28 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



February 



brood ever aj^pears, the careful bee- 

 keeper will surely cure It in the de- 

 scribed maimer, he will constantly 

 watch his brood and if he notices any 

 gnawed cells, he will attend to them 

 at once, so that the evil does not gain 

 the upper stage. Last summer, after 

 the honey flow was over, I had the 

 opportunity to witness a party using 

 the McEvoy treatment. For a while 

 we thought that it had cured, but after 

 some time the sickness reappeared, al- 

 though the treatment had been care- 

 fully performed. But as only sugar 

 syrnp was fed. the energetic, a<•ti^■e, 

 ambitious spirit of the bees Ava.s miss- 

 ing. This I also noticed, when formal- 

 dehyde fumigation was used exclusive- 

 ly. This leads me to the conc^lusion 

 that if healthy honey and pollen in 

 oils had been used the cure would have 

 been perfect. There always will be 

 bee-keepers who will not take proper 

 care of their bees. For such, a foul 

 brood law, compelling them to disin- 

 fect hives and colonies is necessary. 



The prevention of disease and the 

 natural care of colonies are the main 

 thing, but not the destruction and the 

 curing of the malady. The enemy is 

 only to be kept out of the apiary by 

 natural ways. Keep them so, that 

 when spring reappears and revives all 

 nature, your bees awake from their 

 slumbers strong and healthy, not weak, 

 perhaps so weak they are beyond re- 

 covery. 

 Cincinnati. Ohio, .Tan. 16, 1904. 

 •*-t~^ 



BEES AND ANTS. 



Some of the Obstacles with Which the Fbrrda Bee 



Keeper Has to Contend. 



By C. S. Harris. 



A FRIEND a few miles distant re- 

 cently wrote me that on visit- 

 ing an out-yard a day or two 

 before he had found it in an uproar, 

 with a big (-luster of bees about five 

 hives in different parts of the yard, 

 three of which had been cleaned out 

 by the robbers. He thought ants were 

 at the botloni of the trouble, which was 

 ■very likely the case, as they had begun 

 ito show themselves in my apiary, al- 

 tibbough a month earlier than I usually 

 have trouble with them. 



We' have many branches of the ant 

 family hei-e, but only two of them I 

 find especially troublesome in the api- 



ary, one being a small black ant that 

 nests about the hives and is, I .some- 

 times think, more annoying to the apia- 

 rist than to the bees, as they crawl 

 upon the person and inflict their sharp 

 stinging bites while he is engaged 

 about the hives. They will occasion- 

 ally over-run and destroy a very weak 

 nucleus. 



The other, and only one to be feared, 

 is a large red ant, the workers of which 

 are about three-eights of an inch in 

 length, while the soldier ants are often 

 a half-inch long, and provided with 

 strong, sharp jaws capable of cutting 

 even the human skin. These ants are 

 great foragers and will travel long dis- 

 tances for food. While they will eat 

 honey and other sweets, they seeni 

 particularly fond of meat diet, and at- 

 tack the bt^es in order to feast upon the 

 brood. They work only at night as 

 a rule. They are very round-a-bout in 

 their attacks at times, passing a long 

 row of hives to select one farthest from 

 their nest: sometimes going up one 

 tree and down another many feet from 

 their starting point, making it diiflcult 

 to line them home, which is the best 

 way to deal Avith them. 



They nest in rotten stumps and 

 roots, or trash of any kind and some- 

 times, though I think not often, in the 

 open ground. They frequently have a 

 series of colonies radiating from the 

 old nest and these various colonies 

 seem to live in harmony and unite in 

 securing food supplies. 



The queen is about the size of the 

 soldier ants or jierhaps a trifle larger, 

 ^vith a more tapering abdomen. The 

 (lueens and drones, or male ants, are 

 provided with wings, which are either 

 shed naturally or bitten off by the 

 v.-orkers after the mating period. 



I have tried various poisons upon 

 tliem, giving it on finely-chopped meat 

 or drone brood, and I think that Faris 

 green is effectual, if you can get them 

 to take the n)eat which for some rea- 

 son they sometimes refuse to do. They 

 will usually take any of the phospho- 

 rus i>rei>aratioiis just as they come 

 from the can or bottle, but while it 

 seems to reduce their numbers, it does 

 not appear to destroy the colony en- 

 tirely. The oidy sure way is to line 

 them to their nests at night by the 

 light of a good lantern or bicycle lamp 

 and then kill them by burning, or the 

 use of bi-sulphide of carbon. 



