156 A Modern Bee-Farm 
countries. The trouble has sometimes been considered a 
form of dysentery, but it is not so, being essentially a case 
of constipation. The hives and combs are very seldom 
soiled, unless occasionally the bees are unable to hibernate 
because of the malady being aggravated by cold. 
Means of Infection. 
A whole list of most improbable causes has been given 
from time to time; the writers entirely ignoring the most 
simple rules of reasoning, and overlooking the fact that 
thousands of colonies existing under the same conditions 
have remained healthy and prosperous. 
Poor and wet seasons can have nothing whatever to do 
with originating the disease, otherwise the complaint 
should have been with us before the late plague and more 
frequently in years past. Indeed, excessive heat, rather 
than bad seasons, tends to develop and aggravate the 
complaint where it is in evidence. 
Pollen and honey-dew, as mediums of carrying the germs 
of disease, and also the practice of feeding sugar as a 
supplementary store, have also been considered causes of 
the Isle of Wight disease, but with no shadow of proof to 
support such theories, for the reason set out above. 
And seldom can the disease be’ spread because bees 
visit flowers that have been searched by diseased bees,* 
otherwise other stocks in the apiary, or neighborhood, 
would not remain free from the complaint, as they certainly 
have done in many instances. 
Contaminated water may be one means of spreading the 
disease, but undoubtedly the sick and dying workers lying 
around are the greatest source of infection to other colonies, 
* Tt is even a question whether an ailing bee goes out to work 
when its condition of disease is so far advanced that it could thus 
disseminate the fatal germs. 
