ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS ASSOCIATION 



19 



Fool Brood and Other Dimses of Bees. 



(Republished by permission of N. E. France, Foul Brood Inspector 



of Wisconsin.) 



Foul brood — bacillus alvei — is a fatal 

 and contagious disease among bees, 

 dreaded most of all by bee-keepers. The 

 "germs of disease are either given to the 

 young larval bee in its food when it 

 hatches from the egg of the queen-bee, 



expansion of the bee industry is the 

 prevalence of foul brood, which is so 

 rapidly spreading over the country as to 

 make bee-keeping a hazardous occupa- 

 tion." 



Canada's foul brood inspector, in 1890 



Showing Bad Results of Fool Brood in a Wisconsin Apiary. 



or it may be contagion from a diseased 

 colony, or if the queen deposits eggs, 

 or the worker-bees store honey or pol- 

 len in such combs. If in any one of the 

 above cases, the disease will soon ap- 

 pear, and the germs increase with great 

 rapidity, going from one little cell to 

 another, colony to colony of bees, and 

 then to all the neighboring apiaries, thus 

 soon leaving whole apiaries with only 

 diseased combs to inoculate others. The 

 Island of Syria in three years lost all 

 of its great apiaries from foul brood. 

 Dzierzon, in 1868, lost his entire apiary 

 of 500 colonies. Cowan, the editor of 

 the British Bee Journal, recently wrote: 

 "The only visible hindrance to the rapid 



to 1892, reported 2,395 cases, and in a 

 later report for 1893 ^to 1898, that 40 

 percent of the colonies inspected were 

 diseased. Cuba is one of the greatest 

 honey-producing countries, and was 

 lately reported to me by a Wisconsin 

 bee-keeper who has been there, and will 

 soon return to Wisconsin: "So plentiful 

 is foul brood in Cuba that I have known 

 of large apiaries to dwindle out of ex- 

 istence from its ravages, and hundreds 

 more are on the same road to sure and 

 certain death. I myself took in 90 

 days in Cuba, 24,000 pounds of fine 

 honey from 100 colonies, but where is 

 that apiary and my other 150-colony 

 apiary? Dead from foul brood." Cuba, 



