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ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION 



31 



foul brood — not American, but Euro- 

 pean — the kind that had been pro- 

 nounced ten times worse than Amer- 

 ican! 



Just for a little I had a feeling like 

 giving up in despair. But not for long. 

 Others had fought the disease; why 

 not I, even if it was spread all through 

 the apiary? One thing to be thankful 

 for was that I had given up the out- 

 apiary, and had nothing but the home 

 apiary to care for. Things are never 

 so bad but they might be worse. 



In all, there were about 150 hives in 

 the apiary with bees in, although a 

 ^ood many hives contained nuclei, 

 most of which' were shortly broken up. 

 Looking over t'he record book now, I 

 find only 22 colonies that were at all 

 times entirely clear of the disease 

 throughout the entire season, against 

 93 that were more or less affected. 

 How many of the nuclei were affected 

 I do not know, but breaking them up 

 certainly lessened the number of af- 

 fected families to deal with. Besides, 

 the season being one of dearth, there 

 was always danger that robbing might 

 be started at any one of the nuclei, 

 and a diseased nuoleus might thus give 

 the disease to several clean colonies. 



The failure of the crop made matters 

 look more discouraging, although I 

 may remark in passing that the late 

 flow filled up the hives in good shape 

 for winter, and gave about a thousand 

 sections besides. The most discour- 

 aging feature of the whole case was 

 the fact that all around were those who 

 had one or more colonies here and 

 there, whose bees were diseased, and 

 however often I might clean up, these 

 sources of infection would always be 

 ready to give me a fresh start, until 

 they were all wiped out; since there is 

 no law in Illinois to prevent any one 

 from indulging in all the foul brood he 

 likes. 



In some colonies, only a bad cell or 

 two were to be seen; and right here is 

 as good a place as any to say just what 

 was to be seen. Generally the diseased 

 iDrood was seen 'When, nearly full grown 

 and still unsealed. A healthy larva is 

 pearl-white; the diseased brood is 

 cream -color, or darker. That's the only 

 thing we paid any attention to, and it 

 is not difficult to detect, even if there 

 be only a single diseased larva in the 

 hive. Generally very little ropiness 

 could be detected, and the odor in this 



European or black brood is very little, 

 compared with that of American follil 

 brood. There was no appearance of 

 anything wrong w^ith the sealed brood, 

 as is the case in American foul brood. 

 Perhaps there is little or no diseased 

 brood in the sealed cells of European 

 foul brood, the brood all dying before 

 it is sealed, and being cleaned out by 

 the bees. And right here, I think, is a 

 marked difference between the two dis- 

 eases. In American foul brood the 

 putrid mass dries down in the cell so 

 solid that the bees cannot remove it: 

 while in the European variety it is not 

 so much like dried glue, and the bees 

 can clean it out of the cell, as was 

 shown by the blackened remains 

 thrown out at the ihive entrance in at 

 least some cases. 



The amount of bad brood in a hive 

 ran all the way from a single cell up to 

 perhaps one in every 8 or 10 cells of 

 unsealed brood. This, however, may 

 not be entirely correct, as it is only a 

 matter of memory. As we wanted to 

 give attention first to the worst cases, 

 we marked as "bad" any colony that 

 had one or more bad cells, up to those 

 that had, perhaps, one bad cell in every 

 20 cells of unsealed brood, and any- 

 thing worse than this was classed as 

 "very bad." I know it may sound a 

 little strange to some to class as "very 

 bad" a colony having among its un- 

 sealed brood only 5 to 12 per cent dis- 

 eased, for that would class as very bad 

 a colony having only about 1% per 

 cent of its 'whole brood diseased; when 

 they have seen foul brood so bad that 

 nearly all the brood in a comb, both 

 sealed and unsealed, would be rotten. 

 I am only telling how it was here. How 

 long the disease would have to run 

 before it would get to be so very bad, 

 I do not know. 



July 8th we began throwing on- foun- 

 dation after the orthodox plan, begin- 

 ning with some of the "very bad" 

 cases. In the first case, we shook the 

 bees on newspaper in front of the hive, 

 so that if any affected honey was 

 shaken out the newspaper could be 

 burned. But after this first case we 

 brushed the bees off. It was, perhaps, 

 safer, and, on the whole, less trouble. 

 Dr. Phillips having said that he 

 thought the second shake was not nec- 

 essary, the bees were thrown upon full 

 sheets of foundation, and I may say 

 here, in passing, that in no case where 



