1881 



GLEANINGS IX BEE CULTUllE. 



19 



FOlIIi BROOD. 



/p^iROAKING like a bird of evil omen came friend 

 %JII Detwiler— "Foul brood, foul brood; perhaps 

 ^^^ you've g-ot it on the yard now and don't know 

 it." We looked into several of the least prosperous 

 colonies, but found nothing wrong. I had never 

 seen a cell of foul brood, never wanted to, and some- 

 how never expected to. As the sum and substance 

 of what I have read about the plague, I had a very 

 incorrect idea about what to look for. I suspect that 

 hundreds of the boys have just as poor an idea of 

 what they should be on guard against as I had, and 

 perhaps a few words on the subject will be timely. 

 I expected the disease to be heralded by a dreadful 

 smell, of the knock-you-down order. Doubtless it 

 does smell bad enough in extreme cases; but in its 

 mild beginning you smell nothing, unless you poke 

 your nose almost into it, and then the odor is almost 

 precisely that of common glue. I expected a mass 

 of dead brood, spreading al^road like the rot in a 

 mellow apple. In i)nint of fact, the commencement 

 may be in less than half a dozen cells, and no two of 

 them near each other. I expected a disease which 

 the bees themselves would be powerless to resist. 

 From what I have seen, I think the bees sometimes 

 hold the disease at buy for many months. I even 

 suspect that they sometimes eradicate it altogether 

 without outside, help. 



Having been posted by friend Det. as to what I 

 should look for, it was not long before I found some 

 of it. And while I meditated what was the best way 

 to destroy them, bees, brood, honey, frames, hive, 

 chaff, and all, I found more of it, and then still more. 

 Five colonies certainly affected, and as many more 

 on the doubtful list, all sprinkled through an apiary 

 of 104 colonies! I'm in for it now. Don't you wish 

 •you were In my shoes? Meantime the season closes, 

 brood-rearing stops, pjnd the whole matter is ad- 

 journed over to next year. 



How came I in this mess? I hardly know. Some- 

 what late in the season I noticed very many bees 

 working on one )>recise line, and also coming in 

 quite late and very heavily laden. I suspected at 

 the time that they were robbing a bee-tree. In that 

 same direction lies an extinct apiary. A farmer 

 who kept many bees in the old let-alone way lost the 

 most of them, and sold the rest to keep them from 

 dying on his hands. Perchance those bees died of 

 fdul brood, and the swarm in the tree caught it from 

 them, and mine brought home the curse when they 

 roltbed the tree. Curiously enough, the two colonies 

 which are my champion robbers are not affected. 

 Either they didn't get the disorder, or they had en- 

 ergy enough to stamp it out. Kemembering the ap- 

 pearance of certain unprosperous colonies in times 

 past, I am not without suspicions that a little of the 

 disease, in a very mild form, has been hanging about 

 the apiary these two years. 



This matter of the different phases of the disease, 

 and its different grades of virulence, needs light. 

 It may be that there are really two diseases called 

 foul brood; one caused by the fungus Cryptococcuti 

 AJ vear i (>, an6 ihe other by the Somcthinoelsus Not- 

 tsobadis. In that case, I'll take the Somctldnaehus. 

 In the disease variola (small-pox), there is a morbid 

 growth in the human blood, somewhat as in foul 

 brood there is a morbid growth in the substance of 

 the young bee. Two children may take the germs 

 of variola from the same source, and one will bo- 

 come an encrusted mass of corruption over a large 



portion of the surface of his entire body, while the 

 other will need parental authority to keej) him from 

 playing outdoors just as usual, each and every day 

 the disease lasts. Between these two extremes 

 there are all intermediate grades. I think, when we 

 get at the truth of the matter, we shall And thiit the 

 Cryptocficcus iiroduces just as wide a range of re- 

 sults. 



What is the slightest perceptible touch of the dis- 

 order? I think, that a very slight growth of the 

 fungus causes the young bee to give some sign of 

 discomfort, which is recognized by the delicate 

 senses of the bees, and that they respond by taking 

 off the caps of the cells. Don't fly off the handle, 

 gentle reader, and accuse me of charging foul brood 

 in all cases of bareheadedness. I don't charge or 

 believe any such thing. 1 merelj' sujjpose that the 

 bees incline to pull off caps whenever there is un- 

 easiness among the brood from any cause. They 

 have no catnip tea to give them, and what can they 

 do but to uncover and rub their little aching heads? 

 The young bees so affected hatch out in due time (or 

 a little later than due time), the least diseased be- 

 coming useful members of the commonwealth, and 

 those more affected becoming useless weaklings. 

 When the disease has reached its third grade of vir- 

 ulence the young bee does not come out of the cell 

 at all, but dies, with his head thrust out and his 

 tongue protruded at full length. I find so many in 

 this condition in the affected colonies that I can 

 hardly be mistaken about this being one phase. I 

 may mistake in supposing that there are any milder 

 phases. A fourth phase is where the bee dies before 

 it is time to emerge from the cell, but after the va- 

 rious integuments of the body have become some- 

 what hardened. With matter at this stage, the cells 

 can still be cleaned out readily, and the bees are still 

 capable of holding the disease in check. One 

 degree further, and they are nearly helpless. In 

 the fifth stage, death takes place while the young 

 bee is yet soft; and the body speedily changes to a 

 mass of li(iuid glue, in which the fungus swims. To 

 pull this stuff out of the hive is impossible, and the 

 inability of the bees to keep their hive clean makes 

 what is really but an increased virulence seem an 

 entirely different disorder. Probably some of the 

 more zealous of the workers try to get rid of the 

 filth by sucking it up, as they would any other unde- 

 sirable liquid, to carry it out and disgorge it. It 

 may readily be imagined that such stuff can not be 

 disgorged so completely but that germs of the fun- 

 gus will remain in the sac. Every larva subsequent- 

 ly fed by such a bee must be poisoned by receiving 

 some of the fungus with the food. I think much 

 more brood is infected in this way than by the 

 spores that cling to the hairs on the bee's feet and 

 drop off in the cells. liut I will wait till I see more 

 before I surmise more. The worst combs I have 

 yet found had less than one-half of the cells dead, 

 and not over one-quarter of the comb affected at all. 



CHAFF COVERING FOR WINTER. 



A word now on a more agreeable topic. Laziness 

 hath many inventions. Last year, in packing bees 

 for winter, not having time to make the additional 

 cushions I needed, I tore otf generous pieces of mus- 

 lin, laid them over the top of the hive, poured in 

 chaff', tucked it nicely into corners, folded neatly 

 over top, and— liked 'em so well that I'm not for 

 making any more sewed cushions at all. A sewed 

 cushion, when tucked down, is in a state of tension, 



