'93 THE PRACTICAL KEE GUIDE. 



in the same manner. These cells will remain closed when 

 adjacent cells, having- g-iven birth to healthy brood, are open; 

 and this, in itself, will often be sufficient to arouse the suspicion 

 of the owner. The cappings of such cells will be seen to be 

 darker than those covering healthy brood, and to be, in some 

 cases, indented, as if pressed with a pencil point, and 

 sometimes, even perforated with jagged holes (Fig. log). If 

 one of those cells be opened, before the contents have reached 

 the scale stage, and, if a pointed stick be inserted and with- 

 drawn slowly, it will bring out the sticky, elastic, brown mass 

 which is an unmistakable indication of the existence ot foul 

 brood. Adult bees, suffering from the disease, die off very 

 rapidly; and the remainder lose heart, become listless, 

 and loiter about their unhappy and unhealthy home ; or, 

 fanning at the entrance, try, in vain, to remove the fetid air 

 which they seem to recognise is, for them, the precursor of 

 doom. When any of the symptoms described are noticed, an 

 immediate examination of the combs should be made; and, if 

 dead brood be found, the other symptoms should be looked 

 for, with a view to discovering whether the mischief present 

 is due to foul brood, or to either of the other diseases described 

 above. 



351. Cause. — "Bacillus alvei," is the name given by Cheshire, 

 in 1883, to the rod-shaped, pathogenic micro-organism causing 

 foul brood. (359b). 



"The bacillus alrei, which interests the bee-keeper, is ot medium 

 size, rod-like in shape, and four times longer than it is broad; and it 

 would take one hundred and twenty-eight billions ot them to equal a 

 worker bee in size. It we placed a bacillus and a bee along side o£ 

 each other, and wanted to place a body along side ot the bee as much 

 larger than the bee, as the bee is larger than the bacillus, we should 

 have to place a house two hundred feet long, one hundred feet wide, 

 and over fifty-seven and a half feet high ; and, it we wished to go 

 on and keep up the proportion, we should require one hundred and 

 twenty-eight billion houses tor the next body. They grow and multiply 

 with wonderful Tapidity. They divide by budding, or transversely 

 across their length every hour, and it one bacterium could keep up 

 this division for three days, it would convert over seven thousand tons 

 of organic matter into bacteria. They form, under certain conditions, 

 spores, or seed-like bodies which can withstand boiling water for one 

 or two hours."— A. W. Smyth M.D, in the Irish Bee Journal. 



In the early stages, bacilli only are present; but later, spores 

 are produced in enormous numbers — billions of them in one 

 dead larva, and more exceedingly minute than the dust par- 

 ticles visible in a sunbeam when it shines through a chink in 

 a closed shutter. These minute spores may be carried in the 



