30 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS ON APICULTURE. 



improbable, inasmuch as the greenhouse men buy their bees wherever 

 they can get them — all the bees within a radius of several miles of 

 the rubbish pile are exposed. More than once the writer has seen 

 from two to a half dozen such hives cast out on the rubbish heap. 

 While there is no intention of endangering neighbors' bees, it is as 

 criminal to throw out of doors any hive in which bees have died as 

 it is to shake the bedding or throw 7 the waste of the sick room from 

 the window. Discarded hives and their contents, if the cucumber 

 grower does not wish to render the wax, should be thrown under the 

 boiler. 



PURCHASING BEES AND QUEENS. 



In purchasing bees the buyer should be as certain that he is getting 

 stock free from disease as is the farmer, who purchases cows, that 

 these have no tuberculosis. A region where the disease is not found 

 or where it has been successfully suppressed can be reinfected "by 

 one careless purchase. For instance, speaking of New York State, 

 Mr. Charles Stewart says : a 



Just as we [the inspectors] were feeling that we had nearly stamped it [the 

 disease] out and were masters of the situation we discovered that at least one 

 if not two fresh importations had been made in a section of the State where 

 no trouble of this kind [European foul brood] formerly existed (p. 55). 



To some degree this applies to purchasing queen bees. It is usually 

 safe, however, to introduce a queen if she is removed from the cage 

 in which she is mailed and is introduced unaccompanied by her escort 

 of workers. The candy which is shipped with queens should never be 

 put into a hive. 



STRAY BEES. 



There is one agent over which the bee keeper has no control and 

 which should cause him no anxiety if a considerable territory is 

 freed of the diseases. It is a well-known fact that under certain con- 

 ditions, as, for instance, in storms and heavy winds, bees enter hives 

 other than their own. Obviously, then, such bees in their interchange 

 of hives may spread the infection. This only emphasizes the urgency 

 of cleaning the disease out of a whole State, or, better, out of a block 

 of States, as New England. Cooperation is the key to the situation. 



BROOD DISEASES CAN BE CONTROLLED. 



Enumeration of the methods by which disease is spread should 

 not convey the idea that these diseases can not be combated, for it 

 has been thoroughly demonstrated that by judicious and persistent 

 manipulation both of them can be successfully controlled and sup- 



a Report of the Meeting of the Inspectors of Apiaries, San Antonio, Tex.. 

 November 12, 1906. Bui. 70, Bur. Ent., U. S. Dept. Agric. 1907. 



