9S DR. miller's 



European foulbrood? If so, state time to do it. Clover flow from 

 June 20 to July 20. 



A. A cure would be likely to follow. Better not wait until 

 the last half of the flow, as the case would be getting worse all 

 the time, but act at the beginning of the flow. But if only two 

 or three diseased cells are present, and the queen is good, all you 

 need to do is to cage her in the hive for ten days. 



Q. If caging a queen for a certain length of time, in case of 

 European foulbrood, stops the disease, should the disease not 

 come to an end in fall, as all brood-rearing stops entirely for 

 several months? 



If an apiary has foulbrood one season, will it be free from it 

 next year? There are no young diseased larvas from which the 

 nurse bees can suck the juice and feed it to healthy ones the 

 next spring. 



A. The shortest answer to your question would be to say I 

 don't know. And that's the truth. I don't know why caging a 

 queen should stop the disease. If caging a queen stops the dis- 

 ease, I don't know why the winter's rest from brood-rearing does 

 not stop it. But here is the important fact that I do know. I 

 know that in a large number of cases cessation of brood-rearing 

 for a week or so has stopped the disease. Note that I don't say 

 in all cases, but in the large majority of cases. I don't know that 

 in the great majority of cases the disease is conveyed from one 

 cell to another by the nurse-bees sucking the juices of recently- 

 diseased larvEe, but it is a pretty satisfactory theory until a bet- 

 ter theory is advanced. 



I think, however, that no one has advanced the theory that 

 the disease is in all cases conveyed by means of larvffi that have 

 been dead only a short time. It may in some cases be conveyed 

 through spores in dried-up scales of larvss that have been dead a 

 long time. But I suppose these last cases are exceptional. Now, 

 although I don't know all about it, if you will allow me to 

 theorize, I'll tell you what I think is possible in the case you 

 mention. In early spring or winter, when the brood-rearing be- 

 gins, there are no diseased larva present. But there are dried 

 scales containing spores. One would expect that the disease 

 would begin rather slowly from these. And observation con- 

 firms that supposition. In a colony which has not been badly 

 diseased in the previous year, the first examination in the follow- 

 ing spring shows very little disease — possibly none. Subsequent 

 examinations will show it on the increase, although if I am not 

 mistaken there are some cases in which a colony will remain 



