THE BACTERIOLOGY OF BEE DISEASES. 15 
‘ause of death, naturally the plant would be selected which was 
found on the farm where the animals were sick and which was not 
found on the farm where the animals. remained well. This is 
exactly the kind of reasoning used when we are looking for the 
bacteria which are causing the diseases among bees. This neces- 
sitates, as you see, the study of all the bacteria which are present in 
any apiary, whether diseased or not, as well as those in diseased 
aplaries. 
At the time we began the work on bee diseases, in June, 1902, the 
disorders which were causing the greatest trouble were known to 
bee keepers as black brood, foul brood, pickle brood, and paralysis. 
After the study of a large number of samples of brood affected by 
disease which was being called black brood and the finding of 
Bacillus alvei in all of them, it is very clear that this disease is 
the same as that investigated by Cheyne in 1885 and called by him 
“foul brood;” he first described Bacillus alvei. “ Black brood” was 
a name given by Dr. William R. Howard, of Fort Worth, Tex., to a 
disease which he thought existed in New York State, and he described 
as its cause Bacillus milii. After a careful search in New York State 
for a disease containing Bacillus milii we were unable to find it, and 
there seems to be. no ground for the description of a new disease. 
What has been called black brood by Doctor Howard is obviously the 
type of foul brood which we now distinguish as European foul brood. 
In the decaying larve and dried scales found in the cells in the 
disease which was receiving the name of foul brood there were seen 
by the use of the microscope a very large number of the spores of bac- 
teria, and in the larve in the early stage of the disease there were 
observed bacteria in the rod form. When these spores were planted 
upon the media or soils which have been explained earlier in this 
paper, they would not grow. It became necessary, then, to devise a 
soil in which the growth could be obtained. After a number of un- 
successful attempts, a medium or soil was made from healthy bee 
larve in which the spores would germinate and the bacteria would 
grow. By astudy of this species, which was found in the dead larve 
of this disease and which was not found in the healthy apiary, it was 
evident that it was not Bacillus alvei, and, since Bacillus alvei is not 
present at all, we know that this disease is not the foul brood which 
Cheyne had reported in his work in 1885. Since it is not this type of 
foul brood, what could it be? By carefully reviewing all the work 
which had been done by others, the conclusion was inevitable that this 
diseased condition had not been described properly from a bacterial 
standpoint as a disease separate and distinct. from the foul brood of 
Cheyne, but that the mistake had been made for a long time of calling 
two different and distinct diseases which affected the brood of bees 
by one name. This condition was reported to the New York State 
