The See-fCeepeps' J\eVie(x' 



A MONTHLY- JOURNAL 



Devoted to th^e Interests of Hoqey Producers. 

 $L00 A YEAR, 



W. Z. MHTrrUTMsorl, Editor & PKOp. 



VOL VN, FLiNT, MiCl 



FEB, 10, 1894. 



NO. 2. 



AVork at Midiip-an's 

 Exp 3ri] jient^J 



R. L, iAYLOE, APIAEIS'I', 

 FOUL BROOD, ITS SYMPTOMS AND OUiw^ 



"Diseases, desperate gr&wn 

 By desperate appliance ave reliev'd, 

 Or not at all."— SW/IAS. 



■pj URING the 

 ly season I have 

 given consider- 

 able attention to 

 the disease known 

 among bee-keep- 

 ers as foul brood 

 which from i< sin - 

 sidionSj highly 

 contagious and 

 deadly character 

 is the one disease 

 of the hive to be 

 greatly dreaded by the apiarist. It no doubt 

 attacks and greatly curtails the life and 

 usefulness of the mature bes but it is in the 

 case of the bee in the larval state that its 

 destructive effects are most evident. Like 

 many of the diseases to which the human 

 family is subject it is induced fcy bactjria to 

 which in this particular case theii!";me bacil- 

 lus alvei is given, and such is its naVignity 

 that when once present, unless propf .neas- 

 ures are taken to keep it in checl: u the 

 course of three or four yuars ^ v^?s : aries 



are swept away. I am inclined to thmkthat 

 it is often present where not suspected and 

 that often the destruction ascribed to the 

 severity of the winter should be assigned 

 to it. 



How to detect the presence of the disease 

 and how to efifect its cure are the practical 

 points to which my attention has been chiefly 

 directed. 



My experience with it i"^, not confined to 

 the past season but runs back over the past 

 seven years during which I have cured more 

 than one hundred cases largely during the 

 first two years of the period, but I became 

 so interested in the study of the disease and 

 so certain that I could control it that I was 

 not anxious to be entirely rid of it preferring 

 rather at some risk to get as thorough and 

 practical acquaintance as possible with its 

 peculiarities and with the best methods of 

 dealing with it. 



It would be important to know if possible 

 all the ways in which the disease is conveyed 

 from one colony to another. Whether the 

 bacteria may be carried in the air to a new 

 hive or whether a bee from a diseased col- 

 ony may carry them out on its feet or body 

 and in gathering nectar deposit them on the 

 flowers so that they may become by chance 

 attached to another bee from a healthy col- 

 ony in its visits to the same flowers aud thus 

 become the means of spreading the disease, 

 or whether a bee from a diseased colony will 

 convey the disease if on returning from the 

 field with a load of nectar it enter a hive not 

 its own I know not, but there are numerou 



