STATE BEE-KEEPERS* ASSOCIATION. 143 



you smell that foul brood once you will never forget it It 

 smells as nearly like a carpenter's glue-pot as anything 

 you can get. 



Mr. Wilcox — Don't you find foul brood sometimes with- 

 out smell? 



Mr. Smith — Where it is not fully developed all over the 

 hive and it is just the first inoculation, you may sometimes 

 find a comb of beautifully sealed brood and just three or four 

 cells that are affected, but it doesn't take long for it to spread. 



Mr. Wheeler — I would like to go bade a little bit. In 

 regard to this treatment that you speak of, the bees are first 

 shaken out at the beginning of the honey-flow, or "shook 

 -out," and they are put on empty frames. Our bees gathered 

 the whole year's crop in two weeks' time. Now, there is a 

 very tender point right there, whether you leave those bees 

 in the hive two weeks and then take them off those combs 

 they have built in those two weeks and melt those combs up. 

 If it is not necessary to do that it would be a great loss of 

 money to the bee-keeper. If two days or 48 hours would do, 

 that would be a great deal better than two weeks. 



Mr. Smith — Two days or 48 hours would not suffice — four 

 • days at least. I wouldn't make the change under that time. 

 While it is a fact that they do not always carry the disease 

 with them — I have known swarms to come out of the in- 

 fected hives, and I have hived them on foundation and they 

 didn't carry the disease with them at all. It seems they 

 exhaust the honey before the young brood gets large enough 

 to take the disease; especially if it is a second swarm and 

 the young queen doesn't get to laying for a few days, the 

 brood is later than the laying queen would be. 



Mr. Wheeler — Some of the money that is used ought to 

 be used to experiment along that line. It makes a great 

 difference to us bee-keepers, if we know just how much time 

 there should be. I have had a little experience, and I have 

 shaken them out on combs, that is, just one comb with a 

 little brood in and fresh-laid eggs, and those bees showed no 

 signs of the disease for a year or two, no more than bees 

 shaken out on empty frames ; why that was I can't tell. They 

 were no more affected than bees that were shaken out on 

 empty combs and given new comb. The object was to save 

 all the bees possible. 



Mr. Smith — In making my trips I cannot go back to every 

 man's yards in four or five days afterward and change his 

 bees, I only leave my orders with him. I have gone back on 

 several occasions where my trip was near there, and found 

 some of them had not transferred them at all. They got 

 busy, it was haying time, and the oats had to be hauled in, 

 and with one thing and another they didn't have time, and 

 they didn't like to bother with them; they were afraid of 

 being stung, and they didn't transfer them back at all. 



Mr. Hutchinson — In all my experience with foul brood 

 I have never cut the combs out, as you speak of. I either 

 shake them on starters or full sheets of foundation, and 

 I never had another case of foul brood come on. In other 



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