February, '21] fracker: foul brood control 117 



STOPPING THE DISTRIBUTION OF AMERICAN FOUL BROOD 



AT ITS SOURCE 



By vS. B. Fracker, Madison, Wis. 



The danger of the introduction of diseased material into clean territory 

 has been well recognized in the case of all animal and plant diseases. 

 For some reason it seems to have been given less attention in the case 

 of bee diseases than of insect pests and live stock troubles. Thus far 

 the only attempts which have been made, except in one or two states, 

 to control the movement of apiary material which may be infected but 

 is not known to be, are in the nature of inter-state quarantines. The 

 failure of the latter, in the case of the distribution of bee diseases, is 

 notorious, and is due almost entirely to the manner in which bees and 

 bee supplies may be shipped and moved about freely inside of state 

 limits without restriction. Unless employees of transportation com- 

 panies develop the habit of looking for inspection certificates or permit 

 tags of some kind in every case where bees are moved or shipped, they 

 cannot be expected to be particularly careful when the movement is 

 inter-state. 



This matter has been brought with particular emphasis to the writer's 

 mind recently by a couple of incidents. One was the story of a certain 

 county in one of the Mississippi Valley states in which an area cleanup 

 campaign had been attempted, based more on the cooperation of the 

 beekeepers than legal authority in that particular state. Great progress 

 was made in freeing the county from bee diseases in two years, but in 

 the spring of the third year a large heavily infected apiary moved into 

 the center of the county. For various reasons no further work was 

 done in this area and the inspector who had been in charge of the area 

 cleanup, states that the county is probably in as bad shape now as when 

 the cleanup was begun. 



The other incident related to the control of tuberculosis in live stock, 

 in which the county cleanup method is also being attempted. Accord- 

 ing to one of the representatives of the U. S. Bureau of Animal Industry 

 that Bureau is refusing to cooperate in the area cleanup of tuberculosis 

 as long as the unrestricted movement of cattle to and fro across state and 

 across county lines is continued. If the necessity for the regulation for the 

 movement of material subject to infection is apparent in the case of 

 bovine tuberculosis, it must be doubly so in the case of foul brood in 

 apiaries, for tuberculosis is not, according to the veterinarians, dis- 

 tributed to any extent through the air, and does not spread from one 

 herd to another in adjoining fields unless they are nosing along the same 

 fence. 



