THE AMEEICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



143 



Mr. Wannow, of Giitland, a very assiduous 

 and intelligent apiarian, always assorted, long 

 before I begun my microscopical investigations, 

 his conviction that foulbrood had arisen with 

 him through giving his bees meal as food, or 

 that it had at any rate been greatly increased by 

 it. Although no other similar observation has 

 reached me, I yet esteem this experience of a 

 thoroughly practical man as well worth notice. 

 Meal is an exceedingly favorable soil for the 

 propagation of this fermentive fungus, as is 

 proved by the abundant fermentation which 

 follows the addition of yeast to dough. It may, 

 therefore, be advisable, at least in hives which 

 are already deceased, to eschew the use of meal 

 as food. 



As the fermentive fungus is very much dif- 

 fused throughout nature, and as countless mul- 

 titudes of its sporules float in the atmosphere, 

 so they witbout being greatly assisted in their 

 increase by fermenting liquors, when they have 

 the opportunity of establishing themselves on a 

 soil wbich agrees with them, contrive to carry 

 out their propensity for multiplication. A partic- 

 ularly favorable soil is found in dead and mould- 

 ering larvae; and for this reason, if brood which 

 has died from cold or other causes be permitted 

 to remain in the hive, it may occasion virulent 

 foulbrood without feeding with deleterious 

 honey or such like. 



The removal of a hive, by which too many 

 bees are lost, and those remaining are uuable to 

 foster the brood, may promote foulbrood. The 

 multiplication of stocks by artificial means, by 

 wbich, when the proportion of the bees to the 

 brood is too small, the latter may readily be 

 cbilled to death, is more favorable to the out- 

 break of foulbrood than natural swarming. I 

 have on a former occasion advised for tbe pre- 

 vention of chill, tbe warming of artificial 

 swarms by means of corked bottles filled with 

 hot water — a practice which I have found very 

 beneficial. We are, therefore, very careful that 

 dead brood, especially such as is sealed over, 

 should be removed as soon as possible from the 

 hive and buried deep under ground, since the 

 fungus, which may, perhaps be already on it, 

 readily grows luxuriantly in tbe open air. We 

 should never throw out dead beesnear an apiary, 

 but bury them, as the dead bodies of bees are 

 also soil in which fungi will thrive. As a corpse, 

 if permitted to iie unburied, might infect a 

 whole town and engender within it a fatal epi- 

 demic disease, so may a few putrefying maggots 

 poison a whole apiary. 



Should ihe disease have already broken out, 

 it may be asked, What farther is to be done ? 

 In the first place, let us not take it easily, but 

 view it with the same serious attention as is 

 wont to be bestowed upon glanders among 

 horses. Tbat we must avoid all the before- 

 mentioned food, either fermenting or capable of 

 fermentation, among which meal sbould be reck- 

 oned, is, of course, self-evident. Medicaments 

 for the extirpation of foulbrood there are none. 

 It is, as with the diseases of men, important to 

 know this, lest time sbould be wasted in useless 

 quackery. But astbere are no medicaments for 

 the disease, the maxim of Hippocrates must 

 needs be valuable : — Qicce medicamenta non sa- 



nant, ferrum sanat ; quae, ferrum non sanat, 

 ignis sanat. We also pass quickly to the iron— 

 i. e., we examine tbe hives diligently, and as 

 soon as foulbrood appears in tbe apiary, cut out 

 every comb in wbich are foulbroody cells. It 

 this is of no avail, the court of third instance— 

 the fire, comes in its turn. We do not spare oui 

 apiary, but remove each foulbroody comb, dis 

 daining to take from it either honey or wax, 

 with which we should reap billions of foulbrood 

 fungi, but throw it into the fire, wherein the 

 fungi are effectually disposed of, and hang the 

 healthy combs in pure hives. We do not deem 

 it necessarv to burn tbe infected hives, but wash 

 them inside and out with diluted sulphuric acid 

 (one part acid to ten parts of water, by weight) 

 and some time afterwards with boiling water, 

 by which means the fungi are destroyed. If we 

 prefer a self-acting process, we place the hives 

 in an oven, and keep them there for some hours 

 exposed to a temperature equal to that of boil- 

 ing water; here the heat penetrates into all the 

 crevices and pores, and effectually destroys the 

 fungus. When, thirty-five years ago, I walked 

 the hospital in Berlin as a young medical 

 student, puerperal fever and hospital gangrene 

 prevailed to fearful extent, and lying-in women 

 and the wounded perished from ulceration, after 

 enduring the most horrible sufferings. All 

 remedies and precautions having proved futile, 

 we emptied the different wards, keeping them 

 for weeks with closed windows heated to a tem- 

 perature of 40°, (123° Fahrenheit,) and when 

 they were again tenanted by the sick it was 

 found that the epidemic had vanished. Here, 

 then, we may also presume that a fungus was 

 destroyed by the heat. 



The site of the apiary should be repeatedly 

 moistened with diluted sulphuric acid, and the 

 earth around it dug oeer. After all the hives 

 are purified, we should, if possible, remove the 

 apiary to a new position. The conveyance of 

 the disease by the bees themselves is, perhaps, 

 less dangerous if we only diligently examine 

 their hives, and for this reason we only kill them 

 when everything else fails. Their establish- 

 ment in new, or at any rate clean hives, is best 

 effected about the middle of June, because they 

 are then able to build sufficient combs and store 

 them with food for the winter. But all foul- 

 broody colonies should be transferred as nearly 

 as possible at the same time, lest the healthy 

 stocks become contaminated by the diseased 

 ones. For this reason also we examine all the 

 combs weekly, and remove such as are infected, 

 and in this way it is quite possible to conquer 

 tbe disease. 



As in medicine the most distinguished prac- 

 titioners generally discovered the right mode of 

 treatment before the actual nature of the disease 

 was determined, so also Dzierson, Von Ber- 

 lepsh, and others have already promulgated 

 many of the above rules for the treatment of 

 foulbrood, and have especially warned us against 

 losing time in worthless quackeries, a warning 

 which we cannot here repeat too forcibly. If, 

 however, the instructions which we have given 

 above be scrupulously and energetically followed 

 out, no one need despair of curing tbe most 

 virulent foulbrood. — Dn. Preuss, Sanitatsrath. 



