230 SOME MINUTE ANIMAL PARASITES 



of plants in its neighbourhood all sources of infection 

 to the still healthy bee. 



Bees are cleanly insects, and contact with an 

 infected member of the hive usually has the effect 

 of those concerned becoming spattered with excre- 

 ment, as is also the hive in their neighbourhood. 

 This defect the bees endeavour to remedy by clean- 

 ing themselves, their weakened neighbours, and their 

 hive. The result is that spores are swallowed during 

 the cleaning process, and the very cleanliness of the 

 insects becomes a scourge instead of a benefit. 



Drones can become infected as well as worker 

 bees, and infected drones constitute a double danger. 

 They have roving habits, and visit a number of hives 

 indifferently. Probably they are protected by their 

 peculiar odour, for their intrusion into strange hives 

 is vary rarely resented. Further, they void faeces 

 within the hive, and when the excrement is removed 

 by the workers, there is danger of them incurring 

 the disease, while there is the probability of the 

 contamination of the food-supply of more than one 

 hive by these infected wandering drones. 



When a hive becomes weakened by many deaths, 

 bees of other hives are not slow to take advantage 

 of the fact, and visit the hive in numbers to steal 

 honey. It happens not infrequently that the robbers 

 carry away more than honey; the insidious spores 

 in the honey do their work, and robbers and robbed 

 alike perish. 



Wasps also rob hives of honey, and not only that, 

 but they will collect freshly dead or dying bees, and 

 carrv them away for feeding their larvae. We have 



