600 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



Aug. 24, 19( 5 



tinued the treatment. Hut last summer (1904) I saw again a 

 few bees here and there twitching and scratching, showing 

 that the cure had not been complete. The malady might have 

 been re-introduced from abroad. If it was, it came through 

 some of the queens I bought, as there are no bees near enough 

 mine to give them the disease. But I rather think that the 

 cure was not complete. 



Bee-paralysis is a very erratic disease. Sometimes it 

 appears, or disappears, or nearly so, without any cause or 

 reason that can be assigned. And it is possible that, the dis- 

 ease decreased of iiself, and that the supposed effect of the 

 camphor applied was a mere coincidence. 



PICKLED BROOD. 



This seems to be essentially a disease of the brood, or 

 rather of the pollen first, and then the brood fed on that pol- 

 len. The first intimation of it is some larv» having a dull 

 appearance, and stretched or turned in a wrong position. 

 More and more are seen, and as the disease advances they be- 

 come a kind of yellowish gray, eventually turning to browji. 

 Most of them finally die before being sealed, others only after. 



When a large portion of the brood has become diseased, 

 the bees discontinue brood-rearing entirely, and cease to 

 bring in pollen. Eventually the sound brood hatches out, 

 arid the dead larvLC dry enough so that the bees can take them 

 out, which they do. They also clean out the infected pollen, 

 and if at that time the hive is examined, the combs will be 

 found as bright and clean as tbey can be. The queen has 

 died, and no attempt at rearing another has been made. This 

 has invariably occurred in every case that I hive seen, 'when 

 left to themselves. It seems, therefore, that the queen also 

 becomes diseased, which is likely to be, since she receives the 

 same nourishment as the larvic. The adult bees and drones 

 seem to remain healthy throughout. However, if a micro- 

 scopical investigation is ever made, it may show a different 

 state of affairs. 



The malady is not contagious, or very little if at all, and 

 does not spread from one hive to the other. Some one in 

 these columns suggested that since the malady is not conta- 

 gious, it would be best to break up the colony and distribiiie 

 the combs among the other colonies. I certainly would not 

 risk it. Because the malady is not contagious from hive to 

 hive, it does not follow that it is not. so from comb to comb in 

 the same hive. In fact, it spreads over all the combs of an 

 infected hive, and there is no reason why it should not do so 

 where a diseased comb is introduced in a healthy colony. It 

 would be easy to try, but I don't care to do it. 



If the queen gets sick, the cessation of brood-rearing may 

 be due to her condition. However, it is not so in all cases. I 

 once removed the queen and put in her place a young- laying 

 queen. She laid a few hundred eggs and quit. The bees 

 made no attempt at brood-rearing, and did not even resunn' 

 pollen-gathering. The eggs remained unhatched some 8 or 10 

 days, and finally disappeared. 



CAUSES OF PICKLED BROOD. 



Some have said lack of honey, some lack of pollen. It is 

 neither one. I never liad a case yet where there was not some 

 honey, and sometimes there was a considerable quantity of it. 

 It certainly is not the lack of pollen. In my locality, polleii 

 could be had by the ton the whole summer," from pumpkins, 

 melons, corn, ragweeds, and lots of other sources in succes- 

 sion. When the disease reaches a certain point, the bees 

 cease to bring in the pollen ; that's all there is to it. 



The investigations of Dr. Howard show that the disease 

 is due, not to a bacillus, but to a fungus— Aspergillus Pollini. 

 It develops in the pollen, and thence into the digestive appara- 

 tus of the brood. Dr Tloward thinks that the malady could 

 be carried from one hive to the other by robber-bees. So far 

 as I remember, the most I had of it in any one year was 4 col- 

 onies in one apiary and 3 in the other. Last year I had 1 

 case, and the year before none. That does not look iniicli 

 like contagion. 



t'URK FOR PICKLED BHOOD. 



The advice is usually given to melt the combs, pollen, 

 brood and all, and siai t the colony on foundation again. Thai 

 always seemed to nr.e to be too much trouble, and I never have 

 done it. I let the thing go through its course, and when the 

 bees have cleaned everything 1 give them a queen and some 

 brood to start anc-.v. I have tried carbolic acid, given m 

 described above, th:!t is. letting its vapors do the work. It i> 

 effectual. The only trouble is that if enough Is given to et'c-c; 

 a cure within a reasonable time, the bees may abscond. 



The case I had lasi summer was discovered early ; ilien. 

 was but little diseased brood yet, and <iuito an amount of 

 sound brood nearly all sealed. I didn't want to lose all that 



brood, so I caged the queen, intending to come back 21 days 

 later, after all the sound brood would be out, and then disin- 

 fect the combs by putting them in a box and burning sulphur. 

 Somehow or other I was delayed, and when I visited the hive- 

 the bees had already cleaned everything thoroughly. I gave- 

 them another queen and some brood. The malady has not 

 reappeared. 



.STARVED BROOD. 



Several times dead brood has been sent to Prof. Cook for 

 identification. In some of his contributiot.s he states that the 

 brood sent him looked merely like starved brood. It may 

 seem strange that such a thing should occur more often in 

 California than elsewhere, but in reading the " Rambles " of 

 .1. II. Martin, in Gleanings, we find the statement that in 

 many parts of California the summer temperature during the 

 day reaches 100, and even 110 degrees, sometimes more. And 

 in looking at the halftone engravings, we see the hives, single- 

 walled at that, exposed to the hot sun without any protection 

 whatsoever. More than that, the hives are right on the bare 

 ground, in a climate where it does not rain the whole summer. 

 XVho does not know that in dry and hot weather the tempera- 

 ture of the ground exceeds considerably that of the atmos- 

 phere ? And with the hot sun above, and ttte radiation of the 

 hot ground below, the temperature to which these hives are 

 exposed must be excessive. When the temperature is too 

 high the bees are forced to abandon the hive. The brood left 

 behind starves, or is overheated — likely both. Then the un- 

 lucky (?) Californian sends a piece of it to Prof. Cook, asking 

 if it is pickled brood or bee-paralysis 1 



POISONED BEES. 



Occasionally bees are poisoned by gathering nectar or 

 pollen from fruit-trees that some ignorant person sprayed dur- 

 ing blossoming time. Some cases of bees dying from the 

 emanations of copper-melting furnaces or similar- kinds of 

 establishments have been reported. And, very often in such 

 cases, the apiarist has thought that his bees had some disease. 



Another cause of trouble is the gathering of nectar or 

 pollen from plants having narcotic properties. Several kinds 

 are known, but here (in the United States) the only important 

 one is the yellow jasmine. The bees affected look, or rather 

 act, very much like those having bee-paralysis, and frequently 

 the two cases have been taken for each other. 



DISEASES OF BEES. 



15ee-paralysis and pickled brood have not been studied 

 seriously yet. We barely know enough to recognize them, 

 and none too well at that. Foul brood has been more thor- 

 oughly investigated, and yet it is only a short ume ago that 

 we finally learned to distinguish it from black brood and 

 pickled brood. And the distinction is not yet as fully estab- 

 lished as it might be. 



A cause of mistakes may be the presence of more than 

 one disease at the same time in the ailected colony. 



Recently, Prof. Lambotte, of Liege (Belgium), asserted 

 that the so called Bacillus alvei was merely the well-known 

 Bacillus mesentericus vulgatus. He was certainly mistaken, 

 but it has since been suggested that both might have been 

 present in the diseased colonies, and thus misled him. 



More recently (last summer, 1904). Dr. Burri, of Zurich, 

 (Switzerland), beg'an a new study of the foul brood. He found 

 in some cases the regular foul brood bacillus (Bacillus alvei), 

 with all the characteristics described by Cheshire and Cheyne. 

 and later by Prof. Harrison, of Ontario (Canada). In some 

 other cases he found another kind of bacillus, which is ex- 

 tremely dillicult to " cultivate,." and therefore to study. Occa- 

 sionally the bacillus mesentericus is found, but in small quan- 

 tity, and seems to be accidental. 



A third kind of bacillus has been seen, but seems to be 

 very rare. 



There is, furthermore, some acid brood — something like 

 what we call here pickled brood — but Dr. Burri found it 

 always in samples having also foul brood. It is caused by a 

 kind of bacteria which do not form spores, and therefore is 

 not a bacillus. 



Other institutions in Germany have also taken up the 

 question, and we may before long be thoroughly informed on 

 all these questions. 



Cheshire, in his examinations of diseased bees (see his 

 book. Vol. IIj, found several organisms besides the foul brood 

 and bee-paralysis bacilli, but he did not have the time to study 

 them. 



In Germany, in 1897, a peculiar disease was observed. 

 Young bees incapable of flying came out and died in heaps. 

 Much of the brood was dried up, retaining its form. It could 

 not be cut with a knife, but broke to pieces under pressure. 



