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THF BEE-KEEPEMS' REVIEW. 



Symptoms of Bee Paralysis ; What May Be 

 Done to Cure it and Prevent its Spread- 

 ing,— Mistaking it for Poisoning 

 by Ye J low Jasmine. 



T. S. FOBD. 



BEAR SIR :— Sitting down this morning to 

 carry out my promise to furnish you with 

 an article on bee paralysis, I happened to 

 think of a letter that I had written for the 

 American Bee Journal, which was not for- 

 warded for the reason that just as it was 

 finished, I saw a letter from another South- 

 ern apiarist refuting the article referred to 

 by me, and therefore I did not send it. It 

 contains a description of the disease, and 

 perhaps you can by striking out such parts 

 of it as you choose, make it serve, or by 

 turning to the back numbers of the Bee 

 Journal, which I have failed to preserve, you 

 can fill out the blank in my letter, and use 

 the article as it is. Having suffered severely 

 from not recognizing the signs of the dis- 

 ease at first, and being of the opinion that it 

 is a worse affection than foul brood, I hope 

 that the bee journals will familiarize their 

 readers with the subject, and teach them its 

 danger. The fact is that, I believe that there 

 is no topic of more vital interest to apiarists 

 than this. If you will take it up, and insti- 

 tute a systematic inquiry as to the nature, 

 history and cure, you will do more for the 

 cause, and be of greater benefit to the bee- 

 keepers of the country, than you could do in 

 any other way. 



While on the subject of bee paralysis, I 

 will say that I have tried the sulphur cure, 

 salt, re-queening and salicylic acid and 

 transferring to new combs, and all these rem- 

 edies have failed in my experience. There 

 are of late letters published in the periodi- 

 cals devoted to bee culture, stating that sul- 

 phur has cured the disease. Last year Mr. 

 Golden and others, have reported cures from 

 the use of salt. Now it is strange that all 

 these have failed in my hands. The only ex- 

 planation that occurs to me is that the re- 

 turn of warm weather always makes an ap- 

 parent cure, and the reported success of 

 these various remedies may be due to the 

 fact that the disease gave way to the ap- 

 proach of summer weather. I fed one col- 

 ony on salted honey for weeks, without any 

 appreciable benefit. 



Judging from the number of letters pub- 

 lished during the last two years reporting 



cases of bee paralysis, it must be that the 

 disease is greatly on the increase. North of 

 the Mason and Dixon line, it does not seem 

 very serious in its efEects, but in this latitude 

 most of the colonies that suffer from it are 

 worthless to their owner. The colony runs 

 down in numbers during the honey flow, 

 which comes in the spring, so that they store 

 no surplus. It may recuperate in summer 

 and build up so that the hive is full of bees, 

 but it all amounts to nothing, as the bees 

 store nothing but honey dew, during our hot 

 weather. When cool weather returns, the 

 disease reappears to blast the hopes of the 

 apiarist again. It would be far better for 

 the luckless apiarist to lose his bees outright 

 than to be thus tantalized by the hopes of a 

 final recovery. 



There are some truths in regard to bee 

 paralysis that I regard as settled. 



First, the disease is highly infectious. A 

 queen from a colony that is infected, though 

 she show no sign of the disease at all, will 

 infect the colony into which she is intro- 

 duced. Robber bees will carry the infection . 

 Where the hives are kept within a foot or two 

 of each other, the malady will spread from 

 one to another until all are diseased. This 

 is effected, probably, by the bees, which by 

 mistake enter the wrong hive. 



Secondly ; the various remedies so far pro- 

 posed are wholly ineffectual to produce a 

 cure. The correct method of procedure, 

 clearly is, to destroy the diseased colony, and 

 disinfect the hive and combs, if the disease 

 is detected, before it has spread. If it is 

 permitted to remain in an apiary any length 

 of time, it gets a foot hold by spreading to 

 neighboring apiaries, and to colonies in the 

 woods, so that it will effect a permanent set- 

 tlement in a county, and thus remain to blast 

 all prospects of success in apiculture in that 

 locality. This has already happened in one 

 part of California. 



Finally, it is suggested, that no queen 

 breeder should ship queens from an apiary 

 that is infected. I took a queen from a col- 

 ony that had apparently made a perfect re- 

 covery from the paralysis, and had shown no 

 signs of the disease for six months and in- 

 troduced her into a colony in my brother's 

 apiary ; and the result was, that in a few 

 months, his bees perished from the disease. 

 As a class, I have found that people who get 

 interested in bees are morally superior to 

 the average of men and women. But there 

 are bad men in the business. The man who 



