STATE BEE-KEEPERS* ASSOCIATION. 157 



BLACK BROOD. 



Black brood is another fatal and contagious disease 

 among bees, affecting the old bees as well as the brood. ^ In 

 1898, 1899 and 1900 it destroyed several apiaries in New 

 York. Last year I found one case of it in Wisconsin, 

 which was quickly disposed of. Dr. Howard made more than 

 a thousand microscopical examinations and found it to be a 

 distinct form of bacteria. It is most active in sealed brood. 

 The bees affected continue to grow until they reach the pupa 

 stage, then turn black and die. At this stage there is a sour 

 smell. No decomposition from putrefactive germs in pickled 

 brood. In black brood the dark and rotten mass in time 

 breaks down and settles to lower side-wall of the cell, is of a 

 watery, granulated, syrupy fluid, jelly-like, is not ropy or 

 sticky as in foul brood, and has a peculiar smell, resembling 

 sour, rotten apples. Not even a house-fly will set a foot 

 upon it. 



TREATMENT. 



Best time is during a honey-flow, and the modified Mc- 

 Evoy plan, much as I have treated foul brood, by caging the 

 queen five days, remove the foundation starters and give full 

 sheets, keeping queen caged five days longer. As great care 

 should be taken of diseased hives, combs, honey, etc., as in 

 foul brood. 



DYSENTERY. 



Dysentery among bees in Wisconsin in the spring of the 

 year, often is quite serious. Many colonies die with it. Dys- 

 entery is the excrements of the old bees ; it is of brownish 

 color, quite sticky and very disagreeable-smelling, and is 

 sometimes mistaken for foul brood. 



CAUSES. 



1. Bees confined too long in the hives, so that they can 

 no longer withhold their excrements, and are compelled to 

 void the same on the other bees and combs. 



2. Poor winter stores gathered in the fall from honey- 

 dew, cider-mills, sorghum mills, rotten fruit, also some kinds 

 of fall flowers. 



3. Old and especially moldy pollen or bee-bread. 



4. Hives too cold or damp. If moisture from the breath 

 of the bees is not carried out of the hive by some means, such 

 as through a deep cushion of some kind over the bees that will 

 absorb moisture and at the same time retain the heat, or by 

 some means of ventilation, so that all is dry and comfortable. 

 If mold forms on the combs or cellar so damp as to form 

 mold, there is great danger the bees will have dysentery and 

 die. - 



TREATMENT. 



I. First of all, have an abundance of combs of sealed 

 clover or basswood honey in brood-frames carefully saved. 



