70 MEETING OF ENSPECTOES OF APIARIES. 



PICKLE BEOOD. 



Mr. Smith. I- there anyone presenl whose bees have been suffering 



from pickle brood '. 



Mr. Dadant. Mine have, and I used oil of eucalyptus. I thought 

 I had foul brood and I afterwards discovered that it was pickle 

 brood. About every four days I fed some oil of eucalyptus and in 

 three weeks there was no trace of the disease. 



Doctor Phillips. Would not that disease have disappeared without 

 the use of drugs ? 



Mr. Dadant. I doubt it. I asked another bee keeper to try the 

 same thing and the result was the same. 



Doctor Phillips. We have no proof that pickle brood is at all 

 infectious. Oil of eucalyptus is a disinfectant: therefore I was won- 

 dering what effect it had. 



Mr. Holekamp. One of the members of the Missouri State Bee 

 Keepers* Association, who was about 20 miles from St. Louis, asked 

 me to come over and help with his bees. He said last spring that his 

 bees were in a terrible condition: he was very busy and did not know 

 what to do. A good many of the colonies were in bad condition. He 

 put a tablespoonful of carbolic acid in a quart of water and sprinkled 

 his bees with this. He told me they were all well except two colonies. 

 He said he did not look at them. I looked at them and they were 

 clean. He told me that he had colonies that had gathered in five 

 days a super full of honey. He had about 10 square miles of Spanish 

 heather, but these colonies that had been affected did not make any 

 surplus, so there must have been some disease. 



Doctor Phillips. It might have been pickle brood. Pickle brood 

 is sometimes pretty bad. but it will disappear. 



EXPENSE OF TREATMENT. 



Doctor Phillips. Is it so expensive to treat bees? How much does 

 the colony lose by shaking during the honey flow \ 



Mr. Anderson. We lose a honey crop. Take all that brood away 

 from a colony and all that remains is the live bees. For ten days 

 there is no brood started to take the place of what has been removed. 



Mr. Juneau. It is altogether different in our country (Colorado). 

 We shake bees, and they act just like a new swarm. I have had as 

 high as two or three swarms from those that have been shaken, if 

 they were ordinarily good strong colonies, and 1 believe it will do 

 just as well to shake a colony during a honey How as any time. It 

 makes no difference. 



Doctor Phillips. That is the point I was about to mention. I 

 know that in Colorado they sometimes shake bees whether there i- 

 disease or not. because they claim the bees do better. You talk about 



