BEES IN COLONIES AFFECTED BY EUROPEAN FOULBBOOD 15 



a hybrid queen in a diseased Italian colony, but the presence of the 

 heavy honey flow made it impracticable to carry the matter further. 

 This colony A cleaned up readily after removal of the queen and 

 was reported all healthy in August. Although a new queen was 

 given to them it is probable that a period of queenlessness and the re- 

 turning of the same queen would have answered just as well. 



COLONY I 



i?oce.— Italian. 



Queen.~lQl7, fairly good condition. 



Condition of colony at time of infection.— Se\en frames of emerging 



brood well covered with young bees. A strong 8-frame colony. 

 Date of first infection. — July 10, 1918. 

 Material Msed.— Thirty diseased larvse from sample No. 5959, macerated 



In 250 c. c. of a 50 per cent sugar sirup. This was abnormally heavy 



Infection of diseased material. 

 First appearance of disease no«e(J.— July 15, 1918, five days after infection. 

 Age of larvw first attacked.— Four days after hatching from the egg. 



This colony was infected during the heavy honey flow, but 

 although given a heavy infection it had sufficient strength, aided by 

 the heavy honey flow, to prevent the disease from spreading. On 

 July 15 there were a few diseased larvae in two combs. On July 24, 

 14 days after inoculation, there were only a few diseased larvae in 

 three combs. This was after the queen had been removed on July 

 18 and the colony had been united with colony H on the 20th. 



An interesting observation was that under the magnifying glass 

 the methods of the nurse bees in sucking the juices from dead dis- 

 eased larvae and the pulling of the skins out to carry them away could 

 be noted. No bee worked very long at s. time on one larva. One 

 after another worked until all was completed. 



SUMMARY OF PREVIOUS EXPERIMENTS 



Table I gives a partial summary of the data thus far described. 



Table I. — STiotoing the first appearance of disease noted after infection. Also 

 the number of combs showing infection and the spread of the infection from 

 comb to comb in the various colonies under observation 



1 Experiments started before the beginning of the heavy honey flow. 

 > Experiments started after the beguming of the heavy honey flow. 



