

m. in. 



FLINT, MICHIGAN, FEBRUARY 10. 1880. 



NO. 2. 



Symptoms of Foul Brood— Putting the Bees 



In Clean Hives Without Comb, the 



Only Cure — A Good Article. 



EKNEST K. BOOT. 



IRIEND Hutchinson: Your letter, ask- 

 ing me to criticise your leader on foul 

 brood, is at hand. When I received it 

 I was so absorbed in the matter of 

 thick top bars, and the practical conclusions 

 arrived at by yourself and correspondents, 

 that I entirely overlooked your " leader " on 

 foul brood. There, now I have stopped and 

 taken time to read it ali throuj^h. As for 

 criticism, there is really none I could make. 

 It covers the whole fjiround succinctly. It 

 suggests the importance of a knowledge of 

 the disease, gives the symptoms very accu- 

 rately and the best method of cure. You ask 

 for an exhaustive article on the subject ; but 

 you have already covered the ground so well 

 that I will only suggest a few other things ; 

 or, rather, emphasize some of the points you 

 have made. 



Many boastingly say they have never seen 

 foul brood, and do not care to, even if a fa- 

 vorable oijportunity should present. Some 

 queen breeders advertise, "No- foul brood — 

 never saw any." Really, I believe I should 

 rather l)uy queens of those who had had foul 

 brood in their api'.\i'ies, in times past, and 

 are thus so well acquainted with its symp- 

 toms that they would not be sending out bees 

 and queens a few weeks before discovering 

 the awful malady. 



A few years ago we did not know what 

 foul brood was ; the descriptions of symp- 

 toms, as given in books, were misleading and 

 incomplete. It got a good start in our api- 

 ary, even when we were shipping bees : and, 

 not until it came in its pronounced form, 

 and we liad shipped some affected brood, did 

 we discover the disease. Had we possessed 

 the knowledge that we now have of its incip- 

 ient stages, we would not have been required 

 to make good the losses from foul In-ood ap- 

 pearing in other apiaries to which we had 

 shipped bees. 



The best time to cure foul brood is upon 

 its. first appearance. If it gains a foothold 

 in a dozen or ftnore colonies, it may be all 

 summer, probably longer, before it is eradi- 

 cated. What, then, are the incipient stages? 

 The first would be scarcely noticable to the 

 inexperienced : but it may bo said that there 



is a general lack of energy, and the cappings 

 of the brood fail to show the ordinary round- 

 ed appearance : some of the cells, perhaps. 

 l>eing a little ll it. We will suppose that, 

 suspicions being aroused, the colony is to be 

 watched. With a tooth i^ick, a few cells are 

 uncapped daily for a time. If it is a case of 

 real foul brood, some of the larva; will be 

 found dead. A little laier they begin to 

 shrivel and at the same time turn to a lemon 

 color. The color continues to deepen until 

 it appears like the coffee we diink with milk 

 in it. If neglected, it turns to the color of 

 a roasted coffee berry and dries up in one 

 corner of the cell. The perforations and 

 sunken cappings appear about tlie same that 

 the larva turns to a milk and coffee color. 

 When it reaches the color of the coif ce berry, 

 the coloration will be darkened a little around 

 the edges of the perforations. Wlienever 

 the perforation is observed, or even when 

 the capping is sunken, the characteristic ro- 

 piness may be discovered by the use of a 

 splinter or toothpick. The odor will then 

 be observed to be very distinctly that of an 

 old glue pot. The glue pot odor — the sunk- 

 en, and, in advanced cases, perforated cap- 

 ping — the coffee color — the ropine: s, or re- 

 semblance, in point of tenacity, to siiittle — 

 all these are characteristic and unmistakable 

 symptoms. 



From a diseased colony I remove and burn 

 the coml)S, putting the bees in a clean hive 

 on frames of foundation. To all intents 

 and purposes, the newly domiciled colony is 

 cured ; it certainly is when the bees have 

 consumed all the honey they lirought with 

 them and commenced comb building. Out 

 of seventy cases treated in this maniitr, not 

 one was a failure. Right here it might be 

 interesting to remark that, without boiling 

 the hives, I ouct shook some seven or eight 

 colonies into hives that had once contained 

 diseased colonies. In a month or so, these 

 colonies had lots of nice healthy brood, and 

 I was just about to shout "Eureka!" and 

 say there is no use in boiling hives, when lo! 

 in every one of the eight hives, foul brood 

 again showed itself. 



During the first summer that foul brood 

 was in our apiary, we tried spraying the 

 combs ill some ten or fifteen of th-j diseased 

 colonies. The disease was held in check so 

 long as the spraying was done each alternate 

 day. When we stopped, the disease reap- 

 j 'eared in all its virulence. Mr. C. F. Muth, 

 of Cincinnati, who has recommended sali- 



