150 BEE-FARMING. 



and, what was even worse, the dreadful plague of London. 

 Bad though all these were, yet in their desolating effects 

 they are as nothing compared with the foul-brood amongst 

 bees. Some of our readers may smile at my making 

 this comparison, and may even think foul-brood is made 

 too much of by scientific apiarians, but, if they witnessed 

 its frightful ravages when it makes its appearance in an 

 apiary, they would be, as I have been, amazed at its 

 effects. I write, not as most of our authors and writers 

 upon this subject, merely to describe the disease, but I 

 speak from experience. I have observed it as introduced 

 into an apiary of fifteen fine stocks, kept bv a medical 

 man, who prided himself upon his advanced system of 

 management, and had the most improved Woodbury hives 

 and other appliances : in tnis instance it was brought in 

 with an Italian queen, and, though eveiyt'iing was adopted 

 on scientific bases to check the disease, all was in vain. 

 In one season every stock was infected, and by the autumn 

 mv friend had not a single stock living — they were all 

 dead. Had the disease not spread, the matter would not 

 have been so serious, but in one season almost every stock 

 throughout the whole neighbourhood — and some were 

 nearly half a mile apart — was diseased and worthless. 

 This will to some extent show its frightfully infectious 

 nature, and the fearful rapidity with which the infection 

 spreads. 



Dzierzon, the celebrated scientific apiarian of Ger- 

 many, commenced about 1838 with a single stock, but 

 these had so wonderfully increased that in the year 1848 

 he prided himself upon having more than 500 stocks. In 

 the interval he had lost seventy colonies from thieves, 

 sixty destroyed, by fire, and twenty-four by a flood. In 

 the year 1848, he states, "a fearful pestilence made its 

 appearance in my apiary, which spread so fast that it con- 

 taminated every stock and artificial swarm I then pos- 

 sessed." He lost this year more than 500 stocks from the 



