AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 629 



Hydesville I was talking with an old settler there who had killed 512 bears in and 

 about that county. He has but one arm, and the other hand is crippled so that he 

 has but one finger. 



We have been having more rain this morning ; it looks as if it has set in to be 

 quite a wet time. I think Mr. Martin does not like the climate in Humboldt county 

 much now. He refers to it in a joking sort of way, as " The Land of the Mist." 'Tis 

 rather foggy there at times, but that is what makes it such a good dairy country. 

 Then it is not as cold as it is near the ocean. You have read of course that it is not 

 cold along the coast of California, owing to the Japan current washing our coast. 

 Here I might remark that the "current " of Japanese that has been flowing into 

 China the past few months have been making things rather warm there, too ! 



North Temescal, Calif., Oct. 23. W. A. Pryal 



BEHS AND FRUIX-BEE-DISEASES. 



BY PROF. A. J. COOK. 



(An essay read at the recent Farmers' Institute, in Santa Barbara, Calif.) 



(Continued from page 599.) 



Foul Brood.— This is a microbe, or fungoid malady, and is by all means the 

 most fatal and serious of our bee-maladies. It was known to Aristotle, and has 

 wiped out whole apiaries in our own time. Its true nature was not known until 

 within a few years, as is true with all microbe diseases, and like most microbe 

 maladies, it is terribly contagious and terribly fatal. But as we have come to know 

 its true nature, intelligent, well-informed bee-keepers have lost their fear of this 

 evil. So true is this, that Hon. R. L. Taylor, director of the Michigan apiarian ex- 

 periment station, keeps a living sample in his apiary for his special study and 

 amusement. He has no longer any fear at all of " foul brood." Is this not encour- 

 aging? Imagine in the future our keeping a little typhoid, tuberculosis, scarlet 

 fever, diphtheria, or cholera, about the premises, with the fangs down, as a thing 

 to play with. I see no reason why we may not, if knowledge can rob terrible 

 diseases that now lie in wait for human victims. I believe it can and will. 



" Foul brood " takes its name from the two facts — its disgusting odor, and the 

 further fact that it attacks and destroys the brood while yet in the cell. It is not 

 difiBcult to identify the disease. The cells, if capped over, will usually be punctured 

 and sunken, or concave. The contents of the cell will have no form or semblance 

 of a bee-larv£e. It will be brown in color, salvy in constituency, so if drawn by aid 

 of a pin or toothpick from the cell, it strings out, and when it breaks from the pin, 

 will fly back with some force. This brown, ropy, viscid, putrescent mass is sure 

 evidence of " foul brood." The odor is also characteristic, but may not be notice- 

 able in case of only a few affected bees. It is very disagreeable, and often betrays 

 the disease as soon as we raise the cover from the hive. I have often received 

 specimens of foul brood by mail in a close box, and wrapped closely with two or three 

 layers of paper, and yet members of my household would detect the contents at once 

 upon taking the package from the mail-carrier, by the odor alone. 



Cure for Foul Brood. — The late Moses Quinby, the renowned pioneer bee- 

 keeper of the United States, first gave the method to cure foul brood. His method 

 is practically that which is everywhere so successful to-day, and, what is the more 

 remarkable, he discovered the cure without knowing at all the true nature of the 

 disease. As we now know it to be a microbe enemy, which we can detect and study 

 with our microscopes, we easily understand why the " Quinby cure," as I should 

 call it, the so-called starvation method of cure, is so entirely effective. 



