
pa pee 
Luther Brown, a graduate of Mississippi Agricultural College, has been 
appointed plant quarantine inspector, and wiil be assigned to duty at River- 
ton, N. J._, in connection with Japanese beetle inspection work, 
——— 
BEE CULTURE INVESTIGATIONS 
E,. F. Phillips, Apiculturist in Charge 
Dr. Arnold P, Sturtevant, who for several years has had charge of the 
bee disease work of the Bureau, has resigned to accept a position in the Depart - 
ment of Bacteriology of the New York Homeopathic Medical College. 
The "bee louse," Braula coeca, a well-known visitant of the bee colony in 
almost all parts of the world, has been repeatedly imported into the United 
States on queenbees from foreign countries and as a rule has disappeared prompt- 
ly after the introduction cf the imported queens into full colonies. As a re- 
sult American beekeepers have believed that this species could not become es- 
tablisned in this country. Several years ago it was reported that this species 
eccurs in Carroil County, Mad., and another report has been received from an 
apiary in central Pennsylvania. E. L. Sechrist recently visited Carroll County 
and found this species in the apiaries of one firm of beekeepers, and it prob- 
ably occurs to a limited extent elsewhere in the locality. No damage seems to 
occur in strong, healthy colonies of bees, It is especially noted that ifa 
colony of black bees containing Breula is queenless for a time, when an Italian 
queen is introduced, she is immediately covered with large numbers of Braula, 
and the beekeepers claim that in such cases the young Italian queen soon comes 
to look like and behave like an old worn-out queen. Material was collected and 
brought to Washington in which many adults end also eggs and pupae were found. 
Developmentai stages were found to occur in tunnels under the capping of sealed 
honey. Until recently Braula has been supoosea to be similar in its mode of 
development to the sheep tick, which develops to the pupal stage inside the 
parent. Since Braula déposits eggs, it can not oelong to the same series of 
Diptera as the sheep tick. With the material now at hand it should be possible 
to establish the relations of this interesting insect to other Diptera. 
Bruce Lineburg, A. D. Shaftesbury, and B. Kurrelmeyer, who have been em- 
ployed during the summer, will return October 1 to Johns Hopkins University, 
Baltimore, to resume their graduate studies. 
The work on the color grading of honey, undertaken in cooperation with 
the Office of Grades and Standards of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, 
has been completed, and an effort is now being made to devise a suitable holder 
for the color grades. The most troublesome difficulty encowmtered in this work 
was to devise materials of the proper color which at tne same time have the 
proper opacity and are color-permanent in solutions, in this work more than’ 
‘450 samples of typical honeys have been examined for light transmission by the 
spectro-photometer, constituting the most extensive study of colors of honeys 
‘ever undertaken. When models for these graders have been devised, duplicate 
graders will be deposited with the several inspection offices of the Bureau of 
Agricultural Economics, and directions will be issued for the manutacture of 
graders for the trade. It is honed that this will reduce the numoer of con- 




