How TO Control American Foulbrood 11 



royal jelly so that their food is not subject to infection dur- 

 ing that period except as the bacteria taken in with the food 

 may remain in the mouth cavity of the nurse bee and become 

 mixed with t^ie larvae food. However, from the fact that the 

 larvae do not show disease symptoms until after they have 

 reached the end of the feeding stage, it is' possible that infec- 

 tion does not take place until after the larvae are three days 

 old. In this case there is an actual period of seven or eight 

 days in which all of the diseased honey carried from the old 

 brood chamber may be consumed. During this period, how- 

 ever, the bees will be bringing in food from the field and stor- 

 ing it in other parts of the hive as well as keeping a supply 

 near the brood nest. If infected honey can be reached either 

 in the store room or through exposed combs during the treat- 

 ment of other colonies, reinfection may occur. The bee- 

 keeper then must carefully carry out every detail of the treat- 

 ment and keep infected honey or combs in a tight storeroom. 

 No beekeeper who is careless or neglects to remove all in- 

 fected honey or combs and keep them away from the bees 

 can expect to eradicate disease from his apiary. 



Why Extracting Frames Should Not Be Saved 



Many beekeepers have attempted to save dry brood-free ex- 

 tracting combs thinking that unless brood had been reared in 

 them they were free from disease. Brood-free extracting 

 frames that are absolutely dry and free of small drops of dried 

 honey do not carry the disease. Careful observations show 

 that so-called dry combs are seldom entirely free from honey 

 unless the colony from which they are taken has been brought 

 near to the point of starvation.^ If there is a fair amount of 

 stores present in the brood chamber, bees clean up the extract- 

 ing- combs and usually^ — but not always-— put the honey in a 

 ,few cells. In many cases A very small amount may be left in a 

 cell arid over a long period of time, perhaps five or six months 

 or from one season to another, these tiny drops dry out and 

 form a very small scale which does not show in glancing over 

 the combs. These sma,ll scales of dried honey may contain 

 spores of the disease and when honey is again stored in 

 these cells, the scales are softened and the spores liberated. 



'Just Jiow the honey in the extracting- supers becomes infected is 

 not clearly understood. During a heavy honey flow the bees deposit 

 nectar in the btood chamber and later carry it to the supers — perhaps 

 this is the explanation. 



