144 EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL EEPOET OF THE 



legs, they will pull their tongues away out to an amazing length, and 

 do this several times, until they become quite exhausted, and then 

 they will let their heads fall forward and roll to one side and rest on 

 their mandibles and remain quite quiet. 



The disease is apt to appear during a wet time, but not always. 

 Also, during the progress of the disease, along about an hour or two 

 before noon, the disease is at its worst. If you went to the apiary 

 then 5^ou would be pretty apt to notice it, unless it was a light form, 

 but you might visit that same apiary late in the afternoon and never 

 suspect that anything was wrong, and yet you would have lost a good 

 many bees during that one day. 



When the disease struck our yards, it Vv'cnt through every colony, 

 and we have six apiaries, and there was not one where the disease 

 did not show, and it was in practically every colony. In fact, I could 

 not say that there was one colony that did not have it. I immediately 

 wondered whether it was some poison, because I could not think that 

 a disease would start up like that in all the apiaries all at once, it 

 seemed as though there was some other reason for it, so we went to 

 all the colonies, everj-where around for a radius of aijout tv/enty miles, 

 and looked at all the large apiaries, and often times if we happened 

 to see a small one we stopped to look at two or three colonies sometimes, 

 but we investigated everywhere we could and found it everywhere, 

 all around us. And in only two cases did the owner suspect that any- 

 thing was wrong, and one of these owners had already reported the 

 case to Dr. Phillips, and the other one had said that he noticed that 

 there was a carpet of bees the first thing in the morning — not the first 

 thing in the morning — along when the sun became real warm. 



It is not always true, but it is often true that after the disease has 

 appeared in the yard it will appear again the following season. Now, 

 for how long that will be true I don't know. The abdomens of the 

 bees are sometimes swollen, but not always: also there is occasionally 

 a trembling motion noticed, the body shows a trembling motion. I 

 speak of those two characteristics, because often times in what is said 

 about the disappearing disease they say those two are not present. I 

 have seen them both. 



In the Isle of Wight they tell us the queen is not affected. Well, 

 I have seen hundreds of colonies that had this disease, and of course I 

 did not take the trouble to find the queen, but if I happened to see her 

 I found her all right except in one case. In one case we found a queen 

 that was rubbing her head most vigorously, she looked a little bit 

 queer, and yet you could not see anything was wrong with her. We 

 watched her anyhow. She kept it up, she ran this way on the comb 

 and then the other and continued to rub her head, and I decided in 

 that cas6 the quefen was affected. She was acting as the rest of her 

 bees were. But I think that is unusual. 



The causes of the disease are not definitely known, and some think 

 that the disease is caused by nozema aphis, but if nozema aphis was 

 never present in well bees and it was always present in those affected 

 with disappearing disease, then we would be more inclined to think 

 that. Some think that the trouble is caused by poisoning, but in 

 cases of poisoning warm weather does not stop the trouble. And 



