AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



177 



brood for all summer, fall, and the fol- 

 lowing spring. During spring, however, 

 I bought some bees and placed one hive 

 on a plank above which an infected hive 

 had stood the previous spring. When 

 treating it, I had, many times, by the 

 means of a tooth-pick or match, pulled 

 out diseased larviB and dropped them on 

 the plank at my feet. When done, I 

 would scrape up the larva3 and disinfect 

 the place with salicylic acid. So I had 

 placed a hive of bees on the plank, the 

 entrance facing the spot upon which 

 larvaj diseased with foul brood had been 

 dropped about 12 months previously. 

 About two weeks afterwards I discovered 

 foul brood in that identical hive. It had 

 just commenced, only a few of the un- 

 capped larvae being affected. The col- 

 ony was cured with two sprayings of 

 salicylic acid. There was no other case 

 of foul brood in my apiary that summer. 



My disinfection of the plank had 

 been, perhaps, imperfect at one time or 

 another, and spores of the disease 

 (bacillus alvei) were hid among the 

 fissures of the wood, and carried along 

 on the feet of the bees running over 

 them, and dropped in brood-cells where 

 they came in contact with larvEC, and 

 caused again a new outbreak of foul 

 brood. I admit that a conclusion like 

 the above is not infallible, but my ob- 

 servations in similar cases, which I can 

 state hereafter, convince me that it is 

 correct. 



Cincinnati, Ohio. 



Why Do Some SiifTer from Bee. 

 iSllings and Others IWot ? 



Written for the American Bee Journal 



BY G. p. HACHENBERG, M. D. 



The above is the subject of an article 

 published in the American Bee Jour- 

 nal of June 1st. The writer pro- 

 pounded the question, but failed to an- 

 swer it. He simply tells us why some 

 people are more likely to be stung by 

 bees than others — a subject that hardly 

 needs discussion. 



The tolerance created by a bee-sting 

 involves a principle that is at this time 

 the most intricate subject now under in- 

 vestigation by the savants of the medi- 

 cal profession. Koch and Pasteur have 

 made themselves famous in the investi- 

 gation of this principle, almost as much 

 so as Jenner has by his discovery of cow- 

 pox inoculation. But it is not only by 

 the inoculation from the bee-sting, vac- 

 cine virus, hydrophobic extract, or, in- 



deed, almost any poison, as in hypoder- 

 mic injections of opium, chloral, arsenic, 

 that a tolerance is established ; but na- 

 ture itself will often produce it sponta- 

 neously by the development of a disease, 

 that hardly ever can be reproduced in 

 the same subject again, as in typhoid 

 fever, measles, small-pox, yellow fever, 

 etc. 



It is under this physiological principle 

 that a tolerance from bee-stings is es- 

 tablished. I know this to be so from 

 my own personal experience. When I 

 had first to do with bees, their stings 

 put me in the greatest agony. The 

 stings were not only exceedingly pain- 

 ful, but were followed with horrible 

 tumefaction — about the face in particu- 

 lar. 



But I noticed that these mishaps with 

 me in the apiary, in course of time, be- 

 came less, both in pain and swelling. 

 Now, after receiving (since I became an 

 apiarist) a couple hundred bee-inocula- 

 tions, the stings nearly lost their poison- 

 ous effects ; indeed, so much so, that I 

 finally got to be as careless about their 

 stings as I was timid and over-cautious 

 at first. 



Another question of interest in my ex- 

 perience is, that the bees molest me 

 greatly less now than they did when 

 I first worked with them. Do they 

 know me as a dog knows his master, or 

 do they know that I am iron-clad against 

 their stings ? I am inclined to believe 

 both. 



But let me take an ill-smelling,oleagin- 

 ous "nigger," or a Dutchman saturated 

 with beer, whisky and tobacco, into my 

 apiary, and the bees are sure to get rid 

 of the oflensiveness without much delay; 

 and often I have to march with him as a 

 penalty for his introduction into their 

 sweet, pure and sacred realm. 



The olfactory of the bee is exceedingly 

 sensitive ; by it they find the honey- 

 flower, know the members of their own 

 family, the intrusion of a robber ; and 

 when you are once stung by a bee, every 

 other fighting bee aches to give you 

 another punch. And by some mysterious 

 contrivance, it appears when you are 

 once iron-clad from their stings, and 

 you behave towards them as a gentle- 

 man, they soon find it out and molest 

 you hardly ever. 



I am firmly under the impression that 

 the bee-sting inoculation will some day 

 prove a cure or prophylactic of some 

 formidable disease — it may be hydropho- 

 bia itself — where the protection of the 

 system is rendered by substitution. 



Austin, Texas. 



