PRESENT STATUS OF INVESTIGATION OF BEE DISEASES. 41 
tion. That suggestion was that either starvation or comb building carried 
the infected nurses past the period at which they act as nurses and gave them 
a chance to rid their intestines of the germ. If this is combined with a 
removal to absolutely clean hives, with new foundation, it may succeed, but 
I must say that absolute cleanliness in this respect must be insisted on. 
As I said above, I have not had any opportunity of investigating the results 
of these methods practically, and so can not speak with certainty. 
The fact of the presence of the bacilli in the workers and in the queen bears, 
to a certain extent, upon this question. Cheshire and others make the state- 
ment that the bacilli are found in the intestines of the workers and in the 
ovaries of the queens. My own experience confirms this. I have found them 
repeatedly in the workers, and in five queens from infected hives I succeeded 
in obtaining the bacillus from the ovaries of three. That they are not always 
- present in the ovaries of the queens from diseased colonies is certain; their 
presence there is apparently accidental. For instance, in the case of one last 
year’s queens in a hive rather badly diseased I was unable to find the bacillus, 
whilst in a six weeks’ queen from a hive in which there were only a few dis- 
eased ceils I succeeded in finding it. 
Cheshire’s statement that he found a bacillus in an egg of an infected queen 
seems to me to require confirmation. I have not been able to find the eggs in- 
fected myself, but it is a question which would require very Jong and careful 
investigation before one could be able to deny or confirm such a statement. 
In the second method of treatment by medication I do not think that an 
absolute destruction of the spores takes place, any more than in the starvation 
-method. As I have shown above, 2 per cent carbolic acid was not sufficiently 
strong to destroy the spores, consequently it is not likely that 0.2 per cent (1 
part in 500) would be strong enough. I tried 0.2 per cent, but found it quite 
unsuccessful. Its action then must have another explanation. To test this I 
made up a sterilized beef broth containing 1 per 500 of carbolic acid, and in it 
placed my infected silk threads. ft found that there was no indication of 
growth. These threads were then taken out and placed in ordinary sterilized 
beef broth, and I obtained a luxuriant growth, i. e., the 0.2 per cent carbolic 
acid in the culture fluid, although it did not destroy the spores, prevented their 
germination. That, then, is the explanation of the value of carbolated sirup 
in the treatment of foul brood, it prevents the germination of the spores. ‘The 
bee journals contain numerous examples of cases where carbolated sirup pro- 
duced an improvement, but as scon as it was stopped there was a relapse. It 
is evident that here again, as in the starvation process, there must be com- 
bined an extremely thorough cleaning up, so that the best possible results 
may be obtained from the treatment. Medicated sirup does not destroy the 
spores, it simply prevents their development and gives the bees a chance to 
rid themselves of the infection, and in that respect I certainly think resembles 
the starvation process. Its advantage over that is that it can be carried on for 
a longer time. 
In the course of these experiments I tried another substance which has been 
much used since Lortet’s work on the subject, viz, beta naphthol. I do not 
think myself, from recent work on this substance, that beta naphthol should be 
ranked very high as an antiseptic, mainly on account of its insolubility in 
water. I found, however, that a beef broth containing 1 per 1,000 beta naph- 
thol would not allow spores of Bacillus alvei to germinute, and consequently 
had an equal value with 1 per 500 of carbolic acid. It has an advantage over 
cearbolic acid on account of the disagreeable taste of the latter, and I think 
would be more acceptable to the bees. 
