SYMPTOMS OF MICROSPORIDIOSIS 215 



much, and the workers that left the hive fail to 

 return. It is a difficult matter to detect the corpses 

 of such bees, unless there happens to be a number 

 in one neighbourhood, or the favourite collecting- 

 ground or drinking-place of some special hive is 

 known. 



Nor does the death of workers from disease alone 

 account for the enormous mortality among the hives. 

 The healthy workers left attempt to fulfil the duties 

 of the whole community, and inevitably succumb to 

 overwork, while the brood, chilled by the lack of 

 warmth from the bodies of the nursing-bees, die in 

 their cells, and thus the colony is not replenished by 

 the issue of the young bees. 



Some infected bees show very little disposition to 

 sting, as well as to fly. This remark applies more 

 especially to the British black bees. No such dis- 

 position to gentleness was found among the diseased 

 stocks of the brighter Italian bees investigated. 



Another feature of some interest, because it is so 

 marked if present at all, is the way in which infected 

 bees soil their hives. Ordinarily, defalcation by bees 

 takes place when the insects are on the wing, and the 

 hive is kept scrupulously clean. But when the bees 

 are infected with Nosema, it not infrequently happens 

 that the abdomen of an infected insect is distended. 

 The slightest touch or pressure is then sufficient to 

 c^use ejection of the abdominal contents, with the 

 result that honey, pollen, wax, hive, and fellow- 

 workers become spattered with excrement, rich in 

 the resistant spores of the parasite, which are the 

 means of the spread of the disease. 



