232 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



July 



foregoing is because the excluder 

 plays a prominent part in my queen 

 story that follows. 



The queen in question was the 

 head of a colony I purchased early 

 last spring. At the time I made my 

 divisions, May 12, she was left with 

 two combs of brood and the neces- 

 sary filling out of the hive with di- 

 vision-boards and empty combs on 

 the old stand. After that she built 

 up her colony in the usual way, or 

 perhaps a little better than the aver- 

 age. About June IS, a few days be- 

 fore the white clover flow came into 

 full swing her hive with the rest of 

 the same class received its extract- 

 ing super with a .172-inch excluder. 



In due time, when I was preparing 

 to supply second supers to the needy 

 hives, I found her super stocked up 

 with brood from side to side and the 

 queen on one of the combs, but the 

 brood-chamber, as I afterwards 

 found, was full of honey and 

 pollen, and not a sign of any brood. 

 This arrangement did not suit my 

 fancy, and 1 decided to rearrange her 

 ladyship's domicile according to my 

 own notions. 



A few days later I made the 

 change. I removed all the combs 

 from the brood-chamber and trans- 

 ferred the brood, queen excluded 

 from the super into the former, at 

 the same time filling the super with 

 empty extracting combs and ex- 

 changing the coarse excluder for one 

 of the finer type. On paper this op- 

 eration looks easy, or even with hive 

 and super empty, except combs, no 

 particular hardships are encountered, 

 but when both are crowded with 

 bees it is anything but an agreeable 

 job. I disposed of the crowded super 

 easily enough by setting it, covered 

 up, on an empty hivebody behind the 

 hive, but when I took the combs 

 from the brood-chamber, the bees 

 seemed to lose all self-control. Smoke 

 had no effect on them. They were 

 running in all directions, over the 

 frames, up and down the sides and 

 ends of the hive, onto my hands and 

 arms, over the edges of the hive, 

 etc., and when all the frames were 

 removed the hive-body, inside and 

 out, was black with bees. And with 

 such general uproar the operator has 

 no inkling where the queen may be. 

 To save her from possible harm all 

 handling of the colony must be done 

 very cautiously. 



Transferring the brood from the 

 super to the brood-chamber was com- 

 paratively an easy task; the bees had 

 quieted down to almost normal and 

 objected very little to the handling, 

 and as the queen was found on one 

 of the combs also, all my anxiety in 

 her behalf was removed. 



When I examined this hive the 

 next time, a week or ten days later, 

 I again found eggs and young brood 

 in some of the combs above the ex- 

 cluder, and the queen presiding over 

 the newly-established household. She 

 did not remain there very long. I 

 shook her on the alighting board and 

 saw her safely enter her proper 

 home. The brood, which she had 

 started above, I scattered among 

 solid combs of honey, expecting that 



that would settle all disputes in re- 

 gard to her home claims for all time 

 to come. 



About two weeks later, when the 

 dark honey flow was well under way 

 and other colonies needed more stor- 

 age room, I expected that this queen 

 (or her colony) would need another 

 super, too; but to my surprise and 

 annoyance found her super to be a 

 well-stocked-up brood-chamber a 

 third time. Taking out the comb on 

 which the queen was found I gave it 

 an unceremonious shake in front of 

 the home, which she had deserted 

 twice before. I have not seen that 

 queen nor opened her hive since. 



As it was getting late in the sea- 

 son and the prospect of getting any 

 surplus honey from the colony ex- 

 tremely uncertain, I left them to ar- 

 range and manage their home affairs 

 to suit their own fancy. Whether the 

 queen remained in the brood-cham- 

 ber after the third transfer or again 

 passed through the excluder I did not 

 find out. It being so nearly time for 

 the adjustment of winter cases and 

 winter packing, I built a two-story 

 case around this now two-story 

 hive and provided substantial pack- 

 ing the same as for all single-hive 

 colonies. 



The contrariness of this queen, 

 with perhaps a little undue persist- 

 ency on my part added, cost me, 

 roughly estimated, about 100 pounds 

 of surplus honey last summer. All in 

 all. I extracted from this colony, 

 mainly from the brood-chamber, 

 about 40 pounds, while the rest of 

 my yard averaged over 200 pounds, of 

 which nearly one-third was comb 

 honey. Had I been a little more in- 

 dulgent with this queen and granted 

 her the privilege of using that super 

 for her brood-chamber, as she 

 seemed to prefer it, one or two 

 supers of surplus honey from this 

 colony would have been almost a cer- 

 tainty. Placing a second and third 

 super with another excluder on the 

 first one would undoubtedly have 

 produced the desired result. 



La Salle, N. Y. 



To Get Rid of Foulbrood 



By Lieut. Alin Caillas 

 Ingenieur Agricole, Chimiste de la 



Societe Centrale dApicuIture. 



Etat-Major de la Division, Secteur 



Postal 41 (France.) 



ALL apiarists know, at least in 

 name, this illness, which is 

 common in several parts of 

 France. Its ravages are most import- 

 ant. I know of entire regions, that 

 are privileged ones as regards climate 

 and flowers, but where beekeeping 

 has become practically impossible, on 

 account of the extension and propa- 

 gation of this awful plague. 



Plague is no exaggerated word for 

 it; foulbrood may be compared, 

 keeping in proper limits, with Indian 

 plague, cholera, Spanish influenza or, 

 — to leave out human diseases — with 

 pebrine and muscardine that threat 



some fifty years ago, to destroy 

 French silk-husbandry. But Pasteur 

 was on the lookout, and thanks to his 



learned workings and patient re- 

 searches, a remedy was found. 



Our apiarists have, generally 

 speaking, but small information, 

 vague and imperfect data on this 

 question. Things do not stand so 

 abroad. Cheshire, in the year 1885, 

 Maasen, 1907, Dr. White, of Wash- 

 ington, Professor Zander, 1910, dis- 

 - covered and studied the bacillus alvei, 

 the bacillus larvae, the streptococcus 

 apis, the three of which bring about, 

 under different forms, the illness 

 commonly called "foulbrood." 



During a recent furlough which I 

 spent on the Cote dAzur, in that en- 

 chanted seaside country all strewed 

 with flowers, where carnations, roses, 

 mimosas give the land a matchless 

 ornament, I was fortunate enough to 

 renew old acquaintance with one api- 

 arist whose name is well-known to 

 all readers of this journal — Mr. Ph. 

 J. Baldensperger. 



Mr. Baldensperger may be called 

 an apostle. A long life of learned 

 workings, all devoted to the study of 

 bees, makes him an uncontested mas- 

 ter in the matter. He has traveled 

 in nearly all parts of the world, 

 speaks and writes English, Italian, 

 German and Arabic as well as French ; 

 so that he certainly is the best quali- 

 fied apiarist of our times and tin- 

 most learned and most enthusiastic 

 one I know of. 



Moreover, his enthusiasm is catch- 

 ing. During our walks in the en- 

 virons of Nice, our conversation 

 often came to the subject of foul- 

 brood. Mr. Baldensperger knows it 

 well, for he had to suffer damages 

 through it. He has noticed its ef- 

 fects, but, in spite of his thorough 

 science of apiarist, it remained for 

 him without any remedy. 



Yet, in the course of his long re- 

 searches, he had the good fortune of 

 coming into relations, at the Societe 

 Naturaliste de Nice, with a learned 

 and distinguished biologist, Mr. A. 

 Prudhomme, of the Paris and Stras- 

 burg Universities, a former scholar 

 of the Institute Pasteur. 



For such a learned a gentleman as 

 Mr. Prudhomme, the question of 

 foulbrood could not fail to be an at- 

 taching one. Quickly, he read and 

 studied an that had been written and 

 done about that question, so as to 

 well master it. Then he applied mod- 

 ern methods to cultivating the three 

 microbes which we have named 

 above, and he succeeded, after pa- 

 tient researches, in cultivating, iso- 

 lating and fixing them. 



The microbes of foulbrood develop 

 in the intestines of the larva; they 

 may be compared in all respects to 

 those of Eberth (typhoid fever.) 

 Now, typhoid fever can be treated in 

 accordance witli two methods ordi 

 nary vaccination, or entero-vaccina- 

 tion, i. c. vaccination absorbed 

 through the digestive tube. 



Mr. Prudhomme succeeded in 

 bringing about a polyvalent entero- 

 vaccination, i. e. virus that can be 

 opposed to tin- infection brought 

 about by the several bacterias of 

 foulbrood. I beg leave to quote here 

 his own words : 



"The cultivation grounds^ to be 

 chosen were a most serious difficulty, 



