166 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Singular Disease of Bees. Its Cure. 



I fancy the following extract from an article 

 on "The Diseases of Bees," which I wrote 

 some time since for the London Journal of 

 Horticulture, may throw some light on the sin- 

 gular disease described by C. E. Thome, in 

 page 120, volume 4, of the American Bee 

 Journal : 



"Dropsy (?).— During the winter of 1801-2, 

 I lost three stocks from what at the time I cal- 

 led, and believed to be dysentery, but which I 

 am now disposed to consider a malady hereto- 

 fore undescribed by apiarians, and which may 

 perhaps be appropriately designated 'dropsy,' 

 to which disease it bears indeed no inconsider- 

 able resemblance. The symptoms are great 

 enlargement of the abdomen, which becomes so 

 distended from a watery fluid that the unfortu- 

 nate bee is perfectly uuable to fly, in which 

 state it either betakes itself to the top of the 

 hive, or rests on the floor-board, where, if the 

 weather be cold, it dies, or whence, if the weather 

 be warm, it drops on the ground and crawls 

 about until it expires. The natural functions 

 appear to be entirely suspended, and if the ab- 

 domen be forcibly compressed, a rupture of the 

 membranes takes place, attended by a flow of 

 its watery contents, which emit a sour and dis- 

 agreeable odor. Contrary to what Dzierzon 

 remarks in the case of dysentery, the queen en- 

 joys no immunity from this disease. "When she 

 is attacked she becomes incapable of oviposi- 

 tion, whilst her abdomen swells to a remarka- 

 ble size. After some days have elapsed, she 

 loses her hold on the combs and drops on the 

 floor-board, where surrounded by a number of 

 Her subjects, she may yet linger many hours 

 before death relieves her from her sufferings. 

 A friend of mine, who is an excellent natural- 

 ist, undertook to preserve and set up a very 

 handsome Ligurian (Italian) queen that per- 

 ished in this way, and he informed me that, on 

 opening her abdomen, a good teaspoonful of 

 fluid gushed out ! I had also a young Italian 

 queen which, about the time I expected her to 

 commence egg-laying, increased so rapidly in 

 size that I became not a little proud of her as 

 the largest queen I ever saw. Alas ! for the 

 futility of human hopes ! My magnificent 

 queen turned out to be not enceinte, but diseas- 

 ed, and perished without ever having laid an 

 egg- 



"I had two other instances of this malady 

 about the same time, in which the queens es- 

 caped, and I could almost fancy their breeding 

 powers were actually stimulated by the presence 

 of the disease, since their fecundity not only 

 overtook the extraordinary mortality which 

 constantly prevailed, but theirs became two of 

 the strongest stocks in my apiary. It was, 

 however, most pitiable to see, all through the 

 spring and during the finest summer weather, 

 the ground in front of the hives perpetually 

 covered with hundreds of disabled and dying 

 bees, which crawled about in all directions, set- 

 ting up at intervals a feeble vibration of their 

 wings, as if in faint imitation of the hovering 



crowd of joyous laborers overhead, in whose 

 delightful toil they were never again to partici- 

 pate. 



" It will readily be believed that I exhausted 

 my ingenuity, and sought for information from 

 all quarters, in the hope of effecting a cure. I 

 even obtained the advice of the great Dzierzon, 

 who was, however, unable to suggest a remedy, 

 but opined that the disease I described was a 

 ' kind of dysentery.' As a remedial measure, I 

 first tried shifting the bees and their combs into 

 clean hives, but no mitigation of the virulence 

 of the disease was the result. I next took away 

 all their combs and brood, which I gave to 

 other bees, and compelled those I had thus ren- 

 dered destitute to commence their world afresh 

 in an unfurnished habitation ; but all to no pur- 

 pose. New combs were built and profusely 

 bred in, but still the mortality continued. One 

 thing, however, became evident, viz : that the 

 infection, whatever it might be, was certainly 

 confined to the bees themselves, since neither 

 their combs nor their brood communicated it to 

 those healthy stocks to which they had been 

 transferred. It therefore occurred to me, that 

 if I could succeed in eliminating every diseased 

 bee, retaining only those which were perfectly 

 healthy, I might succeed in banishing the di- 

 sease altogether ; and as this really turned out 

 to be a ' perfect cure,' I will fully describe the 

 means by which it was effected. Selecting a 

 fine day, and spreading a cloth on the ground, 

 I looked over the combs until I discovered the 

 queen, which I imprisoned in a queen cage, and 

 then set the hive on the ground, putting an 

 empty one in its place. I next took out the 

 combs one by one, brushing off every bee on to 

 the cloth, placing the combs into the previously 

 empty hive ; and completed the operation by 

 putting on the crown-board and introducing the 

 queen at the top. In this way I effected the 

 end I had in view, which was, that no adult 

 bee should be permitted to enter the new hive, 

 that was unable to rise from the ground and 

 gain the entrance by means of its wings. A 

 number of infant bees, as yet unable to fly, 

 were unquestionably lost ; but I spared no 

 pains in rescuing as many of these as possible, 

 and had the satisfaction of finding that I had 

 at length affected a radical cure." 



T. W. Woodbury. 

 ("A Devonshire Beekeeper ") 



Mount Radford, Exeter, Eng. December 

 21, 1868. 



The wild bees appear to be of annual, or of 

 even more restricted duration merely. Of this, 

 however, we have no certainty. The conclu- 

 sion is derived chiefly from the circumstance 

 that, as they progressively come forth with the 

 growth of the year, they, when first appearing, 

 are in fine and unsoiled condition. But some 

 species of humble-bees are reputed to have a 

 longer life than of one year. — Siiuckard. 



The quantity of pollen that is collected in the 

 course of a season, by the diligence of the bees 

 of a colony, has been estimated at from sixty to 

 seventy pounds. — Scuuckard. 



