Mar. 16, 1899. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL, 



165 



and secure enough more honey to pay him for his extra 

 pains, if he more closely attends to their needs. But, as I 

 said before, it would be a great mistake to recommend this 

 practice to the beginner, as he would perhaps overdo his 

 work, and make a failure of his very eagerness for success. 

 With this warning I will proceed to map out the course that 

 maj' t^e successfully pursued. 



As early as convenient, provided the weather is suit- 

 able, an examination of each hive is made, dead bees re- 

 moved, and all weakened colonies reduced to not over two 

 combs more than the entire number they cover. The 

 weaker the colony the more closely confined it mu.st be. If 

 upper ventilation has been furnisht during the winter, and 

 there is no probability of very hard freezing weather, it is 

 best to close up all upper currents of air, for these have been 

 given in the first place, only to prevent the gathering of 

 the moisture over the combs during frosty weather. This 

 moisture is no longer to be feared, but the air-current takes 

 away heat, which is very necessary to the rearing of brood. 

 So we close all upper currents and still retain as warm a 

 covering as possible, and all tlie shelter that is available. 

 The entrance of these weak colonies is reduced to a mere 

 fraction. It must be of easy access, but as small as practi- 

 cable. If feed is needed, and the weather is likely to be 

 cold, so as to make it unadvisable for the bees to stir about, 

 it is best to feed by supplying honey in the combs by inter- 

 change with more wealthy colonies. If the weather is fairly 

 warm and likely to remain so, a little warm feed, but only a 

 little at a time, is given right above the brood in a place of 

 easy access. 



Mr. Gray, in the questions askt above, refers to the 

 dangers to a begfinner in feeding. He has evidently " been 

 there." and is not himself a "beginner." This early feed- 

 ing of weak colonies is a stone in the path of the apiarist 

 over which he will surely stumble, if he is not very cau- 

 tious, as can probably be testified by hundreds of my read- 

 ers. When we supply the bees with combs of honey sealed, 

 and in good shape, there is no excitement. In a few min- 

 utes they have taken possession, and see no need of hurry- 

 ing to consume it. But when warm feed is given it acts 

 upon them exactly as a crop of honey would that began all 

 of a sudden. They become so elated by their "find " that 

 they lose all restraint, care for nothing, but spread the good 

 news abroad, and not only stir up their own colony to un- 

 expected activity, but even seem eager to spread the news 

 to the neighborhood, and " gossip " it about from door to 

 door, apparently, but in reality imagining that they may 

 expect to find good things almost anywhere. 



If the weather is cold, many bees will perish that have 

 strayed too far away. If it is warm the buzz and excite- 

 ment may attract some powerful neighbor, that will at once 

 think of " expansion," and will try to annex the supplies of 

 its weaker acquaintance. So it is necessary to keep a 

 close watch and to use considerable discernment in the feed- 

 ing of fresh food to weak colonies. Hancock Co., 111. 

 [Concluded next week.] 



Annual Report of Ontario's Inspector of Apiaries 



BY WM. m'EVOV. 



DURING 1898 I visited bee-yards in the counties of Essex, 

 Middlesex. Huron, Grey, Wellington, Simcoe, Card- 

 well. Norfolk, Wentworth, Lincoln, Peel, York, Onta- 

 rio and Victoria. I examined 100 apiaries, and found foul 

 brood in 32 of them. 



Nearly every bee-keeper that had foul brood in his api- 

 ary wrote me private letters about it, and, working on the 

 rule of doing to others as I would like to be done by, I 

 treated all such letters as if they were markt strictly pri- 

 vate, and always will. By working along this line in a 

 quiet way, and helping the owners of the diseased apiaries 

 to cure their colonies, I have been able to find out more 

 about who had foul brood in their bee-j'ards than could, or 

 ever will, be found out in anj- other way. 



I am very much pleased with the way the owners took 

 hold and cured their apiaries, and particularh- so with two 

 that were cured by two ladies in the county of Simcoe. 

 These two ladies did the best work in the shortest time that 

 I ever had done, and with two of the worst foul-broody api- 

 aries I ever handled. 



Scarcely one week ever passes any more than I do not 

 receive more or less letters asking questions about foul 

 brood, and dead brood of other kinds. I have also received 

 very many samples of combs with dead brood in them, and 

 about seven out of every ten of these were genuine foul 



brood. The most of the letters, and samples of comb con- 

 taining decayed brood, came from many parts of the United 

 States, and the others from bee-keepers in the Provinces of 

 Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia. 



" About how long would foul brood be in a colony be- 

 fore it would become very bad with the disease ?" was one 

 of the questions askt by several of the writers. I answered, 

 saying, sometimes not more than one week ; in others over 

 one year ; but in the most of cases less than three months. 

 Just how soon or how long it would be before any diseased 

 colony would become very bad with foul brood would de- 

 pend entirely upon how much, or how little, of the honey 

 was diseased. The honey to become diseased must be 

 stored first in cells where foul-brood matter had dried down, 

 and when any honey is removed from such diseased cells, 

 to cells partly filled with sound honey, it will disease it 

 also. Foul brood is spread throug-h a colony just in propor- 

 tion to the amount of diseased honey that is fed to the 

 larva;. 



I sent out Mr. F. A. Gemmill a part of the time, and he 

 inspected 15 apiaries, and found foul brood in three of them. 

 I am very much pleased to say that neither Mr. Gemmill 

 nor I had to burn one diseased colony. We found all par- 

 ties very willing to cure, and gave them a chance to do so. 



I believe that the Province of Ontario has less diseased 

 apiaries for the number kept than any country in the world, 

 judging by the number of letters that I have received. 



For the very nice way that Mr. Gemmill and I have 

 been treated by all parties while on our rounds through the 

 Province, we return to them our most heartfelt thanks. 



Woodburn, Ont., Canada. 



No, 3.- 



-Doolittle's Talk on Bees at a Farmer's 

 Institute in New York State. 



BY REPORTER. 



[Coatinued from pag-e 147.] 



HE next took the grains in a like manner, showing that 

 buckwheat was the only grain raised in central New 

 York which needed the aid of the bees, and that was 

 the only grain that secreted nectar, yet time and again had 

 jealous persons claimed a remuneration • from him for the 

 damage done their buckwheat yield, by the bees taking 

 away the nectar needed to bring the grain to perfec- 

 tion ! But with the farmer who had kept a record of his 

 yields of grain from buckwheat, he had always been able to 

 show him his mistake, by comparing that record with his 

 honey record, so convincing the farmer that in the years of 

 his greatest yield of buckwheat grain, Doolittle had secured 

 his largest yields of buckwheat honey, and vice versa. 



He then took garden truck, speaking of the vine family, 

 and proved from Gregory, the great squash-raiser, how it 

 was an impossibility to secure even an imperfect squash, 

 pumpkin, melon or cucumber from any female blossom 

 where bees had been excluded from the blossoms by tying 

 netting over them as Gregory had done in his experiments 

 at cross-fertilization, unless fertilization was accomplisht 

 by the hand of man. His reasoning was so conclusive that 

 many changed their views entirely, as was admitted by sev- 

 eral to the writer, and from the energy Mr. Doolittle put in 

 this part of his address it was very evident that herein lay 

 the main object of his coming. But as before, he must 

 clinch the point with a story which ran as follows : 



A certain farmer dreamed he died and went to hell (not 

 that all farmers go to that place!). And when he arrived 

 there, an imp from the Satanic majesty met him to escort 

 him around "sight-seeing" before he took up the place of 

 his final abode. Ho took him first to a room in which were 

 many politicians, all writhing and crying out in the terrible 

 burning, which made the farmer shudder and draw back. 

 Then to a place filled with lawyers burning in like torment. 

 Next, to a place where there were brewers, distillers and 

 saloon-keepers, where it appeared, if such a thing was pos- 

 sible, that the "burning " was hotter than any other. Then 

 to where there were mechanics, then merchants, then a few 

 ministers, who had mistaken their morality for the new 

 birth ; and church-deacons and members who had used their 

 profession as a cloak to cover iniquity — all of whom were 

 suffering such excruciating torment that the farmer was 

 sickened in the extreme, and was about to say he had seen 

 enough, when it came to him that he had seen no farmers 

 in any of the places he had visited. So he inquired if there 

 were any farmers that came there. 



" Oh, yes, plenty of them," was the reply. " Would j'ou 

 like to see them ?" 



