AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



435 



had hundreds of very foul-broody api- 

 aries to get cured of that disease, by 

 all sorts of bee-keepers that she had to 

 train, many of them very careless, some 

 down-right cranks, and a few so dull 

 and stupid that they would botch every- 

 thing they undertook if they were not 

 sharply looked after— what a terrible 

 failure she would make of the whole 

 business ; and if she was in my place, 

 with a whole Province to look after and 

 manage, when she made one of the 

 greatest failures ever known of her own 

 apiary, when it had foul brood, and was 

 able to save only 4 out of 100 colonies ! 

 If I had had charge of Mrs. Atchley's 

 apiary, I positively know that I could 

 have cured it of foul brood, and made 

 considerable increase, and in the fall of 

 that year would have had not less than 

 120 colonies in grand condition, com- 

 pletely cured of foul brood. 



But Mrs. Atchley doubts if I am treat- 

 ing foul brood at all. She might just as 

 well doubt Prof. J. J. McKenzie, of To- 

 ronto, who examined the brood, and he 

 said that it was foul brood. I do believe 

 that both Prof. McKenzie and myself 

 are just as good judges of foul brood as 

 Mrs. Atchley is. 



Mrs. Atchley says she had some hives 

 of bees washed away in a flood, and that 

 brood rotted in them, and when the 

 combs dried up that she gave them to 

 bees to clean up, and all was well. That 

 case of hers is not to the point at all, as 

 that is different entirely from having 

 brood reared in corrupt cells in brood- 

 chambers full of drowned brood that had 

 gone into great masses of corruption, 

 followed by extreme heat in June, like 

 Mr. Charles Urlocker, of Thorold, Ont., 

 had in June, 1890. In less than six 

 weeks after the flood had drowned all 

 the brood in Mr. Urlocker's apiary, I ex- 

 amined his apiary and found it in a hor- 

 rible state with foul brood. Mr. Ur- 

 locker first wrote to Mr. D. A. Jones, of 

 Beeton, and he reported that it was foul 

 brood. Then he wrote to Mr. Allen 

 Pringle to have me sent to his aid at 

 once, which he did. 



In the Foul Brood Bulletin, Mr. D. A. 

 Jones, of Beeton, Ont., gives one of the 

 most convincing proofs ever given, and 

 one that no man between earth and sky 

 can get over or dispute. He speaks of 

 an apiary where the brood in a lot of 

 colonies was drowned, and how the 

 owner took the brood out of some of the 

 colonies at the time and they became all 

 right ; but in the others, where the 

 drowned brood was not removed, they 

 had foul brood. Also, see all the proofs 



that I gave of the only and true cause 

 of foul brood in the American Bee Jour- 

 nal of May 11, 1893. 



Mrs. Atchley's saying that drowned 

 brood won't cause foul brood is a dan- 

 gerous advice to give, and will cause 

 people to be very careless, and when 

 foul brood starts in their apiaries it will 

 almost ruin them before the owners 

 wake up to the true state of things. 

 Advice like that is like placing a board 

 from bank to bank, high above a river, 

 and then saying it is a safe bridge for 

 all to travel over on, because many have 

 crossed the river on it. Then along 

 comes a very heavy man, and he is 

 tempted to try it because he saw Mrs. 

 Atchley and many others cross it ; but 

 when he gets out to the middle of the 

 board it breaks, and down goes the man 

 to the river of death. Then the pieces 

 of boards are examined by several men, 

 and one Mrs. Atchley, with faces long 

 enough to move a meeting house, to see 

 if it was not this "germ" and that, 

 that caused the board to break, when it 

 was only a case of too much man for the 

 board that caused it to break. So it is 

 with a hive of bees when they have too 

 much corruption to clean out. Is it any 

 wonder that they would sicken of so 

 much filth, and break down under such 

 a horrid load, and end in foul brood ? 



I have not one cell of dead brood of 

 any kind in my whole apiary ; I man- 

 age my apiary so as to have none, and if 

 I had I would make wax of the combs at 

 once. 



I see that Mrs. Atchley won't take my 

 word on my methods of curing foul brood 

 right in the same old hives without 

 scalding. It tickled me so when I read 

 that, that I had to laugh right out. 

 Why, if that dear lady had asked me 

 how long she was to boil the hives, I 

 would have said that would all depend 

 on how long she intended to boil the 

 bees. Surely, no person would do such 

 a naughty thing as to put bees from a 

 foul-broody colony into a boiled hive with- 

 out first scalding the dirty little feet of 

 the bees that traveled over the foul 

 combs, so that they could not make the 

 boiled hive as bad as ever. And to make 

 matters a thousand times worse, the bees 

 would be full of the deadly stores when 

 they were put off the foul combs into 

 the boiled hives. Why not attend to 

 the main thing, and boil the bees ? Why 

 boil the hives and not the bees ? Why 

 should any person strain at a bat and 

 then swallow a sawmill ? Boiling hives 

 that foul brood had been in. is a thing 

 of the past in Ontario, and I am glad to 

 say that I stopped all such folly as that, 



