50 



EIGHTH ANNUAL. REPORT OF THE 



queenless and gave it a queen-cell, 

 which hatched and gave a young queen 

 to this colony. I sent a sample of comb 

 from this hive to Washington, but 

 Avhen it Avas seen by Dr. Phillips in 

 California, to where it had been for- 

 warded, it was reported as being 

 mouldy. 



I will give the condition of all these 

 affected colonies a month later when 

 a big flow was on. Not a dead larva 

 to be found, all colonies working nicely. 

 Several colonies which had shown 

 considerable dead brood gave me two 

 hundred pounds of extracted honey 

 each. At the end of the season I had 

 extracted from this apiary ten thou- 

 sand pounds of honey and made arti- 

 ficially a large increase. 



Two years ago a bee-keeper on the 

 Mississippi River, about thirty miles 

 from me, who had about a hundred 

 colonies of bees, requested me to come 

 and look at his bees, that they were 

 badly diseased. This bee-keeper be- 

 ing located off the railroad, probably 

 a month or six weeks expired before 

 I was able to see him. When I came 

 there, 'he told me that he had treated 

 his bees to a drenching with a disin- 

 fectant which he used at his poultry 

 houses, and that his bees seemed to be 

 better now, but that there were two 

 hives which had not been treated, 

 which were the worst in the yard, and 

 he hardly considered it worth while 

 to bother with them, as they were so 

 far gone, especially as those bees were 

 awful cross. When I opened these 

 hives there was not a trace of disease 

 to be found, and all other colonies 

 which I opened were perfectly healthy. 

 I wish to mention here that at the time 

 I inade this visit there was an im- 

 mense flow from Spanish needle, there 

 being a slough several miles long close 

 to this apiaiy which was just yellow 

 with flowers. Our Inspector has been 

 at this apiary this summer and has 

 found it in a. healthy condition. When. 

 I went last month to the convention of 

 the National! Bee-Keepers' Association 

 at Detroit, Mich., I went there with 

 the hope of obtaining some light on 

 this subject. The first man I met when 

 arriving at the hotel was Mr. Wm. 

 McEvoy, just the man I wished to see. 

 I described the disease I found to him 

 and he exclaimed: "Starved brood, 

 nothing but starved brood." I men- 

 tioned there had been plenty of honey 

 in the hives where the dead brood was 

 found, and Mr. McEvoy's explanation 



was that often bees will not uncap 

 honey fast enough to feed the larvae 

 sufficiently, consequently the dead 

 brood. 



He described just what I had often 

 noticed, very small young bees hatch- 

 ing from the cells and crawling slowly 

 over the combs, seemingly too weak to 

 move. Mr. McEvoy suggests as the 

 remedy to uncap honey in the combs. 

 To this I would add that feeding of 

 syrup, if practical, might be resorted 

 to, but that probably the re- 

 queening from stock which will feed 

 its larvae abundantly would be the 

 proper way of remedying this condi- 

 tion. If next year the trouble as de- 

 scribed should recur, which, how- 

 ever, I do not expect, as I requeened 

 this year most of this apiary, I will 

 be particular to raise queens from a 

 colony which feeds its larvae plenti- 

 fully and expect to overcome the dif- 

 ficulty in this way, and I would sug- 

 gest that bee-keepers who have no- 

 ticed the same conditions in their api- 

 aries would experiment on the same 

 lines. I hope that the disease found 

 by our Inspector and suspicioned as 

 European foul brood may turn out to 

 be what my bee-keeping friend on the 

 Mississippi River found in his apiary 

 two years ago, but as the disease de- 

 scribed by our Inspector was prevalent 

 during the later part of the season, 

 careful investigation will be necessary. 



The dry season may have stopped 

 the flow of nectar and caused the bees 

 to feed the larvae scantily and this 

 may have caused the brood to die in 

 the combs. 



There is another disease amongst 

 bees of which there seems to be very 

 little known and for which different 

 remedies have been suggested. This 

 is bee paralysis. 



I have had, off and on, a few cases of 

 paralysis in my yards, but never tried 

 any cure till the season of 1907, when 

 I had about six cases in my home 

 yard which seemed to be rather bad. 

 I looked over all literature at hand 

 and wrote to the apiary experts at 

 Washington, D. C, but could not get 

 any information. The only suggestion 

 given me from some source was to 

 requeen. 



I went to a hive with Italian bees 

 which seemed to be the most afflicted 

 and removed the queen, intending to 

 kill her, but she being such a fine large 

 queen I hesitated, and then it just 

 occurred to me that there was a good 



