DISEASES, &o. 191 



air, on the bodies of robber bees, or on the person of the bee- 

 keeper, from hive to hive, or from apiary to apiary, to infect 

 other stocks, and to set up disease in hitherto healthy locali- 

 ties. They get into the honey, and are fed with it to the larvae; 

 then follows a brief period of incubation, after which the 

 bacilli are produced, which feed upon and destroy the larvae, 

 and pass into the spore state, to re-appear in the resulting 

 bacilli. The spores are more dangerous than the bacteria, 

 because of their wonderful powers of resistance to treatment 

 which would speedily overcome the bacilli. Cheshire declares 

 that he found the bacilli in queens, and, not only in their 

 organs, but also in the partially developed eggs in their ovaries. 

 They are capable of growing in any favourable medium ; but 

 bee-larvae, as it is for them a richer soil, offers special attrac- 

 tions. Weak colonies, and such as are living upon unhealthy 

 food, or in insanitary conditions, are generally the first to be 

 attacked, so that, often, at the outbreak, it is not, as is some- 

 times supposed, the disease that has weakened the stock, but 

 the weakness of the stock that has invited the disease. 



352. Pkeveniion. — Foul brood is eminently a disease to which 

 may be applied, with special force, the maxim — " Prevention 

 is better than cure." For, while the cure must always be exact- 

 ing and anxious, and to some extent uncertain, the disease may 

 generally be prevented by methods which, while they involve 

 little trouble to the bee-keeper, are, in many respects, of 

 incalculable benefit to his stocks. In the forefront of all desir- 

 able precautions may be placed — cleanliness ; the elimination 

 of all weak stocks by uniting; and the encouragement of strong 

 colonies by the use of only young, vigorous queens, and 

 suitable food (321-5); thus opposing to the assault of the 

 bacteria, the vigour of stocks qualified, by a healthy constitu- 

 tion, to resist the disease. — 



'* The bees, when their colony is favourably situated, can resist the 

 disease to a great extent, and the stronger the colony the greater is the 

 resistance. In the treatment of infectious diseases in man and animals ; 

 and in experiments made by inoculating animals with parasitic bacteria, 

 the only way yet found to save the infected animal is by strengthening 

 and increasing the resistance of the host, so that the parasite and its 

 poison may be unable to prevail against it. The best and safest germi- 

 cides in foul brood are the bees themselves. If we cultivate the bees 

 more and the bacteria less, spores will not be so abundant in the hive, 

 and the bees will be able to attend to them." — A. W. Smyth, M.D., 

 in the Irish Bee Journal, 



Naphthaline — an intestinal antiseptic and parasiticide, acting 

 as a disinfectant to arrest decomposition, enables, or encourages 

 the bees to remove diseased larva: from the hive before 



