File:American bee journal (1918) (17493379883).jpg

Title: American bee journal
Identifier: americanbeejourn5859hami (find matches)
Year: 1861 (1860s)
Authors:
Subjects: Bee culture; Bees
Publisher: (Hamilton, Ill. , etc. , Dadant & Sons)
Contributing Library: UMass Amherst Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: UMass Amherst Libraries

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1918 AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 161 man couldn't enjoy his own garden. "Too much of it; that's the reason. A cat's got no use fer two tails, an' one sting's a-plenty fer a bee, ain't it?" "For all practical purposes," I agreed. "But if the bee had nine lives to protect, like the cat " The gardener gave the barbed wire an impatient twist. "Can't corner the earth and get away with it, not even if you had twenty lives. It's again' natur'." The gardener is right. Again the Pussy willow has come and gone. The paths are fringed with clamber- ing blackberry and the feathery bloom of Poison oak; the first blue haze of Ceanothus is on the hills; and my bees take their fill, unmo- lested. There is nothing to remind me that all this beauty is owned by an absent neighbor. It is as though the broad acres were mine instead. Indeed they are mine. Every curve of the shaded roads, every tint of foliage, every song of the streams, the fragrance, the sunshine, the panoramic glimpses of valley and hill and sky, all are mine—mine and the bees.' No man can take them from us, least of all the babbling old man who sits all day in a far-away hotel under the watchful eye of a trained attendant. Los Gatos, Calif. Curing or Eradicating, Which? By F. Dundas Todd EARLY in the year 1911 I was in- vited to become a bee inspector for the Province of British Columbia, and my department chief asked me what I intended to do with any cases of foulbrood I happened upon. I asked a little time to con- sider the question, and this I devoted to going through all my bee litera- ture, reading everything I found upon the matter and making note of re- sults. Altogether I amassed a very considerable amount of data, and I gathered it all into two heaps. A very small one represented the re- gion where it was claimed that foul- brood had been gotten rid of entirely, and remained free for a number of years,ten I think. The other big mass represented the regions where scores of men claimed to be curing foul- brood, but it was apparently still rampant in their districts. I carried the piles to my chief, and arranged them on his desk, remark- ing, "This big heap represents the ef- forts of many men who cure foul- brood, and still have it, this single sheet of paper tells how Belgium got rid of the disease in 10 years, and still remains free of it. I propose to follow the example of Belgium, not pretend to cure it, but to wipe out by fire everything that I find in contact with the disease. Such procedure will probably raise an awful howl, but 1 am game to see it through, if you think the experiment is worth mak- ing." He decided it was, and has loy- ally stood behind his inspectors from that day until now. In 1914 I came in contact with American foulbrood for the first time, and during the last half of the year it kept me quite busy. I need not go into details, as they were given in an article that appeared in the July issue of the American Bee Journal, show- ing how I stayed by the proposition, stamping it out wherever I found it. Needless to say I got considerable advice as to how I really should have comported myself if I wished to be- have according to Hoyle, but it was all carefully neglected. Well, I now have had four seasons' experience of fighting American foul- brood and am able to give results, and armed with these to do a little talking back, as I think it is a poor game that is played all on one side. So I have gathered together a batch of literature for the second time,_ and had another good look at the situa- tion. The human race never gets very far in any particular phase of activity unless it devises a measuring rod adapted to the conditions, so that it can check results. I think if we had a good measuring rod to apply to the foulbrood situation we would not have been deluged with so much ora- tory. In looking over the recent magazine articles at my disposal I find only one man, Wesley Foster, who catches a glimmer of its need, for in July Gleanings he says: "In our experience with European foul- brood we find something to learn ev- ery day. It is hard to eradicate but easy to cure. What is meant by that is that an individual apiary can be cleaned up readily, but it is difficult to clean up a district comprising 20 apiaries." He states the proposition exactly as I saw it in 1911, so the standard I set for myself was this, in how short a time can I eradicate the disease from an infected district? One of my own beekeepers, a good student of apiculture, evolved the same idea when he learned I was burning infected cases. He said, "All right, I'll give you five years to see what you can do, and if you have no definite results by that time, then I'll want a different policy." Well, here is a measuring rod pro- vided for me, the combination of the ideas of these two beekeepers. If he
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No more Poison Oak for the Missus.—Photograph by John R. Douglass

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