THE AUSTRALIAN BEEKEEPERS’ JOURNAL. 
IU1 
and obviated the tedious process of approxi- 
mation. This is the method : Two stocks are 
to be united, say A and B ; B is to remain in 
its old position. In the evening, a little be- 
fore dark, when most of the bees are at home, 
smoke both stocks well, and after a few 
minutes move all the frames but one, with no 
brood in it, from A, and place them in B, 
alternating them with the frames of B, and 
smoke the united stock freely. Close them 
up, but before leaving them put a piece of 
board in front of the entrance, slanting it, so 
that it rests on the alighting board and 
against the front of the hive. This compels 
all the bees going out to go around the slant- 
ing board and induces them to mark the 
locality, and prevents many from returning to 
their old hive. The few bees remaining in the 
old hive, with those returning late in the 
evening, as well as auy old bees going back to 
their old hive next day, will cluster on th 
comb left behind, and next evening can be 
shaken into the united stock, and the frame put 
back again for any returning bees, and so on. 
We have found that very few return after 
the second day. This is far less troublesome 
than moving a hive three or four feet a day, 
especially when they are a considerable dis- 
tance apart. 
FOUL BROOD. 
(Continued from Rage 84 .) 
We see that legislation has taken place in 
some of the Australian Colonies with regard 
to this, bee pestilence, ana, as in the case of 
contagious and infectious diseases among 
animals, it is intended to provide against 
( spreading foul brood through ignorance, care- 
lessness, or indifference of owners, by making 
it punishable to have hives affected with this 
disease after due notice of its existence has 
been given. 
In Queensland, we are informed, an Act has 
been passed for this purpose, and a week or 
two since a similar enactment was carried in 
the Legislative Assembly of South Australia. 
I While under consideration in the latter 
Colony it met with some opposition. The 
following letters, extracted from the Adelaide 
papers, show that there are opponents to any 
legal enactment iu this direction, as there 
always must be where individuals are likely 
to suffer for the welfare of the many. 
A letter, signed Lavington Y. Tite, is as 
follows: — “Dr. Cockburn, in moving the 
second reading of this absurd Bill, which is 
now being rushed through the House of 
Assembly, made the assertion that all the 
beekeepers of the Colony had asked for it, and 
that it would affect no other elass. I venture 
to assert that nine-tenths of the beekeeping 
community never even heard of such a pro- 
position, and that the effect of its passing will 
be to stamp out the industry. Foul brood, 
forsooth ! The only brood of that description 
I know of is the miserable brood of legislators 
who, with their meddling, paltry, pitiful laws 
are surely crushing the vitality of the com- 
munity. It is this class that first legislated 
to protect the rabbit and the sparrow, and are 
now worrying and threatening the farmers to 
compel their destruction ; who legislated to 
penalise the keeping of dogs that killed the 
rabbits, and now threaten to let loose on the 
Colony a cruel and malignant disease, the 
results of which it is impossible to foresee. 
This is the class that crushed out the flax- 
growing industry at Willunga, Port Victor, 
and Gawler, and which, by wicked tariffs and 
senseless restrictions on trade, load men with 
heavy burdens grievous to be borne ; which 
has just successfully ruined the Silverton and 
Western Australian trade, on which so many 
bright hopes bad been built, and discounted 
the fair chances of returning prosperity. But 
this Foul Brood Bill is the highest height of 
drivelling inanity, the very topmost limit of 
j even legislatorial imbecility. If it be sug- 
gested to endow the inventor thereof with a 
fool s cap and silver bells I will promise a 
handsome subscription thereto. Foul brood, 
indeed ! Why, the disease so called is only 
another name for starvation. The amateurs 
in beekeeping have filled the Adelaide Plains 
with swarms of bees out of all proportion to 
the food supply by the eucalyptus and other 
honey-bearing trees and plants to be found 
there, and, as a natural consequence, the young 
bees are the first to feel the want of proper 
food, and dying in the comb become putrid. 
1 will guarantee to produce foul brood in any 
locality in three years by simply overstocking. 
The only remedy is the simple one of greatly 
reducing the numbers of hives, and so increas- 
ing tiie food supply for the remnant. I sup- 
pose it will be asked — What does this man 
know about it ? M y reply is, I have been 
beekeeping for nearly thirty years before most 
of these dilettante Bill inventors knew the 
difference between a bee and a blowfly, and 
that in the season 1881-5 I sold nearly two tons 
of honey, the produce of my own hives. “ 
1 >r. Cockburn is the member who introduced 
the F'oul Brood Bill into the South Australian 
Parliament. The writer ot the above letter 
has evidently no mean opinion of his know- 
ledge of the subject, an opinion I am afraid 
that will not be shared by beekeepers generally, 
lie speaks with the dogmatism of ignorance. 
Foul brood is starvation, and starvation is 
foul brood, so says Mr. L. Y. Tite. So then 
must scab in sheep, small-pox in the genus 
homo, and pleura-pneumonia, and anthrax in 
cattle 1 >e starvation. 
Another writer, signing “ Apis,” writes, hut 
less dogmatically, yet still ignorantly, as fol- 
lows : — “ As there is a good deal of discussion 
just now on this subject, I wish to offer a few 
remarks on it. I do not insist that I am right ; 
1 leave your readers to judge for themselves. 
Iu the locality where I reside, in and near 
