50 
THE AUSTRALIAN BEEKEEPERS’ JOURNAL. 
of a good season come to us from Tasmania, 
as -well as from those portions of New South 
Wales that have not been much affected by 
the drought. In the Northern Island, New 
Zealand, Mr. Hopkins reports excellent and 
heavy yields, and from Southern Queensland 
such glowing accounts have come that it may 
be regarded as a “ land flowing with honey,” 
if not with milk also. 
Increasing and successful bee culture in 
Australia will very shortly render the ques- 
tion of market and price for honey- an important 
one. During the past season lib. sections 
have sold retail freely at Is. 3d. to Is. 6d. 
While extracted honey in small packages has 
commanded a price varying from 6d. to 9d. 
per lb., strained bush or box-hive honey in 
large parcels has realised 3d. to Id. per lb. 
This difference will show our beekeepers the 
advantages of section-box honey and frame- 
hive honey for extracting, as compared with 
the common strained commodity. The strained 
honey selling at 3d. as gathered by the bees, 
was just the same as that selling for Is. 6d. 
and 9d , but it was not presented in such an 
enticing form. Bell glass honey- commands 
the highest price in Europe and America, and 
no doubt would do so here if carefully got up 
for the market. 
Numerous and serious complaints of heavy- 
losses among bees by disease have reached us 
during the season, and the whole question of 
bee disease is a very important one. “ Foul 
biood” is unfortunately- a more common dis- 
ease among our hives in Australia than is 
generally admitted, and we are convinced 
that hundreds of stocks are lost from this 
disease, while the owner has attributed it to 
a “bad season” or ‘‘the moth.” Then we 
have the diseases which, like foul brood, are 
attributed to the bacillus germs, such as the 
shiny bee disease, trembling or sivollen bee 
disease, and a mixture of both, which has 
thinned out many- a colony from beekeepers’ 
stocks the last Summer, our knowledge of 
which is yet very limited, but which it 
appears, are manageable with some care and 
trouble, as has been shown in our pages. For 
combating the diseases of bees, it is neces- 
sary first of all that they should be understood, 
the true causes established and generally 
admitted ; we shall then have some prospect 
of rational treatment. Unfortunately, how- 
ever, every beekeeper has a theory of his own, 
and acts accordingly, and too frequently 
unsuccessfully. As foul brood is certainly, 
and probably other germ diseases in bees are, 
contagious, every beekeeper is in honour bound 
to use his best efforts and to seek the best 
knowledge to stamp out any disease in his 
apiary for his neighbours’ sake as well as his 
own. 
PROCEEDINGS of BEEKEEPERS’ 
SOCIETIES. 
Victorian Beekeepers' Club. 
An ordinary meeting of the Club took place 
on the evening of 6th April, at the Manufac- 
turers Associations’ Rooms, about twenty 
members being present, Mr. Ellery in the 
chair. 
The following new menbers were elected, 
viz.: — Dr. H. Lindsay Miller, Warrnambool ; 
Messrs. T. J.Loukes.Daylesford; W. Robinson, 
Warragul; G. IV. Robinson, Berwick; Charles 
Moore, Wandin Yallock; Jos. Maggs, Ring- 
wood. 
Mr. Ellery read the following paper: — 
“ A season’s experience with bee disease. 
“ Early last Spring, 24th September, a friend 
left a hive, with combs, at my residence, with 
a message that his bees, which he had got 
from New Zealand, had absconded from the 
hive, and that as I kept bees the hive might 
be useful to me. I found the hive in the 
garden, and some of my- bees going in and 
out of the entrance. On opening the hive, 
the sickening odour was evidence enough of 
foul brood; combs were rotting with it, 
although there was plenty- of honey, but not 
a single bee left except some of my own 
carrying off the honey. I at once stopped up 
the entrance, removed the hive, burnt the 
combs, frames, honey- and all. I sulphured 
the hive thoroughly. On examining a fine 
stock of Italians in my garden about a month 
subsequently, I was annoyed but not surprised 
to find foul brood thoroughly established, not 
very bad, but three frames emitting the faint 
odour so characteristic of this disease. 1 at 
once took a new hive, with frames of founda- 
tion, and shaking the bees from the old frames 
into a box, let them crawl into the entrance 
of the new- hive. I fed them with phenol 
syrup, three pints altogether in ten days. To- 
day (3rd April, 1 886) the colony is strong, 
healthy', full of honey, and still increasing. 
Some of my stocks at the Observatox-y, about 
one-sixth of a mile distant, subsequently- 
showed occasional cells of foul brood, and one 
weak stock was worse than the rest. This 
was treated by Cheshire’s method, by feeding 
and pouring over combs; but although the 
foul brood was stayed, the queen ceased lay- 
ing and the colony dwindled and eventually 
the queen died. 
“Another stock, the strongest in my apiary 
(Italian,) contracted the shiny bee disease (or 
Bacillus Gaytoni,) and with it, the form of 
disease, where the bees come out with swollen 
abdomens and die in a trembling condition on 
