AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



209 



An Experience ^vitli the Lan; 

 <lon Xon-§ warmer. 



Written for the American Bee Journal 



BY HON. EUGENE SECOK. 



I have been trying Langdon's "non- 

 swarmer " this season. I invested .$5 in 

 the device, and hence am not under ob- 

 ligations to say I am pleased when the 

 thing don't work according to theory. 

 We have often heard the old saying, 

 "One swallow doesn't make a summer," 

 and I think an invention which is to 

 " revolutionize bee-keeping" — one fit to 

 be classed with Laugstroth's movable- 

 comb hive — ought to have been tried 

 more than one season, and in more than 

 one apiary, before so confidently putting 

 it on the market as a ne plus ultra. 



If my memory serves me correctly, 

 bee-keeping has been " revolutionized" 

 several times since I have been in the 

 business. There was the extractor 

 craze (a good invention, too, if properly 

 used) ; and the reversible-frame, and 

 the automatic hiver. I have seen enough 

 of many of these fine-spun theories to 

 make me a trifle cautious, but like many 

 other bee-keepers who have been wait- 

 ing, hoping, for a solution of the swarm- 

 ing problem that would not require the 

 presence of an attendant all summer, I 

 grasped at this "straw." The theory 

 seemed tenable. 1 was prejudiced in its 

 favor. I wanted it to succeed. Conse- 

 quently, what I now write is because I 

 have to, rather than the wish to. 



As before said, I invested in ten of the 

 devices, and put them on twice that 

 number of the best colonies I had. I 

 didn't care to put them on colonies so 

 weak that they would not swarm any- 

 way. I use the 8-frame Langstroth 

 hive. My bees are mostly Italians, and 

 their crosses with the common black 

 bees of the country. I reversed every 

 seventh day, according to instructions. 

 I found no trouble about working the 

 two colonies together, and no difficulty 



in clearing the closed hive of bees. 

 Many of these were so completely de- 

 pleted that they killed their drones. But 

 I lost two very strong colonies after re- 

 versing the device, by smothering. The 

 escape was insufficient to clear the hive 

 of bees without excitement. This, how- 

 ever, could be easily remedied if it were 

 the only objection. 



I had four swarms before the middle 

 of July — three on the fourth day after 

 reversing, and one on the sixth day. 

 And, more than all, the 20 colonies so 

 treated will not furnish me more honey, 

 if as much, than 20 treated in the old 

 way. I have had no swarms from these 

 hives since the middle of July, but as 

 the honey-flow suddenly ceased, the 

 other colonies stopped swarming also. 



I do not wish to prejudice any one 

 against this or any other like invention, 

 but if I were allowed to paraphrase an 

 oft-quoted saying of Abraham Lincoln, 

 I would say : You may fool all the bees 

 sometimes, or some of them all the time, 

 but you can't fool all the bees all the 

 time. 



Forest City, Iowa, Aug. 7, 1893. 



More Experience Avitli the Foul 

 Brood Disease. 



W7~itten for the American Bee Journal 

 BY A. A. BALDWIN. 



I would like to endorse what W. Z. 

 Hutchinson says on page 80, about foul 

 brood being caused by dead or decaying 

 brood. The fact that there are sections 

 of country where bees have been kept 

 by all kinds of management, from the 

 scientific to the slip-shod, and foul brood 

 has never resulted from any such man- 

 agement, is strong evidence that it does 

 not come from any conditions that may 

 arise in the apiary, but must be intro- 

 duced from without. 



Mr. McEvoy is right when he says that 

 honey is the vehicle that conveys the 

 disease, notwithstanding that some of 

 our knowing ones, because they could 

 not find the germs of the disease in the 

 honey, have said that it was not inti'o- 

 duced that way. Experience is a dear 

 school, and we are not apt to forget 

 what we learn in it. 



Science, by microscopic examinations, 

 says that bringing the honey to the 

 boiling-point does not kill the germs; 

 but experience says that it does, or at 

 least renders them incapable of doing 

 any further harm. The saying is, "The 

 longest way round is the surest way 



