254. THE BEE-KEEPER'S MANUAL. 
Chilled Brood.—This is a disaster almost suf- 
ficiently explained by its name, but which, till quite 
recently, was very generally set down as a milder 
form of the terrible plague described in the fol- 
lowing section. In its main feature—the brood 
dying off and drying up im the cells—it certainly 
bears a striking resemblance thereto; yet even 
Schirach, in 1784, spoke correctly of it as “ properly 
no disease at all’—it is an accident. Its usual 
inciting cause is a sudden fall of the temperature, 
at the close of winter or beginning of spring, 
causing the bees to crowd closer together in the 
centre of the hive, and thus leave the outer combs 
deserted, and the brood upon them to be chilled to 
death. The bees will sometimes proceed at once to 
remove and eject the perished brood of themsclves ; 
at other times they will let it remain, when it will 
turn to a dry crust at the bottom of the cells. It 
is desirable, however, that this should not be 
allowed to remain long, or the effluvium arising may 
produce the more serious disease. There is ob- 
viously nothing to be done for the chilled brood 
but to clear it away; but, with a view to pre- 
vention, the inhabited part of the hive should be 
restricted to dimensions sufficiently narrow to allow 
of a proper maintenance cf warmth. 
Von Berlepsch, who, like others, appears to 
include chilled brood among the forms of “the 
uncontagious foul brood,” speaks of the latter as 
sometimes liable to be occasioned by the food of 
the bees, in which case his quotation, “not a 
disease,” becomes obviously inapplicable. Consider- 
