THE AUSTRALIAN BEEKEEPERS’ JOURNAL. 
85 
and make a mixture of rye-flour and bone-flour, 
using three parts of rye-flour and one of bone- 
flour, adding enough of the syrup or medicated 
honey to make a thick paste. Spread this 
paste over part of one side of a disinfected 
comb, pressing it into the cells with a stiff 
brush or a thin honey-knife, and hang this in 
the hive next to the brood. Continue this 
treatment until a cure is effected. Keep 
sweetened brine at all times accessible to the 
bees, and continue the use of the rye and bone 
flour paste while the colonies are recuperating. 
As a preventative apply the remedy in the 
form of a spray over the tops of the frames 
once every week until the disease has dis- 
appeared from the apiary. 
Mr. McLain says further that “all the 
evidence so far obtained seems to prove that 
pollen is the medium through which the 
contagion is commonly introduced, and by 
which it is communicated to both bees and 
brood.” 
In our report of the proceedings of the 
South Australian Beekeepers’ Association on 
page 86, will be found a very useful and valu- 
able paper on Foul Brood and its treatment, 
read at the last meeting of the Association by 
E. Clough, Esq., of Mt. Barker, South Aus- 
tralia, which our readers will find worthy of 
careful perusal. 
(To he continued). 
ANTS IN THE APIARY. 
(Continued fbom Page 68.) 
We believe that strong healthy stocks are 
seldom troubled with ants, and although they 
may sometimes be seen reconnoitering about 
a hive on warm evenings they soon appear to 
be convinced that no business is to be done, 
and none will be again seen around that hive 
during the summer, but they soon find out 
every colony that get3 weak or demoralised. 
Numerous devices are resorted to to prevent 
ants getting on or in the hives, and most of 
them require that the hives should be raised 
at least some eight or ten inches from the 
ground. The most economical way is to keep 
the hives on a tango or bench supported by 
two legs at each end — such a range may be 
made of common 2m. x 3in. scantling or hard- 
wood quartering. A range or bench, eight 
feet long, will carry four to six hives, 
and the legs or supports may be from eight to 
sixteen inches high. To keep the ants from 
this range the four legs should be made to 
stand in four tins (jam or preserve meat tins 
or anything of the kind will do), fill these tins 
wit h water, on top of which a little kerosene 
should l>e poured to prevent evaporation. So 
long as the tins are kept clear of leaves, dirt 
and weeds and filled with water, no ants will 
get on the bench or hives. Wo find a very 
successful method instead of the tins, is to 
wind one or two turns of Manilla lashing 
(used for hay bales, &c.) around each leg and 
paint it occasionally with a mixture of tar 
tallow and kerosene. No ants will pass over 
this unless it is allowed to get quite hard and 
dry. Some tack a strip of opossum skin, with 
fur outside, around each leg. the fur in this 
case keeps back the ants. Simply painting 
the legs regularly with kerosene or carbolic 
acid solution is also effective. 
There are some ingenious contrivances made 
for screwing into the bottom boards of hives 
which form four legs or supports, each of 
has a little hooded tin vessel for bolding kero- 
sene, over which the ants cannot pass. 
Hives on the ground, well covered with 
long grass, will be free of ants until the grass 
gets dry. 
If the beekeeper bears in mind that kero- 
sene, tar — both coal and Stockholm — oil or 
grease, and carbolic acid, are all substances 
over which ants will not pass so long as they 
are not actually dry and hard, it will be no 
difficult matter to arrange a bench or stand 
for hives that will be proof against these 
troublesome marauders. Our own experience 
has shown us that this method is simpler, 
cheaper, and more effective for an apiary 
troubled with ants than any other, although 
those several capital devices, such as the 
screw legs with kerosene cups, are neat and 
effective where one has only a hive or two. 
We will now give some of the very numerous 
methods suggested for destroying or driving 
away ants from the vicinity of an apiary ; for 
it is found that by persistently disturbing and 
worrying the nests of many of the common 
varieties of ants they will almost always move 
off to new nests some distance away from the 
old ones. 
1. Pick or dig up the ground containing the 
nests so as to break up all the galleries and 
brood nests, and with a watering pot. wet the 
whole turned up surface with carbolic acid 
water. One part of Calvert’s No. 5 carbolic 
acid in 100 parts of water, or with a strong 
brine if no carbolic acid is available This 
will destroy a large part of the colonies and 
weakens them so much that it will be some 
time before they become troublesome again, 
and a second treatment null either break them 
up altogether or drive them away. Carbolic 
water is much the most effective. 
2. After an ant’s nest is in full working in 
summer and the queens are laying eggs, stop 
up all the entrances to the nest but the princi- 
pal one with turf or clay, and pour into the 
open entrance about an ounce of bisulphide of 
carbon and cover this entrance also. The 
queens and most of the ants get killed and the 
nests will be abandoned. 
3. In South America corrosive sublimate is 
used with success — it is generally powdered, 
finely sprinkled over the entrances, after 
which the ground is freely watered with a 
watering-pot. This appears to slowly poison 
the whole colony. 
