AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL.
EDITED AND PUBLISHED BY SAMUEL WAGNER, WASHINGTON, D. C.
AT TWO DOLLARS PER ANNUM, PAYABLE IN ADVANCE.
Vol. VI. NOVEMBER, 1870. No. 5.
[For the American Bee Journal.]
Cure of Foulbrood.
Mr. Editor:—I promised, (vol. V., page 187,) to report how my refrigerator wintered its colony. The frames were covered with a piece of old carpeting, and the whole space outside the inner hive packed with straw and shavings. This spring it was in splendid condition, and it was found necessary to remove brood and cut out queen cells as early as the 20th of May; and, for this locality, the surplus would have been large, if I had not been obliged to break up the colony on account of foulbrood.
You can imagine my disappointment when my apiarian friend, Mr. Sweet of West Mansfield, pointed out to me this loathsome disease in my choicest Italian colony, early in June, when up to that time I had supposed that everything was prosperous with my twelve colonies. After a thorough examination I found six hives more or less affected, and according to high authority, should be condemned to death. The other six appeared free from disease at this time, although three more subsequently became diseased.
This is my second summer of bee-keeping, and all the duties pertaining to an apiary were entered into with the enthusiasm, and shall I confess it, the ignorance and carelessness of a novice. Yes, ignorance and culpable carelessness, for in gathering empty combs from various quarters, the disease was introduced and spread among my pets. One hive, in particular, of empty comb had the peculiar odor, perforated cells, and brown viscid fluid, with which I have since become so familiar this summer; and it seems unaccountable to me, how any person with the Bee Journal wide open and Quinby’s instructions before him, could be so careless as to give such combs to his bees.
But such was the fact, and foulbrood spreading right and left. What shall be done to get rid of it? Shall Quinby be followed, purify the hive and honey by scalding, and treat the colony as a new swarm; or shall the heroic treatment of Alley be adopted; bury or burn bees and hive, combs and all? The latter has sent me some fine queens; but the former has always given reliable advice, and I shall follow his instructions with two colonies which are past all cure, and reserve the others for treatment, hoping that I may find some cure, or at least palliative for the disease, and add my mite of experience, and, perhaps, useful knowledge to our Bee Journal.
Accordingly, June 8th, the combs of the two condemned colonies were melted into wax, the honey drained over and scalded, and the bees, after a confinement of forty hours, were treated like new swarms; and now, September 18th, are perfectly healthy and in fine condition for winter.
I will not occupy your valuable space with all the details of my experiments and fights (which lasted through three months) with the trials of doses of different strengths and kinds, with old comb and new, with young queens and old ones, and with no queen at all, and how, in doing this, I was obliged to keep up the strength of the colony for fear of robbers and of spreading the disease to my neighbors. Suffice it to say, that after two months I had made no apparent headway, although still determined to “fight it out on this line, if it took all summer” and my last hive. In fact, I devoted my apiary to the study of this disease, and, perhaps, death.