90 BEES FOR I'LEASURE AND PROFIT. 



These bees often get chilled through, if the iveather is cool, and 

 eventually die. 



Sometimes the diseased bees lose the use of their legs, or 

 of one pair of them. 



As the disease advances, the abdomens of the aiFected bees 

 become swollen, and assume a dull black appearance, and very 

 often the wings stand out in an abnormal manner, and become 

 what is commonly called " dislocated." Often the diseased 

 bees lose the hairs on their abdomens ; but the bee-keeper 

 must be careful not to confuse such diseased bees with 

 perfectly healthy lean old bees (to be found in most healthy 

 hives) whose abdomens have become black, shiny, and hairless 

 with hard work. 



In Isle of Wight disease, the bees sometimes soil their 

 hives and combs with their excrement (for which reason 

 certain people have styled it Malignant Dysentery), but in 

 other cases they do not. 



It must be clearly understood that the symptoms vary 

 greatly, and also that the progress of the disease is sometimes 

 very slow, and at others exceedingly rapid. 



The disease, tliough occasionally met with in other parts 

 of the world, does not appear at the present day to have the 

 same virulence on the Continent that it displays in England. 

 Whether, like the African cattle plague Rinderpest, which 

 every now and then sweeps as a terrible scourge through the 

 continent of Africa, Isle of Wight disease has ever attacked 

 bees in Europe in epidemic form before 190-1, it is difficult to 

 say ; but for myself I am inclined to think that it has, for in 

 old works on bees we read, for example, that in 1790 "Bees 

 of late years have been troubled with a nasty dysentery which 

 doth destroy a full stock in a very short time," * while thirty 

 to forty years later we read, "Dysentery in our bees doth 

 greatly trouble us, and a traveller from Holland reports that 

 many thou.sands of stocks have died in that country." 



Cures and. Prevention. 



Although no certain cause and no certain cure, which will 

 work infallibly in all cases, have as yet been found for Isle 

 of Wight disease, experience and experiment have proved 

 certain broad principles quite conclusively. For example, 



* Ordinary dysentery is not so rapid as this. 



