598 



ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PRACTICAL HORTICULTURE 



tance from all other colonies, and moder- 

 ate feeding with medicated syrup or 

 honey should be continued for a few days 

 thereafter. 



The combs of diseased colonies which 

 contain brood may be assembled over a 

 single one of these colonies, or, if the 

 amount of brood be too great for one 

 colony to care for, over several such dis- 

 eased colonies, until the young bees have 

 emerged. All of the honey is then to be 

 extracted. While it is wholesome as food, 

 it should not be offered for sale, lest some 

 of it be used in feeding bees or be in- 

 advertently exposed where foraging bees 

 might find it and carry to their hives the 

 germs of this disease, harmless to other 

 creatures but so fatal to bee life. A good 

 use for this honey is to employ it in mak- 

 ing vinegar. 



If the honey containing the germs is 

 to be used for feeding bees, it is to be 

 diluted with half its own quantity, by 

 measure, of water and kept at the boiling 

 point for three hours in a water bath — a 

 vessel within another containing water. 



The combs frcm which the honey has 

 been extracted, as well as all of the 

 pieces built by the bees during their four 

 days' confinement, may be melted into 

 wax, by thorough boiling in soft water. 

 This wax should be kept liquid for 48 

 hours or longer, to allow all impurities 

 to settle. These will include the foul 

 brood spores, which may then be removed 

 with the impure wax by scraping or cut- 

 ting away the bottom of the cake. These 

 scrapings should be burned. The same 

 disposition had better be made of the 

 frames from which the combs containing 

 germs were removed. 



In all of this work the utmost care 

 should be exercised to avoid the dripping 

 of honey about the apiary or the exposure 

 of implements, receptacles, or combs 

 smeared with or containing honey from 

 the diseased colonies. The old hive and 

 all utensils used about the diseased col- 

 ony should be disinfected by washing in 

 a solution of corrosive sublimate. If it 

 be found that the diseased colonies are 

 weak in numbers and seem, therefore, 

 individually hardly worth saving, several 



colonies may be smoked and shaken to- 

 gether into the same box to make a single 

 strong colony, the best queen of the lot 

 having been selected and caged in the 

 box in such a way that the workers can 

 release her within a few hours by eating 

 through candy. 



Bee Paralysis 



Among other diseases of a bacterial 

 nature paralysis is most noticeable, al- 

 though not to be dreaded as foul brood. 

 It affects the adult bees only, producing 

 a paralyzed condition of their members 

 and a swelling up of their bodies. The 

 source from which the bees obtain the 

 original infection is unknown, but, once 

 in the apiary, it is spread mainly by the 

 entrance of affected workers into healthy 

 colonies, and probably also by the visits 

 which bees from healthy colonies make to 

 the diseased ones, the latter often being 

 so weakened in numbers as to be unable 

 to protect their stores from healthy bees 

 out on robbing expeditions. 



Ordinary paralysis may generally be 

 cured by strewing powdered sulphur over 

 the combs, bees, and along the top bars 

 of the frames, the precaution first having 

 been taken of removing all unsealed 

 brood. This brood would be killed by the 

 application of sulphur, but as there is no 

 danger whatever of spreading the disease 

 by the transfer of brood or honey from 

 one hive to another, provided absolutely 

 every one of the adult bees has first been 

 shaken or brushed from the combs, the 

 latter may be given to healthy colonies 

 which need strengthening. 



Another simple plan for getting rid of 

 the disease and yet utilizing the available 

 strength of the affected colonies is to close 

 their hives at night and move them a 

 mile or more, locating them, if possible, 

 outside of the range of other bees. As 

 the brood in these colonies remains 

 healthy all that is sealed or even well 

 advanced in the larval stage may have 

 the bees shaken from it and be distributed 

 among the remaining colonies of the 

 apiary. The bees of the diseased col- 

 onies thus become rapidly reduced in num- 

 bers, and several of the colonies them- 

 selves may soon be combined, the best 



