30 THE BACTEEIA OF THE APIABY. 



8. MooEE, V. A., and Wright, F. R. Observations of Bacillus coli communis 



from certain species of Domesticated Animals. <American Medicine, Vol. 

 Ill, No. 13, p. 504, 1902. 



9. LoEBEE, E. A Bacteriological Study of the Intestine of the Fish. <Am. Bled., 



Vol. VII, No. 4, p. 152, 1904. 



10. Matzuschita, T. Bacteriologische Diagnostik, 1902. 



11. Chester, F. D. A Manual of Determinative Bacteriology, 1901. 



PART II.— THE DISEASES OF BEES. 



The bee industry in this country, and other countries as well, is 

 suffering large losses from various diseases among bees. Those which 

 are most destructive attack the brood and weaken the colony by kill- 

 ing off large numbers of the young larvae which would otherwise 

 mature. There are other diseases which attack the adults and so 

 decrease the strength of the colony in that way. 



In order to combat a disease to the best advantage it is clear that 

 its cause must be known, as well as the means by which the infection 

 is transmitted and the environmental conditions which are favorable 

 for the breaking out of an epidemic. The brood diseases among bees 

 are on the increase. The custom of selling and shipping the honey, 

 which is now carried on more extensively than formerly, the manner 

 in which the products of the apiary are handled, and the absence of 

 a general knowledge by the mass of bee keepers of the nature of the 

 diseases are conditions which must be met before the spread of these 

 diseases can be checked. When a colony is diseased, very little or no 

 profit is realized from it; consequently the wealth and comfort of a 

 very large number of people are greatly endangered by the existence 

 of bee diseases. This suggests the importance, from an economic 

 standpoint, of a thoro knowledge of these disorders. 



BRIEF HISTORY. 



The attention of investigators has been attracted by these diseased 

 conditions, not only from the economic interests attached thereto, 

 but from the scientific point of view as Avell. The writings of Aris- 

 totle (12) contain an account of certain disorders which were then 

 prevalent among bees ; at that time it was thought that the blight of 

 flowers bore a relation to bee diseases. In 1769 Schirach (13) gave 

 the name foul brood to a diseased condition of the brood of bees; 

 he attributed the cause to (a) unwholesome food, and (h) the placing 

 of the larvae with head inward in the cell. Leuckhart (14) thought 

 the cause to be a fungus, related to the cause {Panhistophyton ova- 

 turn) of the disease of the silkworm. Muhlfeld (15), in 1868, 

 thought the trouble to be of two kinds — infectious and noninfec- 

 tious — and that the cause of the infectious one is the larva of a para- 

 sitic fly (Ichneumon apium fneUificarium) feeding upon the larvse of 

 the bee. In 1868 Preuss (16) exprest the view that the cause of" 



