1918 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



161 



man couldn't enjoy his own garden. 



"Too much of it; that's the reason. 

 A cat's got no use fer two tails, an' 

 one sting's a-plenty fer a bee, ain't 

 it?" 



"For all practical purposes," I 

 agreed. "But if the bee had nine 

 lives to protect, like the cat " 



The gardener gave the barbed wire 

 an impatient twist. "Can't corner 

 the earth and get away with it, not 

 even if you had twenty lives. It's 

 again' natur'." 



The gardener is right. Again the 

 Pussy willow has come and gone. 

 The paths are fringed with clamber- 

 ing blackberry and the feathery 

 bloom of Poison oak; the first blue 

 haze of Ceanothus is on the hills; 

 and my bees take their fill, unmo- 

 lested. There is nothing to remind 

 me that all this beauty is owned by 

 an absent neighbor. It is as though 

 the broad acres were mine instead. 

 Indeed they are mine. Every curve 

 of the shaded roads, every tint of 

 foliage, every song of the streams, 

 the fragrance, the sunshine, the 

 panoramic glimpses of valley and 

 hill and sky, all are mine — mine and 

 the bees.' No man can take them 

 from us, least of all the babbling old 

 man who sits all day in a far-away 

 hotel under the watchful eye of a 

 trained attendant. 



Los Gatos, Calif. 



Curing or Eradicating, Which? 



By F. Dundas Todd 



EARLY in the year 1911 I was in- 

 vited to become a bee inspector 

 for the Province of British 

 Columbia, and my department chief 

 asked me what I intended to do with 

 any cases of foulbrood I happened 

 upon. I asked a little time to con- 

 sider the question, and this I devoted 

 to going through all my bee litera- 

 ture, reading everything I found upon 

 the matter and making note of re- 

 sults. Altogether I amassed a very 

 considerable amount of data, and I 

 gathered it all into two heaps. A 

 very small one represented the re- 

 gion where it was claimed that foul- 

 brood had been gotten rid of entirely, 

 and remained free for a number of 

 years, ten I think. The other big mass 

 represented the regions where scores 

 of men claimed to be curing foul- 

 brood, but it was apparently still 

 rampant in their districts. 



I carried the piles to my chief, and 

 arranged them on his desk, remark- 

 ing, "This big heap represents the ef- 

 forts of many men who cure foul- 

 brood, and still have it, this single 

 sheet of paper tells how Belgium got 

 rid of the disease in 10 years, and 

 still remains free of it. I propose to 

 follow the example of Belgium, not 

 pretend to cure it, but to wipe out by 

 fire everything that I find in contact 

 with the disease. Such procedure will 

 probably raise an awful howl, but 1 

 am game to see it through, if you 

 think the experiment is worth mak- 

 ing." He decided it was, and has loy- 

 ally stood behind his inspectors from 

 that day until now. 



In 1914 I came in contact with 

 American foulbrood for the first time, 



and during the last half of the year 

 it kept me quite busy. I need not go 

 into details, as they were given in an 

 article that appeared in the July issue 

 of the American Bee Journal, show- 

 ing how I stayed by the proposition, 

 stamping it out wherever I found it. 

 Needless to say I got considerable 

 advice as to how I really should have 

 comported myself if I wished to be- 

 have according to Hoyle, but it was 

 all carefully neglected. 



Well, I now have had four seasons' 

 experience of fighting American foul- 

 brood and am able to give results, 

 and armed with these to do a little 

 talking back, as I think it is a poor 

 game that is played all on one side. 

 So I have gathered together a batch 

 of literature for the second time,_ and 

 had another good look at the situa- 

 tion. 



The human race never gets very far 

 in any particular phase of activity 

 unless it devises a measuring rod 

 adapted to the conditions, so that it 

 can check results. I think if we had 

 a good measuring rod to apply to the 

 foulbrood situation we would not 



have been deluged with so much ora- 

 tory. In looking over the recent 

 magazine articles at my disposal I 

 find only one man, Wesley Foster, 

 who catches a glimmer of its need, 

 for in July Gleanings he says : "In 

 our experience with European foul- 

 brood we find something to learn ev- 

 ery day. It is hard to eradicate but 

 easy to cure. What is meant by that 

 is that an individual apiary can be 

 cleaned up readily, but it is difficult 

 to clean up a district comprising 20 

 apiaries." He states the proposition 

 exactly as I saw it in 1911, so the 

 standard I set for myself was this, 

 in how short a time can I eradicate 

 the disease from an infected district? 

 One of my own beekeepers, a good 

 student of apiculture, evolved the 

 same idea when he learned I was 

 burning infected cases. He said, "All 

 right, I'll give you five years to see 

 what you can do, and if you have no 

 definite results by that time, then I'll 

 want a different policy." 



Well, here is a measuring rod pro- 

 vided for me, the combination of the 

 ideas of these two beekeepers. If he 



No more Poison Oak for the Missus. — Photograph by John R. Douglass 



