128 



SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



CHORUS. 



'Tis friendship, sweet friendsliip, 



'Tis friendship that binds — 

 As brothers we meet here today. 



We're kindred by labor — 

 Our hearts and our minds 



Shall echo the greetings we say. 



(Applause.) 



Mr. Hilton: What is the pleasure of 

 the Convention? We seem to have 

 exhausted our program practically. If 

 any member has anything to offer we 

 would be very glad to hear it. 



Prof. Surface: We have in the room 

 Mr. A. I. Young, of Littletown, who 

 was stung a year ago. He could in 

 five minutes' time give us his own per- 

 sonal experience of the bee sting cure 

 for rheumatism. 



Mr. Young: Gentlemen, I was 

 thrown out of a wagon head first, and 

 I guess all that saved me was a fur 

 cap and a big storm coat that I had; 

 my shoulder was dislocated, and the 

 doctor afterwards said I was full of 

 rheumatism. He said it was a lucky 

 fall I had. He said if I hadn't had that 

 fall, the chances are, I was so full of 

 rheumatism, that it would have gone 

 to my heart, and I wouldn't know what 

 struck me. After I commenced to get 

 better the rheumatism showed itself, 

 and at one time I hadn't power enough 

 to move my hand but a short distance; 

 I could not wind even the stem of my 

 watch, but now you see when I came 

 in I could shake hands with the Pro- 

 fessor. It is some time since I was 

 stung by the bees, on account of the 

 fact that the weather has been almost 

 too hot. He sent me word he would 

 have some bees here, and I proposed 

 starting in again. I can feel the ef- 

 fects of it in my blood, and that is 

 where I think rheumatism originates. 

 I have had as many as ten or fifteen 

 stings at one time. The first time I 

 saw it I thought it was plain common 

 sense that the acid of the bee counter- 

 acted the acid in the blood which 

 caused the rheumatism. I know one 

 old gentleman in our town who had 

 rheumatism so bad that he could hardly 

 move, and he was stung by a lot of 

 bees and he never had rheumatism af- 

 terwards. I think by referring to the 

 books you will find that acid from ants 

 is even better than from the bee. 



Mr. Phillips: How long should dis- 

 eased honey be boiled and at what 

 temperature? The question was asked 

 whether it was known definitely that 

 a certain amount of boiling would cure 



foul brood and that it could safely be 

 given back to the bees. 



Mr. France: If I had it I would 

 bury it before I tried the experiment, 

 from the fact that I have witnessed 

 a good many cases where people said 

 they were boiling honey and they were 

 putting the honey in some receptacle 

 and placing it in boiling water. The 

 water was boiling but the honey wasn't 

 nearly warm enough to cure the dis- 

 ease. I believe experiments have shown 

 that where honey was,^ actually boiled 

 it takes a long time. I question if there 

 has been a record of less than 25 to 

 30 minutes good boiling. I had a yard 

 in which there were 208 colonies and 

 I shook them back into the same hives 

 and they remained there without any- 

 thing, not even comb foundation. We 

 caged them in, extracted the combs, 

 put that honey to boil, then rendered 

 out the wax, made that into comb 

 foundation, and in a few days we 

 had the bees back in the same hives 

 on the same foundation made from in- 

 fected combs, and we fed them the 

 boiled honey, but that honey was boil- 

 ing pretty near all afternoon. Those 

 208 colonies have never had foul brood 

 in the hive since, and that is eleven 

 years ago this spring. 



Mr. Kernan: Did you change the 

 bees twice? 



Mr. France: They were in these 

 hives while we were melting the 

 combs and getting it back in founda- 

 tion. It was made on the Given Press. 

 The frames from an infected hive can 

 be used again, but I should want to put 

 them into water that was really boil- 

 ing. Boiling will cure disease, but we 

 must not go halves at it. 



Mr. Hershisher: I either read or 

 heard Mr. Doolittle describe the 

 method of cooking honey to de- 

 stroy the germs of foul brood. 

 He had a colony that was in- 

 fected, and he took the honey and 

 on the kitchen stove, and went out to 

 do something outside, and forgot the 

 honey, and when he came back it had 

 started to boil and ran all over the 

 kitchen floor. He tried to gather it 

 up, but before he could do so, the bees 

 from the apiary were in there, and he 

 expected to have all his colonies in- 

 fected, but none of them got the dis- 

 ease. 



Mr. Darby, of Missouri: These re- 

 ports go into the hands of a great 

 many small bee-keepers, who are not 

 careful enough in their experiments. 



