THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



187 



one posted in this phase of the busi- 

 ness. In my early experience it was 

 different and I didn't Icnow but that 

 bees always got enough honey to 

 winter on; and so after changing to a 

 place where they never got anything 

 after clover, in tlie middle of February, 

 of the hard winter of 1878, I found out 

 that my bees were out of honey pretty 

 generally, and that something had to 

 be done or thej^ would soon starve to 

 death. I filled frames with candy, fol- 

 lowing a suggestion made about that 

 time in one of the bee papers, and hung 

 them in the hives, some close against 

 the cluster, some directly within it. 

 The bees never ate any of that candy 

 that I could see, but the lai'ge cold 

 slabs soon made an end of them. I 

 tried several other plans to save them 

 in the steady cold weather, but I suc- 

 ceeded in keeping only about two out 

 of forty. 



The next season, I had increased 

 pretty rapidly, and when it came winter, 

 I was afraid, after a good deal of feed- 

 ing, that the bees were yet on short al- 

 lowance. I made shallow boxes of 

 picture-backing large enough to cover 

 tlie tops of the hives, and filled them 

 with candy made of grape sugar and 

 granulated sugar, according to the re- 

 ceipts then published in Eoot's ABC 

 book, and inverted them over the bees. 

 In the candy in five or six of the boxes, 

 I put quite a large proportion of wheat 

 flour. The others all came through 

 finely ; but the bees in all the hives 

 having fiour in the candy had dysen- 

 tery; but instead of the usual dirty 

 spots made in this disease, their drop- 

 pings were all white, filled with the 

 undigested flour. I took this as a con- 

 firmation of a suspicion I had previ- 

 ously expressed in a contribution to 

 the Beekeepers' Magazine, that bee- 

 dysentery was caused by pollen, which 

 I believe was the first suggestion made 

 in bee literature of the "pollen theory" 

 of dysentery. Since then James Hed- 

 don seems somehow to have received 

 the glory and the opprobrium of being 

 the father of that theory ; although, 

 according to my recollection, he was 

 at that time advocating tlie bacteria 

 theory. If he, now under the heavy 

 shot of Cornell and Doolittle, and the 

 revelations of those experiments of 

 his which are to settle everything, 

 surrenders the championship, I shall 

 still be "unterrifled," for all my subse- 

 quent observation strengthens me in 

 the conviction of the correctness of 

 what I then said, "I do not know that 



pollen is the cause of dysentery, but 

 without pollen there can be no dysen- 

 tery, as we now know it." The prin- 

 cipal symptom by which the disease is 

 recognized is the spotting of the hive 

 with the diseased excrement. Now 

 under the microscope these spots are 

 seen to be filled with pollen grains, not 

 at all or but partially digested. 



Whether you can succeed or not, in 

 making the bees eat pollen when you 

 want them to, friend Doolittle, they do 

 eat it, because it is there in the excre- 

 ments. Now if there were no pollen 

 for them to eat, and consequently there 

 could not be the usual characteristic 

 spots, could there still be dysentery? 



But this is a digression. To return 

 to the answer. '^The next season was 

 the poorest within my recollection, I 

 did not take away a pound of surplus, 

 and I had not a single hive which had 

 half honey enough to go through the 

 winter, although they were all light in 

 bees. Winter was upon me before I 

 had got entirely reconciled to the fact 

 that I would have to feed those bees 

 between two and three barrels of sugar, 

 to get them through to fruit blossoms. 

 I finally took up my cross and went to 

 making candy. This time I made it 

 entirely of confectioner's A sugar. I 

 put hot water enough with a batch of 

 sugar to make it a thick paste. Then 

 I brought it to a boil, and then taking 

 the kettle from the stove, I set it into 

 a pan of snow or ice water and stirred 

 the candy rapidly till it crystallized 

 in fine grains, making a soft, moist 

 candy, like that inside of chocolate 

 drops. I moulded it in soup-plates 

 covered with a paper. One of these 

 small cakes I put on the frames of each 

 hive, and covered snugly with woollen 

 cloths. I watched them closely and as 

 soon as a cake was about used up, I 

 gave them a fresh one. In this way 

 one need never lose a colony by starv- 

 ation. The bees will never starve as 

 long as they have any of this candy 

 left. I brought them all through in 

 this way satisfactorily. If I were 

 compelled to do a similar thing again, 

 I would try the "Good" candy, as it is 

 more easily made, by stirring sugar into 

 honey till it is stift" enough to mould. 

 Bound Brook, X. J. 



ANSWER BY L. C. ROOT. 



I should regret saying anything in 

 answer to this question, which would 



