322 FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 



another. It is well known that if a larva be broken 

 open the bees will suck up its juices, and in a case of 

 starvation the juices of the larvae are consumed and the 

 white skins thrown out of the hive. When a larva first 

 becomes diseased, and has not yet become offensive, it 

 is easy to believe that the nurse-bees will suck up its 

 juices, and then when they feed healthy larvae the 

 healthy larvae will become diseased. But in a little while 

 a diseased larva will become decayed and offensive, so 

 that it will no longer be eaten by the nurse-bees. If this 

 supposition be correct, it will come to pass that if egg- 

 laying should stop for 5 or G days (the time a larva 

 remains unsealed in its cell) there will no longer be in 

 the hive at the same time diseased larvae fit for the nurses 

 to eat and healthy larvae to which the diseased food may 

 be given, and thus the disease should come to an end. 



It was not hard to make the test. I caged the queen 

 of a diseased colony after strengthening it, and freed her 

 after six days of imprisonment. Xo more diseased brood 

 appeared in the hive. Of course, one swallow does not 

 make a summer, and this might not work in all cases. 

 Keither would I in any case recommend the continuance 

 of the old queen after treatment. A queen that has been 

 for some time in a foul broody colony seems sluggish, 

 and is better replaced by a vigorous young queen. 



As between the ]\IcEvoy and the Alexander — or the 

 Alexander-Miller treatment as it has been called — there 

 is so much to be gained in the saving of combs, that 

 even if the first plan always succeeds and the other 

 sometimes fails, it may be cheaper to use the latter and 

 treat over again the failures. But I may remark in pass- 

 ing that among the 27 cases of 1910 some of them were 

 of those that had been brushed upon foundation the pre- 

 vious year. 



\\^ith my present knowledge of the disease, here is 

 the treatment that I believe well worth trying for Euro- 

 pean foul brood : Make the colony strong, preferably 

 by giving sealed brood so as to have abundance of young 



