TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 125 
circumstances respecting the death of a hive of bees in his possession, which induced 
me to request from him a full statement of particulars, He gave me the following 
account :—‘‘In October last I had three hives of bees, which I received into my 
house. The doorway of each hive was closed, and the hive was placed upon a piece 
of calico; the corners were brought over the top, leaving a loop, by which the hive 
was suspended from the ceiling. The hives were taken down about the 14th of 
March; two were healthy, but all the bees in the third were dead. There was a 
gallon of bees. The two hives containing live bees were much smaller; but in each 
there were dead ones. Under whatever circumstances you preserve bees through 
the winter, dead ones are found at the bottom of the hive in the spring. The room, 
an attic, was dry; and I had preserved the same hives in the same way during the 
winter of 1856. In what I may call the dead hive there was abundance of honey 
when it was opened; and it is clear that its inmates did not die from want. It is 
not a frequent occurrence for bees so to die; but I have known another instance. 
In that case the hive was left out in the ordinary way, and probably cold was the 
cause of death. I think it probable that my bees died about a month before the 
14th of March, merely from the circumstance that some one remarked about that 
time that there was no noise in the hive. They might have died earlier, but there 
were certainly live bees in the hive in January. I understand there was an appear- 
ance of mould on some of the comb. There was, I think, ample ventilation ; indeed, 
as the hives were suspended, they had more air than through the summer when 
placed on a stand. When the occurrence was first made known to me, I suggested 
that the bees might probably have died from the growth of a fungus, and requested 
some of the dead bees might be sent to me for examination. They were transmitted 
to me in a very dry state, and a careful inspection with a lens afforded no indication 
of vegetable growth. I then broke up a specimen and examined the portions with a 
compound microscope, using a Nachet, No.4. The head and thorax were clean, 
but on a portion of the sternum were innumerable very minute linear slightly curved 
bodies, which, when immersed in water, showed the well-known oscillating or 
swarming motion. Notwithstanding the agreement of these minute bodies with the 
characters of the genus Bacterium of the Vibrionia, I regarded them as spermatia, 
having frequently seen others indistinguishable from them under circumstances in- 
consistent with the presence of conferve, as in the immature peridia and sporangia 
of fungi. In the specimen first examined were no other indications of the growth 
of any parasite ; but from the interior of the abdomen of another bee I obtained an 
abundance of well-defined globular bodies resembling the spores of a fungus, ‘0001 2— 
-00016 inch in diameter. Three out of four specimens, subsequently examined, con- 
tained within the abdomen similar spores. No traces of mycelium were visible; 
the plants apparently had come to maturity and withered, leaving only the spores. 
The chief question then remaining to be solved was, as to the time when the spores 
were developed, whether before or after the death of the bees. In order, if possible, 
to determine this, I placed four of the dead bees in circumstances favourable for the 
germination of the spores, and in about ten days I submitted them again to examina- 
tion. They were covered with mould consisting chiefly of a species of Mucor, and 
one also of Botrytis or Botryosporium. These fungi were clearly extraneous, cover- 
ing indifferently all parts of the insects, and spreading on the wood on which they 
were lying. On the abdomen of all the specimens, and on the clypeus of one of 
them, grew a fungus wholly unlike the surrounding mould. It was white and very 
short, and apparently consisted wholly of spores arranged in a moniliform manner 
‘like the filaments of a penicillum, These spores resembled those first found in the 
abdomen of the bees, and did, I think, proceed from them. The filaments were 
most numerous at the junction of the segments of the abdomen. The spores did 
not resemble the globules in Sporendonema musce. The Rev. M. T. Berkeley, to 
-whom I sent some of the bees, found, by scraping the interior of the abdomen witha 
‘lancet, very minute curved linear bodies which he compared to vibriones. He found 
mixed with them globular bodies, but no visible stratum of mould. From the pecu- 
‘liar position of the spores within the abdomen of the bees, and from the growth of 
a fungus from them unlike any of our common forms of Mucedines, I think it pro- 
bable that the death of the bees was occasioned by the presence of a parasitic 
fungus.” 
