STATE bee-keepers' ASSOCIATION. 



161 



away from this naughty colony which was the strongest, and 

 to-day is a dead colony in the hive. Now the disease in ap' 

 pearance varies according to the localities, but I find some 

 few things that do not vary a great deal: The sunken cap- 

 ping; the ragged, perforated holes in the capping. I believe 

 in all the States that is common. The bee in the larval age, 

 at aboui. six to eight days from the egg, will first to the naked 

 eye show the appearance of the disease; earlier than that you 

 would need a glass. I am taking this from the point of those 

 who want to use just the naked eye, as you can't, without a 

 glass, see it before that. The bee will, in the larval age, in- 

 stead of crawling around as it should, stand upon the point 

 ends of that larva with its back up. It is diseased, in agony, 

 and in that condition it does not lay down naturally. There is 

 a little yellow cast on either side of the back. It finally 

 straightens out the same as the natural larva, and in stand- 

 ing up it lacks the vitality to retain itself in that shape and 

 falls back again to the lower side-wall of the cell. That is 

 the time that the larva will make itself adhere to the side- 

 wall and will never let go. 



Now, there is a marked difference between black brood, 

 pickled brood, and foul brood. Foul brood, when it once 

 strikes the lower side-wall, stays there as if fastened with 

 glue. The bees can not remove it except in one way. If 

 those combs have been thoroughly fumigated with formalde- 

 hyde it has a chemical action on those and they do remove 

 it in some cases, but not in all. That bee in the last dying 

 effort gets quite a dark color, and it throws out its tongue 

 frequently with force sufficient so that the tongue strikes the 

 upper side-wall and as such will hold as if put there by glue. 

 That will have a tendency, as the body of the bee dries out, 

 to draw the head up. This tongue has a tendency still to 

 hold, a(nd in the sample I have here there are many of those 

 larvae at that age with the tongue still holding thread-like to 

 the upper side-wall. That is the only reason I can give why 

 always in foul brood the head of the larval bee has a Chinese- 

 shoe-fashion or turn-up; it is because of that. 



' Now, the body of the bee becomes flattened and dark- 

 brown, nearly coffee-color, and just at that point in giving 

 way, as it drops down, there is a dark, very nearly a black 

 streak across the body of the bee, and apparently on either 

 side little brown streaks that will remain in that condition for 

 about two days. It will continue to dry on the point on the 

 lower side-wall until it is no thicker than the side-wall of 

 the comb, s6metimes even thinner than that, but the head 

 end of the bee having dried in that curled-up shape shows 

 itself to the eye much quicker than the balance of it further 

 back. 



jHow to look at the comb is one of the most important 

 features that the bee-keepers of our country have not learned. 

 They take a comb and hold it looking straight down into the 

 cells. I confess I can't see foul brood in that way. For the 

 benefit of this bulletin we are getting out, I went to an artist 

 the other day with this comb and told him I wanted to be 





