478 DISEASES OF BEES. 



Some apiarists insist that the only ^-ay to get rid of ropy 

 foul-brood is to entirely destroy the colonies suffering from it, 

 hives, bees and combs, by fire. This is wanton waste and 

 quite unnecessary. 



In spite of Cheshire's assertion that no spores are to be 

 found in the honey of diseased colonies, practice has sufficiently 

 proven that Cheshire's assertions on that score were erroneous. 

 The honey, in this disease, is the main source of transm.ission. 

 Schirach, the man who discovered that a queen m.ay be reared 

 from any egg that would produce a worker (109), in his 

 '' Histoire Naturelle de la Reine AheilW (The Hague, 1771), 

 recom.m-ends the rem.oval of all the com.bs, starving the bees for 

 two days, then giving them fresh combs with a remedy composed 

 of diluted honey with nutm^eg and saffron. 



7S2. Following this advice, D. A. Jones of Canada, and later, 

 Wm. McEvoy, then inspector of apiaries for the Province of 

 Ontario, succeeded fully in the method which we here give 

 and which is now recommended by all authorities, ^-ith slight 

 variations. Mr. N. E. France, for a long tim.e inspector of 

 apiaries for Wisconsin and former General Manager of the 

 National Beekeepers' Association, who has had a m^ost exten- 

 sive experience in the matter of foul-brood, gave the method 

 in the following words : 



McEvoy treatm.ent: "In the honey season, when the bees 

 are gathering honey freely, rem.ove the combs in the evening 

 and shake the bees into their own hives; give them frames with 

 comb-foundation starters and let them build comb for four 

 days. The bees will m.ake the starters into comb during the 

 four days and store the diseased honey in them, which they 

 took with them from the old comb. Then in the evening of the 

 fourth day take out the new comb and give them comb founda- 

 tion (full sheets) to work out, and then the cure will be com- 

 plete. By this method of treatm.ent all the tainted honey is 

 removed from the bees before the full sheets of foundation are 

 worked out. All the old foul-brood com-bs must be burned or 

 carefully made into wax after they are removed from the hives, 

 and all the new combs made out of the starters during the four 

 days must be burned or made into wax on account of the 



