132 A Modern Bee-Farm 
The honey found in diseased stocks which are reduced 
to death’s door, is seldom in sufficient quantity to be worth 
saving, and the combs should be destroyed just as they 
are in the frames by the one great purifying element—fire. 
On the other hand stocks not so far reduced may be made 
to use up their own stores (without daubing the extractor, 
and a hundred other things) in the manner I have already 
set forth, and by other means I shall later dilate upon. 
3.—The disease is probably never communicated without divect 
contact. 
I now come to a proposition that probably does set 
forth a new theory, which however I trust has already 
been reduced to fact by my own practice. During 
my severe trial of many years since, for two to three 
seasons in succession I had several hives standing within 
a few feet of others diseased, but for the reason that the 
combs of the former were built across the frames, having 
been purchased in that condition, they escaped ordinary 
manipulations, and were simply supered each _ year. 
Strange to relate, these stocks escaped infection, and the 
fact largely helped me in finally clearing the apiary, 
because I quite saw I had previously been the means of 
infecting further hives by not being sufficiently careful. 
I then had no hesitation in saving all the brood combs 
but slightly diseased, during the gradual decline of the 
malady, and I began to get the upper hand of it. 
Partially Diseased Combs set over Queenless 
Colonies. 
Thus one or two queenless stocks were made to take 
such brood combs as another stock would be completely 
renovated, and when all the living brood had hatched, 
those stocks were finally renovated and the combs 
