WINTER MANAGEMENT. 257 
Having been thus tempted to place the most 
interesting facts at the head of our notice, we must 
now proceed to that description of the disease itself 
which ought more strictly to have stood first. 
This we propose to supply in the form of an 
analysis of Von Berlepsch’s lengthened account of 
the symptoms and supposed inciting causes of the 
disease; for, though some of his remarks will at 
once strike our readers as out of date, the majority 
of them remain of value, and there is still sufficient 
obscurity attached to portions of the subject to 
warrant the reproduction of all that he has to say. 
Indeed, foul brood is still the béte noire of apicultu- 
rists, and nothing but the most scrupulous and 
persevering pains will suffice to save any portion of 
a colony, when once attacked, from remaining, 
throughout its existence, a propagator of miasma 
to every hive and apiary in the neighbourhood. 
Let us just premise, for the sake of the beginner, 
that foul brood is a disease affecting the brood 
alone, but which is so terribly contagious that the 
bees in an infected hive will convey the micrococcus 
spores wherever they go, and thus renew the 
outbreak in any sound brood to which they may 
subsequently be conjoined. When we speak of the 
bees as being themselves diseased we therefore mean 
no more than that they are charged with the germs 
which will produce disease in the brood; and when 
again we talk of “saving the bees” we refer to the 
brimstone-pit to which, if not disinfected, they will 
require, sooner or later, to be doomed. 
In the symptoms and nature of this malady there 
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