232 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



July 



queen, and if you cannot rear your 

 own queens, how are you to do it? 



While most any strain of Italians 

 would be better than hybrids, if the)' 

 were not inbred bees, simply be- 

 cause they are Italians does not 

 spell success in cleaning up foul- 

 brood. That there are strains of 

 Italians that are more immune to the 

 disease than others, ihere seems to 

 be but little doubt. 



When you find a queen that has 

 gone through an epidemic of Euro- 

 pean foulbrood with no sign of the 

 disease, spot her for your breeding 

 queen. You may get fooled on her 

 the following year, but keep on try- 

 ing until you do find one, then rear 

 your cells from her. But do not 

 make the mistake I did once and get 

 so struck on a queen as to practice 

 inbreeding and have it to do over 

 again. 



N. E. France says inbred bees will 

 succumb to the disease fully as 

 quickly as hybrids, and I found it 

 true. Use at least two strains in 

 your yard to avoid this, and more 

 would be better. 



If you will paste these last re- 

 marks in your hat, and work along 

 these lines you will be on the road 

 to success. 



As soon as you are aware of the 

 presence of foulbrood in your apiary, 

 or in your locality, examine every 

 colony carefully, and at least once a 

 week after. Cage or kill the queen 

 in all diseased colonies immediately. 

 not the next week. The longer you 

 leave her free to lay after the first 

 diseased larva appears, the more dis- 

 ease you will have to clean up. You 

 will be surprised, if you have never 

 had any experience with the disease, 

 to know how bad they will get in a 

 week's time if left to themselves. 



After going through the yard and 

 marking all colonies diseased, also 

 the strong and the weak ones, unite 

 the weak colonies until they are 

 strong, even if it takes 3 or 4 piled 

 up to make them so. You are cutting 

 down the number of cases to be 

 treated, saving money for queens if 

 you have to buy, and lessening the 

 chance of infection to healthy colo- 

 nies. You will not need to save any 

 for experimental purposes, for in all 

 probability you will have plenty of 

 them before the season is over. 



You should not expect a weak 

 colony to clean up even under the 

 most favorable circumstances. So do 

 not try it, as it will be time worse 

 than wasted. In ten days or two 

 weeks (depending on circumstances) 

 you will be ready for the cells from 

 your breeding queen, if you have 

 one, else young queens from some 

 good breeder, which should have 

 been ordered previously to introduce 

 to these colonies that have had their 

 queens removed. 



In our own yard we figure on using 

 ripe cells to graft at this time, as we 

 have better success with them than 

 with queens, and if we have plenty 

 of cells we do not always wait ten 

 days before we graft, because ii is 

 some daj's before the young queen 

 begins to lay. 



I might explain more fully as to 

 why we prefer the cells to queens. It 



sometimes happens that in stacking 

 up colonies a queen cell is over- 

 looked at the time of cutting, and 

 while a very small ner cent of queen 

 cells hatch from a foulbroody colony, 

 it does sometimes happen, and you 

 have a virgin running somewhere in 

 the hive bodies. Even though there 

 is no virgin in the hive, a colony 

 that has been without a queen for 

 ten days or longer is the hardest 

 kind of a colony in which to intro- 

 duce a queen, as any good beekeper 

 knows. 



If you are paying a dollar apiece 

 for your queens, and this virgin is 

 not found before you introduce your 

 queen, you have lost your dollar, 

 and this might happen often enough 

 with the novice to make a very dear 

 colony of bees. 



If you graft a cell and the cell is 

 O. K. after 24 hours, you are safe in 

 thinking they have no queen. If the 

 cell is destroyed, you can thank 

 yourself that it was your cell instead 

 of the dollar queen. 



If we are using queens from some 

 breeder, and are ready to introduce 

 them, and the bees have not cleaned 

 out the dead larva, we aim to shake 

 them from the diseased combs onto 

 clean ones, in a clean hive. We have 

 at times in our yard several colonies 

 which we call hospital colonies, and 

 we give the diseased combs to these 

 colonies to be treated later. This 

 lessens the chance of disease break- 

 ing out the second time, and the 

 process of cleaning up repeated, 

 which should be avoided if possible, 

 as, if you don't watch out, the sum- 

 mer will be gone, the harvest ended, 

 and your colony not saved. 



If the disease appears in your 

 apiary early in the season, before 

 many young bees are hatched, and 

 your colony has had no chance to 

 make up for winter mortality, with 

 perhaps cold, damp weather, and no 

 flow, you have about the worst con- 

 dition imaginable to fight European 

 foulbrood. The fact is you can't 

 fight it until conditions change. Rob- 

 bers are bad at these times, making 

 examinations exceedingly difficult, 

 and with these conditions, if you are 

 not a first-class beekeeper, you will 

 probably spread more disease than 

 you stamp out. 



When fruit bloom is out and the 

 bees are busy gathering pollen and 

 honey, is the proper time for the 

 average beekeeper to commence op- 

 erations. But waste no time when 

 the conditions are such that you can 

 work, and remember, you must have 

 a flow, either natural or artificial, to 

 accomplish anything in fighting foul- 

 brood. 



If you have followed the outline of 

 treatment I have described as thor- 

 oughly as you should, the apiary 

 should be in a fair wav to clean up, 

 and by having some swarms at this 

 time, you can boost it in the way 

 that I shall now describe. 



You will ,in all probability, unite 

 some swarms, which will cut down 

 your number, and to follow this Up 

 without anj increase, you soon 

 « i mid be "lit i if bees. I think I hear 

 someone saying, I could start nuclei 

 and increase without natural swarm- 



ing. I can only say, you might, and 

 you might not. Remember, you now 

 have European foulbrood, and noth- 

 ing but strong colonies should be 

 tolerated in the yard. You should 

 allow no robbing now. If you do, 

 likely enough your summer's work 

 will come to naught. Personally I 

 do not want any nuclei to bother me 

 as long as I know foulbrood is close 

 by. 



When a colony swarms, the queen 

 is picked up at the entrance, as we 

 always clip our queens. The old hive 

 is removed from its stand and the 

 new hive with a clean set of combs in 

 its stead, a queen excluder on top of 

 that, then the supers from the old 

 colony, with the caged queen at the 

 entrance. 



The brood from the colony that has 

 swarmed is examined closely for any 

 disease. If it shows no disease, it is 

 put on a stand and left to rear its 

 own queen, and perhaps a bunch of 

 nice cells that can be used to good 

 advantage at this time. If it shows 

 any trace of disease it is stacked over 

 some colony that has been treated 

 previously, and has not yet a queen; 

 never over a colony with a laying 

 queen. In a few days the young bees 

 from the hatching brood will give the 

 colony a boost that it badly needs, 

 and there is nothing like young bees 

 to clean out the diseased combs, as it 

 is in their line of business. 



We never aim to allow a queen cell 

 to hatch from a queen that shows 

 disease. This plan is followed as long 

 as we have swarms and colonies that 

 need help. It is no serious setback 

 to the colony that swarms, and it is 

 a decided boost to those colonies 

 that contracted the disease and had 

 their queens removed, and soon puts 

 the whole apiary in condition to 

 gather honev and strengthen up for 

 fall. 



In summing up, there are 8 points 

 I would like you to remember : 



1st. Learn to rear your own 

 queens. 



2nd. Remember that a young 

 queen from a vigorous strain of Ital- 

 ians will come nearer to cleaning up 

 the disease than any other thing. 



3d. Do not inbreed your bees. 



4th. Italianize with a good resist- 

 ing strain of bees before you get Eu- 

 ropean foulbrood. 



5th. Cage or kill the queen imme- 

 diately after finding the first cell 

 that shows disease. 



6th. Examine your bees at least 

 once a week after you are aware the 

 disease is present in your own yard, 

 or in your neighbor's. 



7th. Allow no robbing. 



8th. Do not treat a weak colony 

 for foulbrood. You will not succeed. 



(enter Junction. Iowa. 



European Foulbrood and Its 

 Treatment 



Bj C, (' Miller 



A GOOD friend, who knows a lot 

 about bees, and for whose 

 opinions I have the highest 

 respect, has written me a few words 

 about my theory as to the way in 



