Page:How to Keep Bees.djvu/220

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178
HOW TO KEEP BEES

starters are given instead. Having no young to feed, the bees use all the infected honey in their stomachs for making comb. At the end of the fourth day all this comb is removed and new-frames with foundation are substituted, and the deed is done.

Mr. Root's practice is to remove the hive from its stand about dark, to prevent robbing, and put another just like it in its place which contains frames filled with foundation. The bees are shaken from the infected hive into the new one. Here they are shut in without food for three or four days, thus being compelled to use all the honey in their honey sacs. Then they are fed and the disease does not appear again in colonies thus treated. Mr. Root burns all the infected comb and frames and disinfects the hives with hot water before they are used again; other apiarists of experience support Mr. Root in this matter. Fumigating the hives with burning brimstone would perhaps be an easier or a surer way of disinfecting the hives.

Many apiarists who do a large business do not destroy the infected comb, but render it in a steam wax press. They also thin the infected honey and boil it for two hours, adding to it a little salicylic acid, and use it to feed back to the bees. But this would hardly pay, unless great care were taken, as one drop of the infected honey would start the disease anew.

Some have tried medicated syrup as a remedy. It is true that syrup made with salicylic acid or beta-