270 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



that he has iu his apiary a disease for which 

 no remedy lias yet been found, and which in 

 my experience, is a worse foe to the success 

 of the apiarist in the South than th<j dreaded 

 foul brood. The attention of this gentleman 

 is invited to the symptoms of bee paralysis, 

 which are as follows : The first advent of 

 an infected bee into a healthy colony is de- 

 tected by the vigilant little guard bees, who 

 will be seen pulling and hauling at the in- 

 fected individual, striving with all their 

 might to drag it from the hive, and gnawing 

 it all over. Tlie suspect in vain tries to ap- 

 pease the guard by offering the contents of 

 the honey sac ; she extends her proboscis at 

 great length, and may be seen scraping it 

 with her forefeet, but all to no purpose. 

 The guards get on her back and gnaw her 

 all over, and use their best efiEorts to get rid 

 of her by every means short of using their 

 stings. At tlie next stage the infected bees 

 will be seen stripped of their hair, and show- 

 ing a thorax of a bluish black color, which 

 discoloration extends to the greater part of 

 the abdomen. This loss of hair has been at- 

 tributed by some to the effects of the dis- 

 ease, but a more careful observation has led 

 me to believe that the bees gradually gnaw 

 all the hair off of them. • These hairless bees 

 will now be seen to grow emaciated, some 

 of them being shorter and more slender than 

 natural. They then will be seen with trem- 

 ulous wings shaking and quivering as though 

 palsied. After a period more or less ex- 

 tended, the third stage is reached, when the 

 hive is thoroughly infected and bees begin 

 to appear at the entrance with their abdo- 

 mens very much swollen and distended by 

 thin yellow feces, which they sometimes dis- 

 charge, spotting the alighting board with 

 yellow splotches. The bees appear paral- 

 yzed, and move with difficulty, while their 

 wings exhibit a characteristic quivering mo- 

 tion that once seen can never be mistaken. 

 They now die in the hive and in the morning 

 they are dragged out by scores. Soon a heap 

 of dead and rotting bees will accumulate in 

 front of the affected hive and a peculiar dis- 

 agreeable odor will be noticed on lifting the 

 hive cover. About this time the infection 

 becomes so virulent that bees will begin to 

 drop dead by thousands all about the apiary. 

 Standing under a wild peach tree in bloom 

 at such a time, I have seen bees with no sign 

 of the disease drop dead from the flowers. 

 About and in front of the apiary, bees will 

 be seen to fall with heavy loads of pollen. 



and to die instantly. All this happens, some 

 years, during the height of the honey flow, 

 and the apiarist feels tempted, after trying 

 every remedy that he can hear of, to give up 

 in disgust ; but, as the warm nights come 

 on, and the honey flow has passed, these 

 symptoms moderate, and colonies that have 

 not lost their queens begin to build up again, 

 and by the middle of summer, only an ex- 

 perienced eye will see any sign of the dis- 

 ease in most of the colonies. Perhaps one 

 colony iu twenty will persist in putting out 

 a few swollen dead bees each morning, and 

 will manifest the presence of the enemy 

 every month in the year. This is bee paral- 

 ysis as I have seen it for three years. It is 

 much worse some years than others. And 

 during all this time there will be a few col- 

 onies that do not show any signs of the dis- 

 ease at all. Now if the writer above quoted 

 were correct, and these effects followed the 

 blooming of the yellow jasmine, why do not 

 these signs appear in all the colonies ? Why 

 does one apiary show this mortality, and an- 

 other only a mile off show nothing of it. and 

 finally, if it is the jasmine flower, that does 

 this work, how is it that this whole series of 

 effects appear in the North and West, where 

 no yellow jasmine ever grows ? 



In our Southern climate at least, it is im- 

 portant for the apiarist to be able to recog- 

 nize the disease when it first appears. He 

 ought not to rest under the delusion that his 

 bees are suffering from the consumption of 

 the pollen of yellow jasmine or from any 

 other poison, but as soon as the disease is 

 observed, he ought to isolate the affected 

 colony by moving it to a distance. And if 

 he does not wish to take the radical measure 

 of stopping the spread of it by killing out 

 the bees, he ought at least to watch it care- 

 fully, and the moment the robber bees begin 

 to assail the weakened community, he ought 

 to make way with it at once, because beyond 

 all doubt, robber bees do carry the infection 

 home with them. 



There is no excuse for the length of this 

 article except the importance of the subject, 

 and my desire to prevent others from suffer- 

 ing the loss that has fallen to my lot, from 

 nol being able to recognize the disease at 

 the outset. 



Columbia, Miss. 



Sept. 14, 1894. 



