Bacillus alvei By Messrs. F. Cheshire d' Watson Cheyne. 591 



antennae of the bees usually do. I also think it probable that 

 occasionally at least, nurse bees infected bring the disease-germs 

 to the mouth in feeding the larvae, and then, turning foragers, leave 

 a germ or germs on the nectary of a flower, -which, visited by 

 another bee, becomes the means of infection to it. The malady is 

 thus carried into other, and perhaps somewhat distant, apiaries. 



Balancing all the probabilities, it would appear that most gene- 

 rally the adult bee takes the disease, and then carries it directly or 

 indirectly to the brood. In a somewhat different malady, Empusa 

 musci of the housefly, the germs are known to take efl'ect by 

 settling on the spiracles or between the abdominal rings, and the 

 spiracle of the bee in all its stages may be the especially vulnerable 

 point. 



3rdly. The method of the cure of Bacillus alvei. Upon this 

 question the scientific is perhaps less than the practical interest, 

 and so I shall content myself with a bare outline. Salicylic acid 

 has been used in attempting to combat this disease with fluctuating 

 and partial success, but phenol I have found perfectly specific. The 

 difl&culty of administration I overcame as follows : phenol was 

 mingled with ordinary sugar syrup of a density most suitable for 

 feeding purposes in the proportion of 1 to 500 by weight of the 

 syrup, and this was then poured into the comb in which brood was 

 being raised. The nurse bees immediately accepted the medicated 

 food, and as a result the malady in the very worst cases disappeared, 

 the exceptions being those in which the queen herself was badly 

 diseased. This would rather seem to indicate that the drug acts 

 as a prophylactic, but upon this most vital point time has not at 

 present enabled me to settle the ground for an opinion. The 

 problem is beset by difiiculties, but during the advancing summer 

 experiments will be made in the hope of gaining evidence respecting 

 it. Even apart from the solution of this question, this investigation 

 promises to have a very important bearing upon the future of 

 apiculture by exposing the errors of the past and supplying a satis- 

 factory method of treating a disease which had promised to so 

 increase as to thoroughly imperil the very existence of apiculture 

 as an industry. 



Part 11.— Uistory under Cultivation. (By Mr. Cheyne.) 



On August 11th, 1884, Mr. Cheshire brought to me a piece of 

 comb containing larva3 aflected with foul brood, with whicli I per- 

 formed the following experiments:— Selecting cells which were 

 closed, but which Mr. Cheshire thought contained diseased larva3, I 

 brushed them over with a watery solution of bichloride of mercury 

 d : 1000) to destroy the organisms on the outside. With several 

 forceps that had been heated and allowed to cool, the covering of 



