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climate and bee-forage second to none in the world. We raise some 

 of the very finest honey in the worldj and there is nothing but this 

 disease to prevent the beekeeping industry in this country from 

 developing into a very extensive business. We have the honey at 

 our feet and the animals for gathering it, yet until some measures 

 are devised to prevent disease running rampant through the colonv, 

 as is the case at present, we cannot profit to the full by these ad- 

 vantages. 



State Legislation. 



The difficulty of individual beekeepers dealing successfully with 

 " foul brood," so easily propagated and spread abroad from apiary 

 to apiary, lies in the carelessness and often wilfulness of many so- 

 called beekeepers who (as I have frequently poitited out in my 

 writings), in utter disregard of advice given them by more careful 

 men, will persist in leaving lying about old boxes with their combs 

 in which diseased colonies have died, for other bees to enter 

 and so to carry away disease-germs, and occasionally hiving stray 

 swarms in the same infected boxes, only to piopagate and 

 spread the disease, and to finally perish as the others did before 

 them. It is absolutely necessary and just that the careful beekeeper 

 should be protected from his careless neighbour, and the only way 

 this can be done is by State legislation, which shall control and 

 compel the careless man to take such steps as will prevent the pro- 

 pagation and spread of disease in and from his apiary. The sale of 

 diseased bees, or implements that have been used in a diseased apiary 

 before being thoroughly disinfected, or the transportation of diseased 

 bees to or from any district, should not be allowed. 



Symptoms of " Foul Brood." 



Healthy brood in the iarvse stage — that is, before it is sealed or 

 capped — presents a clear pearly whiteness, but when attacked by 

 "foul brood" it rapidly changes to light buff, then to brown, coffee- 

 and-milk colour, and finally to black, at which stage nothing is to be 

 seen in the cell but a flatfish scale-like substance when examined 

 closelv. It is, however, when the brood has been attacked after it 

 has advanced to the pupa period of its existence — that is, when it 

 has been capped over — that the novice is better able to detect the 

 presence of " foul brood." 



In the early stage of an attack a capped cell here and there will 

 appear somewhat different from the surrounding healthy brood. 

 Instead of the cappings or seals being bright, full, and of convex 

 form, characteristic of healthy brood, they will be of a dull blackish- 

 brown colour, and flat or sunken, an indication that the cells contain 



