1918 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



233 



which European foulbrood is con- 

 tinued and spread in a colony into 

 which the disease has been intro- 

 duced, and also as to its treatment. 

 The theory is this: If you cut or 

 crush bee-larvae, the workers eagerly 

 devour the juices ; when a colony is 

 brought to the point of starvation the 

 bees tear open the larva?, suck their 

 juices, and throw out the white skins. 

 Similarly, when the miscreant of Eu- 

 ropean foulbrood (bacillus pluton ), gets 

 in its work upon a larva, and while 

 the juices of the larva are still palat- 

 able, they are consumed by the 

 nurses and fed to healthy larvae. 

 These become diseased, and in turn 

 their juices are fed to other larvae, 

 and so the work goes merrily on. But 

 the time is limited in which the 

 juices of an infected larva are suf- 

 ficienly palatable to be consumed, 

 and as soon as sufficiently offensive 

 they are no longer sucked up by the 

 nurses. So if the laying eggs, and 

 the consequent rearing of brood, be 

 broken in upon for a sufficient time, 

 there will cease to be in the hive the 

 diseased larvae of the right age to be 

 consumed, larvae coming into exist- 

 ence subsequently will not be fed in- 

 fected matter, and a cure will result. 

 My friend says: "The question 

 which I would like very much to 

 have you or someone else answer is, 

 how in the world does European 

 foulbrood ever appear the next 

 spring if the method of transmittal 

 is through the eating of freshly dead 

 larvae? There must be some other 

 way, probably through the eating of 

 infected honey, and yet when we 

 know how readily a colony can get 

 along with honey from affected 

 colonies, if the colony getting the 

 honey is good and strong and of vig- 

 orous stock, this hardly seems credi- 

 ble." 



I can easily see how this objection 

 might seem insurmountable, for one 

 might say, "If cessation of egg-lay- 

 ing for 10 days proves a cure, then 

 after a cessation of months, as in 

 winter, surely there should be no 

 question as to a cure, and yet, we 

 know when spring arrives business 

 opens at the same old stand." 



I am not certain that I can give a 

 satisfactory reply to this, yet reply 

 is not utterly lacking. Although 

 nearly all cases of transmittal may 

 be in the way I have indicated, yet 

 that is not the only way, and my 

 friend is quite right in saying, 

 "There must be some other way." 

 That other way may be through the 

 introduction — I think we might say 

 the accidental introduction — of a 

 spore; for in a way the usual intro- 

 duction is not accidental, but inten- 

 tional, at least so far intentional that 

 it is the intention of the nurse-bee to 

 feed the infected juices, whereas 

 there is never any intention to feed 

 the dried spores. It is to be remem- 

 bered that in a colony, or in an api- 

 ary, where European foulbrood has 

 existed for even a few weeks, these 

 spores, or dried seeds, abound by the 

 million. They are scattered over the 

 combs and in the cells, on the floor 

 and at the entrance, and all over the 

 ground for a distance of rods. Is it 



any wonder that now and again one 

 of these spores, possibly sticking to 

 the toe of one of the nurses, should 

 accidentally fall into some baby's 

 porridge and make a start of the dis- 

 ease? Take a bad case in the fall, 

 where multiplied millions of spores 

 are all through the hive, the bees too 

 discouraged to clean up, and is it at 

 all strange that the following spring 

 a few spores should find their way 

 into the food of the larvae? In line 

 with this, you will probably find that 

 early in the spring the case is not 

 nearly so bad as it was the previous 

 fall ; indeed, you may not detect it 

 at all until June. This accidental 

 swallowing of a spore by some baby 

 may account for the fact that after 

 a cure has seemed complete the dis- 

 ease may turn up again in the future. 

 Now, my friend, I'm not sure that 

 this answer to your question will 

 satisfy you, and to tell the truth, it 

 doesn't fully satisfy me. By any sort 

 of reasoning I can use, it seems to 

 me it ought to be the rule that the 

 cessation of brood-rearing for the 

 winter should at least generally re- 

 sult in a cure, and it doesn't. To be 

 sure, I suspect that if close watch 

 were kept it would be found that 

 cases of over-winter cure are not 

 altogether wanting. But the explana- 

 tion I give is the very best I can do, 

 even to accommodate so good a 

 friend as you. If you can offer a 

 better, I'll gladly accept it, or if 

 you'll offer a theory more easily ac- 

 cordant with all the facts, I'll drop 

 mine like a hot potato. 



You further say, "You state that 

 you do not find dead larvae after 

 they have been dead long enough. I 

 am wondering whether three or four 

 days might not be just as good as 

 ten, if the condition of the larva was 

 the determining factor'.' What a 

 revolutionist you are! Of course, 

 you know that I was trying to fol- 

 low the Alexander treatment, and by 

 mere blunder made the time of 

 queenlessness shorter than he. His 

 plan was to have the colony without 

 egg-laying 27 days, and he was very 

 emphatic that it should be "not a day 

 less." I was criticised very severely 

 for my presumption in cutting down 

 from 27 days to 16, and now you 

 come suggesting 3 or 4! Well, be- 

 tween you and me, I was never very 

 sure about that 10 days, but 10 is a 

 round number, and I wanted to be 

 on the safe side. As to cutting down 

 still further, suppose we figure a lit- 

 tle. The larvae are fed during a 

 period of 5 days; so if we should 

 stop egg-laying for 5 days it would 

 seem it might stop the continuance 

 of the disease. But is a larva effec- 

 tive as a disease-carrier at any time 

 of its 5 days' existence? I don't 

 know. I doubt. It may be fed in- 

 fected pap the minute it hatches 

 from the egg, but that doesn't imme- 

 diately kill it. It may be, for any- 

 thing I know, 2 or 3 days before it 

 gets to the point where the nurses 

 tear it open and suck its juices. In- 

 deed we know that some do not 

 reach that point before they are 

 sealed over. So it is possible that no 

 larva is torn open until it is 2 or 3 



days old; in other words, it is effec- 

 tive as a disease-carrier during only 

 the last 2 or 3 days of its larval ex- 

 istence. In that case it might not be 

 very hard to grant your 3 or 4 days 

 of egglessness. 



Here's something that seems to me 

 corroborative. Some have reported 

 the curing of European foulbrood by 

 merely changing queens. At least 

 this treatment was successful in 

 nearly all cases. Now, when a laying 

 queen is removed and a new one is 

 introduced, there is a break in egg- 

 laying, which may be 2 or 3 days. I 

 suspect it was the break in egg-lay- 

 ing rather than the change in queens 

 that made the cure, and if that short 

 break was successful in these cases, 

 why not as short a break in general? 



Of course, in so short a treatment 

 the dead larvae will not all be cleaned 

 out; plenty of black ones more or 

 less dried up will be found in the 

 cells ; but the bees will not eat them, 

 and so they will not continue the 

 disease. It's the big yellow fellows 

 that count ; if none of them are 

 found present we may say, "It's a 

 cure," no matter how many black 

 larvae are present. To be sure, there's 

 always the possibility that a spore 

 from some black larva may acciden- 

 tally get into baby's dinner, but 

 that's exceptional. 



Even supposing a treatment of 27 

 days — or even 10 days — should be al- 

 ways successful, and that not more 

 than 9 out of 10 cases should be suc- 

 cessful with 3 or 4 days' treatment, 

 I'm not sure but I should prefer the 

 shorter treatment. For would not 

 the gain in brood more than repay 

 the few cases needing to be treated 

 over again? 



Some have reported success by 

 merely putting the brood of a dis- 

 eased colony, together with adhering 

 bees, in an upper story, leaving the 

 queen upon foundation or empty 

 combs in the lower story, under an 

 excluder. This may be accounted 

 for by saying that nurse-bees are not 

 inclined to travel far on the combs, 

 and so do not go from the upper to 

 the lower story to carry the disease. 

 This may well be true, for when a 

 colony is first attacked by the dis- 

 ease it will be found confined to one 

 comb for some time, perhaps a week. 



I've tried to answer as best I 

 could; here's a question I leave you 

 to answer. Once in a while a case 

 will be found, not very bad, and 

 without anything being done for it 

 a later examination will show that 

 the disease will have disappeared. 

 On what sort of theory will you ex- 

 plain that? 



Let me give you another item. You 

 may know that during my first ex- 

 perience with European foulbrood I 

 treated it the same as American. I 

 assembled the diseased brood from 

 all over the yard and piled them on 

 top of one of the diseased colonies, 

 several stories high, intending to 

 treat this colony after the brood in 

 the upper stories had emerged. After 

 some three weeks I lifted off the up- 

 per stories and opened the brood- 

 chamber with no little interest to 

 see what I should find after an ag- 



