16 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



discussed with no consideration whatever 

 for the feelings of the inventor or manufac- 

 turer. Where is the consistency ? Then, 

 again, one journal may excel in one particu- 

 lar, another in some other direction, and the 

 bringing out of these points might not be 

 any disparagement to any journal, yet would 

 aid bee-keepers in their choice of journals. 

 This idea that a bee journal, or some feature 

 of it, must ne er be commended, criticised, 

 or discussed in a convention is more a fash- 

 ion than one of good sense. 



PKEVENTING SWAKMING BY WOKKING SE'EBAL 

 COLONIES TOGETHEB. 



Many of the visitors at the World's Fair 

 must have seen the long box of thick combs 

 in the New York exhibit of honey. It was 

 sent there by Mr. F. H. Cyreniu •, of Oswego, 

 N. Y. In a recent letter he has the following 

 to say in reference to the manner in which 

 it was secured, and the effect of the proceed- 

 ing upon the swarming propensities of the 

 bees engaged in the work : — 



" I am not sure but in securing the build- 

 ing of the combs in the long box that you 

 saw at the fair, that I made a useful discov- 

 ery, viz., that by setting two or three hives 

 side by side, with a queen excluder over 

 each, and a surplus case long enough to 

 cover all, swarming may be prevented. This 

 box, as well as several others, were thus ar- 

 ranged, the colonies made very strong, and 

 everything made favorable for swarming, 

 which was daily expected, but did not occur. 

 Perhaps the bees think they have too much 

 room to need to swarm." 

 is 



WINTERING BEES IN A •« ABM ATMOSPHEEE. 



Dr. Miller is rather inclined to throw cold 

 water upon the wprm-atmosphere-metliod of 

 wintering bees. On the other hand I have 

 received several letters giving this plan a 

 favorable mention. Aside from that given 

 by Mr. B. Taylor in another column, the 

 most positive report is furnished by Mr. F. 

 H. Cyrenius, of Oswego, N. Y. He says : 

 " I have two colonies wintering in a warm 

 room where the temperature is from 60° to 

 70° most of the time, and the bees are doing 

 nicely. They are quiet and make no attempt 

 to fly unless the weather is suitable. They 

 have an entrance under the window sash and 

 can fly any time if tliey choose." Of course 

 it is not yet spring, and we shall all be inter- 



ested in knowing how the bees " come out," 

 but I feel more and more as though we 

 ought to have some comprehensive, exhaus- 

 tive and extensive experiments upon these 

 points of temperature, ventilation, moist- 

 ure, etc. 



^ 



FOUL BBOOD. 



Foul brood is receiving considerable dis- 

 cussion in the American Bee, JoxirnaL Mr, 

 Cornell is showing the apparent fallacy of 

 the chain of reasoning whereby Mr. McEvoy 

 attempts to prove that foul brood may orig- 

 inate in dead brood. J. A. Green argues 

 that it is possible that foul brood germs are in 

 the air, and And in the dead brood the prop- 

 er food and condition for their propagation. 

 I do not understand why the germs would 

 not find as favorable conditions, or if not so 

 favorable, at least sufficiently so, in healthy 

 brood. Mr. Cornell advances one dea, how- 

 ever, that to me seems unreasonable. He 

 says : — 



'* It is not because the infected honey the 

 bees carry with them is all consumed in four 

 days that Mr. McEvoy's method cures, but 

 because during the interval between shaking 

 the bees on starters and the first appearance 

 of young larviv requiring to be fed — an in- 

 terval of about ten days under Mr. McEvoy's 

 treatment — the diseased nurses either die 

 off, or become too old, or too sickly to con- 

 tinue to act as nurses." 



The nurses are the youngest bees in the 

 hive, and would be the last to die off. If the 

 nurses become too old to act as nurses, there 

 are certainly no younger bees to take their 

 places. Possibly Mr. Cornell's idea is that 

 not all of the bees of a colony are diseased 

 (ttieir bodies infested by the germs of the 

 disease) and that those diseased will die off 

 in the time that will elapse after the bees are 

 shaken from the combs and the hatching of 

 the first larva^. This would leave only 

 healthy nurses. But why the older bees 

 should be more free from the germs than 

 is the case with the younger bees I am at a 

 loss to understand. Another point : If the 

 infection of the brood results from the dis- 

 eased condition of the nurses, it seems to me 

 that all, or, at least nearly all, of the brood 

 would become diseased at once. If only a 

 part of the nurses were diseased, it seems to 

 me that the haphazard way in which they 

 feed the larvip would bring about a diseased 

 condition of all of the larva'. This is not 

 the case, as only a feiv diseased larvif appear 

 at first. This idea was advanced to me by 



