168 



EIGHTH ANNUAL, KEPOKT OF THE 



keepers do not sit down and study the 

 description. 



Now, as was intimated by someone 

 here, tlie price of freedom from foul 

 brood is eternal vigilance. We are 

 not going to get entirely rid of it be- 

 cause It is in the woods, and bees die 

 in the woods, although I have heard 

 some say that a colony in a tree never 

 dies, but it is pretty certain they do, 

 and they surely would when they had 

 foul brood, and we will get it from the 

 woods and from two or three colonies 

 liere and there out in the country per- 

 haps that we never have known about 

 where the owner takes no particular 

 interest in them and does not care 

 whether they die or not, and does not 

 care whether they are robbed out or 

 not when they do die. That, I think, 

 is the point of greatest importance. 



Now, as to avoiding financial loss 

 otherwise. You understand the loss 

 may consist in the loss of the bees or 

 the hive or the honey. How shall we 

 proceed in order to save this prop- 

 erty? Sometimes the bees will be 

 found to be worthless when you dis- 

 cover the foul brood. When they get 

 so weak that there are about a hand- 

 ful of bees left, they are almost en- 

 tirely old bees, and the quicker you 

 can destroy them the better. There is 

 no financial loss in that. The hive is 

 safe to use again. There is no finan- 

 cial loss in that. But sometimes we 

 find foul brood colonies that are of 

 considerable strength. You may dis- 

 cover in your apiary a half dozen or 

 dozen colonies afCected with foul 

 brood. How are you to dispose of it? 

 In the first place, you want to under- 

 stand thoroughly just what you have 

 got and the condition of each colony. 

 Then you want to lay down a plan as 

 to how you will proceed. If your col- 

 onies are strong there is a way to get 

 rid of it without much danger and I 

 think with perfect safety so far as the 

 new colony is concerned^ and that is 

 Baldridge's plan of using a bee escape. 

 You prepare a hive for your colony 

 with starters or foundation and place 

 it upon the stand of the colony that 

 has the foul brood, setting that one a 

 little aside, putting the entrances as 

 nearly together as possible; then take 

 sufficient bees out of the foul broodj. 

 colony and put them in the new hive 

 with the queen to make a start — 

 sufficient bees to take care of the 

 queen at least — and then put up a bee 

 escape upon the front of your hive, 

 having it in every other way perfectly 



bee tight. Then you have nothing 

 more to do but to let the bees come 

 out of themselves through the escape, 

 and if you place your escape properly 

 they cannot return to the foul brood 

 colony but go into the new hive. Mi\ 

 Baldridge uses that and says it is al- 

 ways successful. I have used it in 

 several instances and have found it 

 successful. There are other cases 

 where some of them are rather weak. 

 There may be a considerable number 

 and you may want to cure them by 

 the shaking method. Provide your 

 hives for as many colonies as you de- 

 sire to make out of the diseased ones, 

 which will generally be somewhat less 

 than the number which have the dis- 

 ease, because a good many of them, 

 unless in a very favorable time of the 

 year and early, will not be sufficiently 

 strong to build up into a good colony. 

 You want to make the new colony 

 sufficiently strong to build up. You 

 select from these diseased colonies 

 one or two colonies, if your brood is 

 worth anything, upon which to put the 

 brood that you take from the rest of 

 the diseased colonies. Then you shake 

 off the bees into new hives, taking 

 such colonies as you think will do 

 best and setting the brood from which 

 you have taken the bees upon. one or 

 two of these diseased colonies and 

 allowing it to remain there a week or 

 two so that a gopd deal of the brood, 

 the healthy brood, in these diseased 

 colonies will be saved. 



Now, I think these methods, with an 

 intelligent understanding of the dan- 

 gers of handling the disease and of 

 the danger of weak colonies being 

 robbed, will be sufficient, and those 

 colonies upon which the foul brood 

 has been put of course will be treated 

 in a week or two afterwards the »ame 

 as the previous ones were treated. 



Mr. Holterman — ^Would you cage 

 the queen in these colonies that you 

 put the brood on? 



Mr. Taylor — I would shut her below. 

 I have never caged her, but I confine 

 her to one part of the hive. 



Mr. Moore — ^What would you do 

 with the combs? 



Mr. Taylor — If I had conveniences 

 for taking care of the combs so that 

 I could be perfectly sure they could 

 be cared for without the bees getting 

 at them, I would boil them up and get 

 the wax out of them. But if I had a 

 colony that had been cleaned of foul 

 brood and I discovered an infected 



