The Emmett index. [volume] (Emmett, Idaho) 1893-1925, 1908-02-20
FOUL BROOD IN HIVES
Meeting Called to Take Steps
to Combat D.sease.


ing considerable time to the propa-
cation of bees and has sold each
wear large quantities of honey. has
found il necessary to destroy nearly
all his lives on account of the pre-
valence OF foul brood. Mr.. West has
i.sled call for convention of bee
owners at Pleasure Club hall Sat-
urday afternoon at 2 O'Clock.
"You and - he says are upI
against it hard. I will tell oyuI
my experience last summre. | vas
extracting as nice honey and as
large Weld as l have ever had
in Idaho. when / got scent that,
made me think of an experience y
had few years before l came here
At that time l had 130 hives and
was figuring on 2700 pounds to
the hive the next year. The foul
brood struck me and though | used
every means to save my combs by
doctoring my bees with medicine
and boiling down over 1000 combs
10 a few hunrded pounds of wax,
but failea and / went out OF busi-
ness. Recently went to Boise to
see J. R. Field, the state bee in
spector, and eI:deavor to secure aid
in combating the contagion, but
he told me that while there was
good law in regard to foul brood,
there was no money to enforce it.
He asked me to accept the ap-
pointment of bee inspector for this
district. and I accepted the job with
reluctance. Mr. Vanderhoof told
me he had hive die-the bees rob
bed it. As it smelled bad he burn
ed it. went to examine it and
found only a few pieces of comb
that were not burned. l found
two more of mine that had it the
day received my appointment as
Inspector for the Payette valley and
Boise county (not very much
country considering the salary.)
smothered them with sulphur and
buried them, as l had done to the
other one. l have since found the
d sease in another hive. l attended
the bee convention at Parma Feb
ruary II and found that they had
it in both the Boise and Payette
valleys. Mr.. McClannahan of Pay
ette told me he had destroyed l4O OF
his own hives and 160 for his
neighbors. R. D. Bradshaw of
Pavette told m. he and his neigh
bors had burned $50 hives.
"Around Emmett. there are pro-
badly 100 people who have hives.
The hives-are housed in bee gums,
dry goods boxes. nail kegs and any
old thing that was handy. To
these say you are going out of the
bee business if you don't change
your hives. have no hives to sell.
TO illustrate: If an inspector
should come to your bee yard along
in April or MAY and should find a
hive that had foul brood, he would
want to look at all of them and
this could only be done by tearing
open the hives and separating
enough of the combs to make a
thorough investigation to be sure
there was no diselse. Yyu would
then have to put it together like it
was because the inspector hasn't
the time to GO so. Again in Sept
ember the inspector would make
another examination and repeat
the first operation.
1 think, however. if no inspector
were to visit your bees, you would
soon be out of business anyway,
although it would take little
longer. Suppose one of your hives
should die of foul brood. The bees
in the other hives would rob the
honey. carry the germs to their own
hives and then all would soon be
diseased. Now let us look at it
in another light. There is cure
for foul brood if you transfer your
bees to clean hives. If you will |
come to the meeting Saturday II
will tell you what l know. l will