.<t»« 



ESTABLISHED ^/^ 

 IN 1861 



DEVOTED TO SCIENTIFIC BEE-CULTURE AND THE PRODUCTION AND SALE OF PURE HONEY. 



VOL. XVII. 



CHICAGO, ILL., JUNE 29, 1881. 



No. 26. 



$ te^MGAft^grfay 



Published every Wednesday, by 



THOMAS G. NEWMAN, 



Editor ano Proprietor, 

 974 WEST MADISON ST., CHICAGO, ILL. 



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For the American Bee Journal. 



The Cause of Bee Dysentery. 



C. J. ROBINSON. 



The length of time (luring which bees 

 can bear confinement without incon- 

 venience, depends greatly on circum- 

 stances. They may endure it 4 months 

 or more, wholly uninjured, or they may 

 be ruinously affected, if shut in only a 

 few days— according to the nature of 

 the food and the amount consumed, the 

 dry or damp state of the air they re- 

 spire, or the degree of cold to which 

 they are exposed. When they are kept 

 quiet in a uniformly moderate tempera- 

 ture, the consumption of food and con- 

 sequent accumulation of excrement 

 will be small, and prolonged contine- 

 will not discommode them. But when 

 the honey they consume in the winter 

 is thin and watery, and has remained 

 unsealed in the cells, the consumption 

 will be greater, the accumulation of 

 excrement more rapid, and its reten- 

 tion more difficult. And if the quality 

 of honey is unsuitable the bees feed on 

 pollen (all stores of farina ought to be 

 taken from colonies before going into 

 long confinement), dysentery is the in- 

 evitable result. So, also, where the col- 

 ony is subjected to frequent disturbance, 

 rousing and exciting the bees, or the 

 changes of temperature are freqeunt 

 and great, or the general temperature 

 in which they are kept is very high or 

 very low, similar consequences ensue, 

 especially if there be a superabundance 

 of moisture in the hive. 



Exposure to cold and hunger will be 

 followed by dysentery, and if, immedi- 

 ately after gorging themselves with 

 honey, bees be placed in a temperature 

 of 5(P to 55°, they will certainly be sub- 

 ject to dysentery within 21 hours. It is 

 difficult to say whether this results from 

 an infection of the intestinal canal, or 

 whether the instinct of the bees has 



simply been at fault, permitting invol- 

 untary evacuations. 



It has been supposed that from atmos- 

 pheric causes dysentery sometimes as- 

 sumes an epidemic character, affecting 

 the apiaries in a wide range of country. 

 Such was the case in Lusati, Germany, 

 in 1840, when more than 3-5 of all the 

 colonies there were destroyed. Ehren- 

 fels recorded the destruction of an en- 

 tire apiary, consisting of more than 300 

 colonies, oy dysentery, resulting from 

 the consumption of unsealed viscid 

 honey, gathered from pine or fir trees. 

 This contained only a small proportion 

 of saccharine matter, in a large mass 

 of crude and indigestible substance. 

 Poor honey, with bee-bread, produces 

 no injury, if consumed when the bees 

 can fly freely, because they are then 

 able to evacuate their excrement, but 

 confinement while they are restricted 

 to such diet, proves disastrous. Pure 

 honey seems to be " the staff of life " 

 for bees and their larvae. Pollen, if j 

 they have it, forms a useful condiment 

 for both mature bees and larvse, but 



but if you introduce pollen plentifully, 

 they become tilled, and if you let them 

 have a flight they drop large, colored 

 discharges. 



The disease called May sickness is 

 not dysentery, but constipation, though 

 it also results, in some cases, from the 

 consumption of bad honey. Fecal mat- 

 ter accumulates in the intestines and 

 rectum, accompanied by an inability to 

 evacuate, resulting from the sluggish 

 condition of the viscera. Breeding 

 bees appear to be particularly liable to 

 this disease. We find them leaving 

 their hives and crawling about on the 

 ground, unable to fly, and with the ab- 

 domen inordinately distended. It rarely 

 happens that any considerable number 

 are thus affected at one time, though 

 some are found, every season, in colo- 

 nies that are populous and have much 

 brood. 



It is sometimes thought to be caused 

 among the breeding bees or nurses, by 

 excessive consumption of honey and 

 pollen, and prolonged through volun- 

 tary confinement. 



Apiary of Mr. J. H. Robertson, Pewamo, Michigan. 



both can do without it. They are cer- 

 tainly wrong who say that pollen is in- 

 dispensable to tfie ' raising of young 

 bees, and that it is consumed exclusively 

 by the larva;. Abundant brood has 

 been raised by experiment while they 

 were shut up on new combs, and fed on 

 refined sugar syrup, when they could 

 not get a grain of pollen from any 

 source. That bees consume new pollen 

 greedily in the spring, as an acceptable 

 change from their old stores, is proved 

 by its cathartic affect on them, as they 

 soil their hives and combs badly for a 

 few days after an abundant yield of 

 early pollen, when they are smoked or 

 disturbed in the least, and the discharge 

 is largely undigested pollen. Dysen- 

 teric discharges during the winter are 

 the same tiling, proving that bees con- 

 sume pollen in the winter, and it is evi- 

 dent that pollen is the chief cause of 

 this disease. You may confine bees 

 till they die, on nice comb honey with- 

 out a cell of pollen, and they will show 

 no appearance of engorgement, and, if 

 released, there will be no discharging, 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Wintering of Bees in Canada. 



P. P. N. E. PELISSIEIt. 



On Nov. 2, 1880, 1 put 12 colonies in a 

 dry, sandy cellar. On March 8, although 

 the weather was rather cold, I put 

 them out and they had a good cleansing 

 flight. In the evening I put them back 

 in the cellar, where they remained very 

 quiet until I took them out for good, 

 April 20, when one of the colonies was 

 queenless, and the other bees robbed it. 

 In the evening of the 23d I removed it 

 to the stand of a very strong colony, 

 contracted the entrance, and put the 

 strong colony on the former stand of 

 the queenless one. Next morning the 

 robbers had a grand reception, in fact, 

 they could not stand the warm embrace 

 of their hosts, and they left, much to 

 their chagrin, but they soon found the 

 new location of the queenless colony, 

 and were making sail havoc with the 

 combs. In the afternoon I gave the 



queenless colony a frame of brood from 

 my Palestine colony, with what bees 

 were adhering to it. These holy bees, 

 who had perhaps helped the robbers, 

 now took possession or the hive, drove 

 out the robbers, including the natural 

 owners of the hive, and at last that 

 handful of Palestine bees remained in 

 possession of the hive. On the after- 

 noon of the 25th I transferred these 

 plucky little fellows to another hive, be- 

 cause their number was too small to 

 constitute a colony. 



I also wintered 3 colonies on the sum- 

 mer stands ; they came out all right, 

 but the strongest colony starved during 

 a cold spell from the 28th of April to 

 May 8 ; they had a lot of young- bees, 

 eggs and brood in all stages. I trans- 

 ferred the capped brood to another hive 

 and it was saved. 



The hives that I put in the cellar are 

 2 story, made of lumber 5-16 of an inch 

 thick, 8 frames in the lower story and 7 

 in the upper one ; the frames are 10 

 inches high arid 15 inches long inside ; 

 the cap is 12.I4 inches deep, and com- 

 pletely covers the upper story and laps 

 over the lower one. I can secure more 

 honey with bees in this hive than any 

 style I know of. By removing frames 

 of sealed brood, and the outside frames 

 which are generally partly filled with 

 honey to the upper story, itleaves plenty 

 of room for the queen to deposit eggs, 

 and I believe it stimulates the bees to 

 greater exertion, for as quick as the 

 bees hatch they fill the cells with honey. 



1 never extract until the combs are at 

 least % sealed. 



The winter hives are made of Y R inch 

 lumber throughout ; there is one inch 

 space between the double floor, sides 

 and caps, which is filled with the best 

 oat chaff ; the front and rear, in addi- 

 tion to the space filled with chaff, have 

 a division board l 1 ., inches from the in- 

 ner wall, which forms a chamber to re- 

 ceive a frame, where bees will store 

 surplus honey very readily. The divis- 

 ion boards at t'ie front and rear are the 

 supports for 11 other frames, which run 

 from front to rear ; all of these frames 

 are 12 inches deep and 15 inches long ; 

 13 frames in each hive, 11 one way, and 



2 across. 



In the fall, by taking out the front 

 and back frame, it leaves a dead-air 

 space of \%. inches front and rear, and 

 by taking out a few frames from each 

 side and inserting division boards, it 

 leaves a dead-air space all around. 



For 2 years I wintered 7 colonies 

 without further protection, and without 

 loss, except what dropped on the snow 

 when they flew out. Last fall I put a 

 chaff cushion on the top of the frames, 

 and a board inclined over the door, 

 which I covered with straw, to prevent 

 too frequent flights, but that was need- 

 less for the cold did not abate from 

 Oct. 20 to March 7. On March 8 I took 

 off the straw from theeutrance, but the 

 bees did not come out, for the air was 

 still chilly. These bees had no flight 

 till April 12 ; I did not put back the 

 straw at the entrance after taking it 

 out on March 8. The total loss in win- 

 tering the 15 colonies was less than a 

 pint of bees. 



I am confident that Palestine bees 

 will winter better than blacks, because 

 they do not gorge themselves with 

 honey when disturbed. 1'ou can judge 

 of the strength of my colonies when I 

 destroyed capped queen cells in 3 colo^ 



