AOA Foiol Brood. 



sad havoc in many regions of our country. No bee malady 

 can compare with this in malignancy. By it Dzierzon once 

 lost his whole apiary of 500 colonies. Mr. E. Rood, first 

 President of the Michigan Association, lost all his bees two 

 or three times by this terrible plague. 



The symptoms are as follows: Decline in the prosperity 

 of the colony, because of failure to rear brood. The brood 

 seems to putrefy, becomes "brown and salvy," and gives 

 off a stench which is by no means agreeable, while later 

 the caps are concave instead of convex, and many will have 

 little holes through them. The most decided symptom is 

 the salvv elastic mass in the brootl cell. With a pin head 

 we neveV draw forth a larva or pupa, but this brown stringy 

 mass which afterwards dries down in the cell. 



There is no longer any doubt as to the cause of this 

 fearful plague. Like the fell "Pebrine" which came so 

 near exterminating the silk worm, and a most lucrative and 

 extensive industry in Europe, it, as conclusively "shown by 

 Drs. Preusz and Schonfeld, of Germany, is the result of 

 fungous or vegetable growth. Schonfeld not only infected 

 healthy bee lar\a3 but those of other insects, both by means 

 of the putrescent foul brood and by taking the spores. 

 Professor Cohn discovered in 1874 that the cause of foul 

 brood was a microbe. Bacillus alveolaris. Mr. Hilbert the 

 following year showed that these micro-organisms existed 

 in the mature bees as well as in the brood. 



Fungoid growths are very minute, and the spores are so 

 infinitesimally small as often to elude the sharp detection 

 of the expert microscopist. Most of the terrible contagious 

 diseases that human flesh is heir to, like typhus, diphtheria, 

 cholera, small pox, etc., are now thought to be due to 

 microscopic g<jrms, and hence to be spread from home to 

 home, and from hamlet to hamlet; it is only necessary that 

 the spores, the minute seeds, either by contact or by some 

 sustaining air current, be brought to new soil of flesh, blood, 

 or other tissue — their garden spot — v\hcn they at once spring 

 into growth, and thus lick up the very vitalit\' of their 

 victims. The huge mushroom will grow in a night. So, 

 too, these other plants — the disease germs — will develop 



