THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



267 



1 first met it in my own apiary in Iowa, 

 some fifteen or sixteen years ago. It was a 

 very serious matter for a couple of years, 

 cutting down the income from the apiary 

 fully one-fourth ; then it gradually died out, 

 but the apiary was never entirely free from 

 it during the working season. I saw a little 

 of it in Cuba, but not enough to trouble one's 

 self about. It has been very bad in my api- 

 ary here last year ana this, cutting short my 

 this year's honey crop by from 5,000 to 8,000 

 pounds. 



Mr. Getaz gives a fair description of the 

 disease in September Review. I never saw 

 any brood afifected with the disease. It is 

 an exceedingly erratic disease. At times it 

 seems to follow no rules ; at other times it 

 works in well defined limits. This leads to 

 many opinions concerning the disease, all 

 of them practically worthless when the ob- 

 server has had only a very few cases, and 

 opinions are nearly as valuable where one 

 has observed a hundred or so colonies, as I 

 have. 



Mr. Dayton says (page 248) that colonies 

 afifected in summer were not in winter. My 

 experience both in Iowa and here is dififer- 

 ent. He also says that it appears to be 

 caused by imperfect queens, which become 

 imperfect through extensive egg laying. 

 With me, my nuclei with young, perfect 

 queens has suffered much more than old col- 

 onies with old queens ; exactly the reverse of 

 his idea. Changing queens has worked well 

 with him. Has been a failure with me. 

 Salt has been strongly recommended by Mr. 

 Alley and others. It had no effect whatever 

 for me. Sulphur has been a failure with 

 Mr. Dayton. It is the only thing I have 

 tried that had any effect whatever. Mr. 

 Ford (page 240) thinks Northern bred queens 

 are more free from the disease than others. 

 Every queen I have had from the North for 

 two years, except one, has had the disease 

 and their daughters have seemed peculiarly 

 liable to the disease. Mr. Ford also says the 

 disease does him no harm except in the 

 spring and during the honey flow. With me 

 it has been worst at those times, but not con- 

 fined to them. In your editorial you say 

 that in the working season there is not much 

 time for the disease to make headway before 

 the life of the bee has run its natural course. 

 On the contrary in bad cases during the 

 working season but few bees indeed ever 

 reach the field-working age. One of the im- 

 portant points to be learned about the dis- 



ease is, as to whether there is any thing con- 

 tagous about it, and, if so, what part of the 

 hive and its contents will carry the conta- 

 gion. I have experimented some on these 

 points ; not enough to reach any conclusive 

 opinion, but still results pointed to the fact 

 that neither hive, honey, nor combs of brood 

 would carry the disease, but the queen and 

 diseased bees would carry it. If this proves 

 true, one can easily eradicate the disease in 

 his apiary by destroying all old bees and 

 queens, and giving brood to other colonies. 

 I have practiced this some, but in doing it 

 one wants to use great care that no dead or 

 diseased bees remain sticking in any of the 

 cells. Diseased bees are very apt to crawl in 

 a cell to die. 



I have tried every remedy I could hear 

 suggested. Changed queens with no result. 

 Used salt, both in the feed and on bottom 

 of hive. Have also useil salecylic acid. All 

 failed. 



Last spring I dusted my diseased colonies, 

 three or four at a time, with sulphur. Used 

 about a table-spoonful of dry sulphur, and 

 saw that all the combs and bees were well 

 dusted. More bees would die immediately 

 after treatment than before, but in a couple 

 of weeks after treatment, all dying seemed 

 to cease and no trace of the disease has as 

 yet reappeared in the treated colonies. I 

 treated them all, a few at a time, so as to 

 observe the difference, if any, between those 

 not sulphured and those that were. In all 

 cases those not treated remained diseased 

 and those that were recovered. So far, no 

 trace of the disease has returned in my api- 

 ary, but next spring is when it will be most 

 apt to return if at all. In two or three cases 

 I gave too much sulphur, which resulted in 

 not only killing all the brood, but all eggs 

 laid for some days afterwards refused to 

 hatch. I remedied this by changing these 

 combs for combs and brood from healthy 

 colonies. While the fifteen or twenty col- 

 onies I treated last spring were perfectly 

 cured, I do not feel that the experiment is 

 any where near extensive enough to make it 

 certain that it is going to be a success. 



Some of our experiment stations can con- 

 fer a great boon on bee-keepers by making 

 a thorough examination of this disease and 

 learning more of its nature than individuals 

 who depend upon their bees for a living can 

 do. I have often marvelled why this has not 

 been done long before this. 



Potsdam, Fla. Oct. 12, 1894. 



