluders on all hives and to tier up as 

 much as possible, so that there will be as few 

 extractings as possible from each hive. Then 

 inspect the brood combs before extracting, 

 and if any disease is found, no matter how 

 httle, extract the hcney from thai hive first, 

 with proper precautions to prevent the spread 

 of the disease. Do not under any circum- 

 stances extract any honey from the brood 

 combs unless ycu expect to do a very 

 thorough job of disinfecting afterward. 



A STEP BACKWARD. 



At a series of farmers' institutes recently 

 held in this part of the state, the speakers 

 being paid by a state appropriation, the man 

 who handled the bee-keeping part of the pro- 

 gram advocated that farmers and others who 

 intended to keep only a few colonies of bees 

 should not go to the expense of movable 

 frame hives, but should put their swarms into 

 plain boxes. His argument in defense of 

 such amazing advice was that even when 

 they used modern hives, they almost always 

 had the combs built crooked so that the 

 frames could not be handled, and that even 

 when they were straight they never handled 

 them. He thought, too, that it was easier for 

 the inspector to examine box hives than 

 frame hives in which the combs were crooked, 

 and finally, while if any hives had to be de- 

 stroyed on account of foul brood, the loss 

 would not be as great as if the hives had 

 <:ost more. 



While there is some truth in these argu- 

 tnents, it is an insult 1o the intelligence of 

 the Colorado ranchman to say that he cannot 

 •get his bees to build combs straight or use 

 them when he has them. There are some, 

 it is true, to whom this applies, but the ma- 

 jority of them handle their bees intelligently 

 and in fact many of them are ahead of some 

 of the larger producers in this respect. Bees 

 cannot be as profitably kept in box hives, nor 

 can they be satisfactorily inspected and kept 

 free from disease. 



It is costing the taxpayers of the state a 

 great deal of money to keep foul brood in 

 •check and that without very satisfactory re- 

 sults. Yet this man, paid bj the state and 

 supposed to be working in the interests of the 

 people, is advocating a plan which will make 

 inspection more difficult and expensive and 

 less effective and that will certainly tend to 



the increase and spread of foul brood. Then 

 our foul-brood law, though not as stringent 

 as it should be in some respects, provides that 

 bees in box hives may be destroyed if the 

 owner neglects to transfer them to frame 

 hives. 



The man who starts with only a few colo- 

 nies may before long have a large apiary. If 

 he has started right, there will be no loss 

 and nothing to regret. He will learn of bees 

 and their ways as he progresses and become 

 an intelligent and successful bee-keeper. The 

 man who starts wrong has a costly mistake to 

 undo, or he will always remain unprogressive, 

 a stumbling block and a menace to his neigh- 

 bor. 



The argument on the cost of hives it seems 

 too is a pitiful one. A frame hive can be made 

 at only a few cents more than the cost of a 

 box hive; and a hive properly cared for will 

 last fifteen or twenty years. 



COLORADO AS A FRUIT COUNTRY. 



While the bee-keepers of Colorado have 

 not much to boast over this season, the fruit 

 men in this locality are jubilant over the 

 crops of apples they have secured and the 

 prices they have received for them. 



A neighbor claims to have sold $64.65 

 worth of apples from one tree. I have 

 picked over $25.00 worth of apples from 

 a ten-year-old tree. Other reports range 

 all the way between. This was not 

 a good peach season, as in most places 

 the buds were killed last winter. In 

 favored localities though, some of the peach 

 men claim a profit of close to a thousand 

 dollers per acre. This beats bee-keeping, in 

 a season like the past. I wish A. I. Root 

 could leave his cabin in the woods long 

 enough to make a visit to the Grand Valley 

 during the fruit season. 



NEW BLOOD NEEDED. 



In inspecting bees this fall, I came across 

 a number of colonies with a hive full of 

 honey and a queen apparently all right, but 

 with only a mere handful of bees. These, if 

 they did not desert their hive, would have 

 died the first real cold snap and then the 

 owner would have puzzled over the mystery 

 why a colony with plenty of honey and combs 

 in good condition should have perished, 

 leaving few or no bees in the hive. 



In such cases I have advised the introduc- 

 tion of new blood into the apiary by getting 

 a few queens that would not stop breeding 

 so early in the fall. 



"tanging" to MAKE SWARMS SETTLE. 



Professor Bigelow appears to think that it 

 is the "city chaps" and funny papers that are 

 responsible for the idea that it is foolishness 

 to pound tin pans, etc., when bees swarm. 

 I think that the ridicule of this old custom 

 originated with and is most common among 

 practical bee-keepers. 



I pounded pans in my boyhood, but I have 

 never seen a particle of evidence tlxat it did 

 any good. At least 999 out of 1000 swarms will 



