68 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' UEVIEW. 



neighborhood where it once gets a foothold. 

 In this would also be found a solution of the 

 problem, why changing the queens will in 

 some cases effect a cure of the diff culty, and 

 in other cases will not ; all depending upon 

 whether the new queen is already contam- 

 inated with the disease or not. But, although 

 the germs of disease may be lurking in her 

 veins, it may not develop with serious re- 

 sults for months, perhaps not during the 

 tirst year of her life, yet afterward render 

 her worthless ; the same as some people who 

 have inherited disease from their parents 

 are not seriously affected thereby until well 

 advanced in life, and then may die from its 

 efifect. 



It has been suggested that bee paralysis 

 is peculiar to warm climates, and that bee- 

 keepers at the North have little to fear from 

 its ravages. But let us not feel too sure of 

 this ; my experience does not corroborate 

 that idea. Whatever may be the origin of 

 the difficulty, if the queen is contaminated 

 therewith, I believe it will develop with dis- 

 astrous results in spite of our northern cli- 

 mate, and will soon become acclimatized to 

 any locality, although climatic influences 

 and local causes may have a tendency to ag- 

 gravate its effect. 



My first clue to the idea that bee paralysis 

 is hereditary, and not contagious, was de- 

 rived from the following facts which oc- 

 curred when I was living on my farm in 

 Seymour, Wisconsin, an account of which 

 was published in the American Bee Journal, 

 volumn 2(), page 582-3, date, Aug. 20th, 1890. 

 But as all the readers of the Review may not 

 have the back numbers of the A. B. J. to re- 

 fer to, I will endeavor to give the main fea- 

 tures of the case here. 



In the summer of 1888, I purchased two 

 queens from a queen breeder that lived 

 several hundred miles south of where I lived. 

 I introduced them into two good healthy col- 

 onies. Previous to that time I had never 

 noticed any sign of disease among my bees, 

 (I kept about 50 or 60 colonies) and I did not 

 notice anything wrong with these two col- 

 onies during the remainder of that season. 

 They wintered on the summer stand, came 

 through in fine condition, built up very 

 strong in numbers in the early spring of 

 1889, but about the time of fruit bloom, both 

 of these colonies having said queens were at- 

 tacked with bee paralysis, and they soon be- 

 came a sorry looking crowd. While they 

 •were passing through the different stages of 



the disease some would have a swollen, 

 greasy appearance, some would be trembling 

 like a man shaking with an ague fit, some so 

 paralyzed that they could only with great 

 difficulty move their limbs ; hundreds of 

 them died in the hive unable to get outside, 

 and they were indeed a sickly looking crew. 

 No other colonies in the yard ever showed 

 any signs of disease, but those having the 

 two queens mentioned appeared to be 

 equally affected, and, although their cases 

 seemed hopeless, I resolved, if possible, to 

 learn something out of the unfortunate af- 

 fair. Therefore I decided to leave one of 

 the colonies entirely to the mercy of the dis- 

 ease, and the other I would cure if I could. 

 I had read that sprinkling them with salt 

 water would effect a cure, so I sprinkled one 

 of them with a weak brine twice a day for 

 two or three days, but could not discover 

 that it had any effect whatever. 1 then took 

 a large spoonful of salt and dissolved it in a 

 little water, just enough to get the salt all 

 dissolved, and mixed this with one gallon of 

 honey and fed it to them just as fast as I 

 could get them to take it. This seemed to 

 check the progress of the disease somewhat, 

 and the bees began to appear more active 

 and lively. The salt being in the honey the 

 bees would necessarily feed it to the queen 

 and larv;e, and when the young bees that had 

 been nursed on this salted honey began to 

 hatch, they increased rapidly in number and 

 and soon the colony became strong and 

 healthy again, and never showed any symp- 

 toms of the disease afterwards. When I sold 

 my farm and bees, in the fall of 1891, this 

 same queen was then alive and the mother 

 of a strong healthy colony. 



The other diseased colony which was not 

 medicated with salt, soon dwindled away 

 and became extinct, queen and all. Then, 

 to demonstrate whether or not this disease 

 is contagious, 1 put another colony of bees 

 upon the same combs in the same hive where 

 that diseased colony had died, without any 

 effort to clean out whatever, except to shake 

 out some of the dead bees that were among 

 the combs, and they never showed any 

 symptoms of disease, so far as I ever knew, 

 nor did it ever appear again in my yard. 



After I once learned of the efficacy of salt, 

 believing in the old maxim that " preven- 

 tion is better than cure," I used to feed all 

 my bees a little salted honey every spring 

 when they first began to fly about. 



Now I have frankly, though briefly, ex- 

 pressed some of my opinions and conclu- 



