TBEATMENT FOB BEE DI8BA8ES, 61 



eating the disease and can be recommended more highly than the 

 burning plan, as by this means tin* wax is not destroyed. 



California lias tin" county system <>!' inspection, and probably the 

 smallest number of colonies which one inspector has to look after is 

 30,000, From thai number the colonics run up to 1.50,000 in a single 

 county. 



Doctor Phillips. What Mr. Rankin has just said is in line with 

 my own observation during the middle of the summer. I visited one 

 apiary in Ventura County, with Mr. A. (i. Edmondson, the inspector 

 for that county, and be showed me L51 hives. Two years ago this 

 apiary was in the hands of a competent bee keeper and no disease 

 was present. Ventura County is so large that the inspector can 

 cover only one half in one year and the other half the next year. 

 When we examined the apiary we found Lo healthy colonies and L36 

 hives in which the bees were dead or nearly so. 



TREATMENT FOB BEE DISEASES. 



In discussing the methods of treatment, it would be a good plan 

 to call on each of the inspectors present and get each one to tell what 

 method he employs. We should hear (irst from Mr. \. E. France, 

 inspector from Wisconsin. He is the oldest inspector in the United 

 State- in point of service. 



Mr. France. Referring to the paper which was just read. I have 

 tried some of the methods of using drugs in the apiaries of competent 

 bee keepers and invariably all these methods are failures in Wis- 

 consin. The fumigating with formalin seemed for a time to check 

 the disease, as did also some of the other drugs, but in the end they 

 all are failures. The one method that has given universal satisfac- 

 tion we owe to the oldest inspector in America, Mr. William McEvoy, 

 of Ontario, and it has often been termed the "McEvoy method." 

 The plan is to remove the bees from the infection and keep them away 

 long enough to use up whatever infected honey there is in the stomach 

 of the bee. 



I am not satisfied to stop with finding disease in a yard and imme- 

 diately prescribing treatment. In fact, I seldom, after looking over 

 the yard and finding the disease, begin to prescribe treatment, for I 

 feel that we are not yet ready for it. 'What is the use of treating 

 when some neighbors might have diseased colonies? Take a wide 

 circuit : then treat at once nil colonic- having disease. This has some- 

 times vexed the beejkeepers, for they want me to stay and -how them 

 what to do at once, but I tell them that I see no good in treating 

 colonic- while leaving another source <d* infection. 



I try first to instruct the owner of the bee- to be careful in hi- man- 

 agement. If. in my judgment, he is one who keep- the apiary clean. 



