11O A Modern Bee-Farm 
Dysentery 
is one of the more simple diseases to which bees are subject, 
and this is known by the bees soiling their combs and the 
flight-board with their excrement, being unable to rise on 
the wing before voiding the same. This occurs in early 
Spring, just as it is hoped the bees have passed the worst of 
the Winter. It can generally be prevented by providing that 
they have plenty of good stores, judicious ventilation, and 
free passage under the frames (see “ Wintering”). A cure 
is to be effected by feeding warm syrup on the first fine 
day, thereby also inducing the bees to take a general flight. 
If the combs are very badly smeared they should be 
removed and clean substituted. 
Dysentery is very readily induced by any exciting .cause 
after the bees have been a long time without a cleansing 
flight. Thus, a stock, apparently in the best possible 
condition, may from some quite avoidable occurrence have 
its entrance choked by dead bees, and then the more 
prosperous the colony, the more disastrous will be the 
result. 
By far the greater number of cases may be put down 
as being caused by semi-starvation. A small lot of bees 
unable to reach stores situated away from the cluster, will 
generally perish without excitement during a too long 
spell of cold, the cluster remaining unbroken just as the 
bees rested upon the combs. But take the case of a 
strong stock, particularly where a patch or two of brood 
has been started, and instead of continued cold compelling 
them to remain and die where they sit upon their combs, 
their very strength is the cause of their own destruction. 
They generate too much heat to remain quietly clustering 
where all the store within reach is at last exhausted. 
Though too cold yet for individuals to reach the more 
distant, but still plenteous store, the bees fully aware of 
