118 HANDY BOOK OF BEES. 



it is SO fully developed as to make the bees forsake their 

 hive, and will not hesitate to give the bees suffering from 

 it a clean hive as soon as he vrisely can. Foul brood in a 

 bee-hive is as dangerous and destructive of health and life 

 as foul air or choke-damp is in a coal-pit. We are not 

 going to waste time and space in theorising as to the 

 cause of this distemper in bee-hives, which is not under- 

 stood. Long and elaborate essays on foul brood have 

 been printed from the pens of great and distinguished 

 apiarians of both Europe and America during the last 

 few years, a careful perusal of which will convince any 

 man of ordinary intelligence that the writers themselves 

 are not quite certain as to the correctness of their opinions. 

 The best of them, to say the most, are but " good guesses." 

 But the last, and every attempt made to clear up the 

 mystery of foul brood, indicates that the person who 

 makes it thinks that all who have gone before him have 

 failed in their attempts. Though we are unable to speak 

 with authority or certainty on this subject, we may 

 be excused for saying that we are yet to be convinced 

 that it is in its nature infectious or self-communicating, or 

 that it is ever carried in honey from one hive to another. 

 That it spreads in an infected hive of living bees, all will 

 admit ; but a satisfactory explanation of the law or pro- 

 cess by which it spreads we have never seen. Many 

 single cells of foul brood, far asunder in a hive, often 

 appear. These cells are covered with lids, rather flat, or 

 slightly concave or scooped, resembling in shape the lids 

 of honey-cells. The lids of cells containing healthy brood 

 are slightly raised or convex. The disease spreads — the 

 cells multiply, apparently not by contact, but singly and 

 separately all over the brood-combs, like berries of a bunch 

 of grapes colouring one by one. 



. A great deal has been, said about chilled brood perish- 

 ing and becoming foul. The bees of a hive full of brood 



