CONTROL OF EUROPEAN POULBROOD. 13 



suiEciently protected during the winter and spring. The single- 

 walled hive was first made as a means of reducing the cost. Such 

 a hive is a good tool for the beekeeper but it is a poor home for the 

 bees. When the 10-frame hive was found too large to be filled with 

 bees in time for them to go into the supers as soon as the honey-flow 

 opened, instead of protecting the hive the use of the 8-frame hive 

 was commonly adopted. This hive is in rather general use through- 

 out the United States, although fortunately it is now being replaced 

 by the 10-frame hive in many localities. In order that the beekeeper 

 may reduce his labor, it would be well to raise the standard of colony 

 strength by providing better protection and more room for the bees. 

 This will to a large degree eliminate the spring manipulations so 

 often practiced, will get better crops, and will make European foul- 

 brood a minor trouble of the apiary. 



REMEDIAL MEASURES. 



When strong colonies headed by vigorous queens of resistant stock 

 are present, European f oulbrood will usually make little if any head- 

 way, yet from time to time there may appear cases which require 

 treatment. The shaking treatment used for American f oulbrood^ 

 is often advocated for European foulbrood and is recommended by 

 many inspectors of apiaries. It was recommended in previous pub- 

 lications of this department, but later observations show that other 

 methods are more reliable. If colonies are given young Italian 

 queens at the time of shaking, results will usually be good, but unless 

 this is done shaking is of little or no value. Some beekeepers prac- 

 tice heavy feeding of either honey or sugar sirup when European 

 foulbrood appears. This often gives good results, for it brings about 

 the conditions which are advocated as preventive measures, although 

 as applied it constitutes a remedial measure. The same amount of 

 stores left with the colony the previous fall will usually do more 

 good than heavy spring feeding as a means of disease control. 



The remedial measures here described should be used only to re- 

 move the disease if it enters the apiary. Preventive measures should 

 then be employed to avoid a recurrence of the disease. 



(1) The dead larvae are easily removed from the cells, and the re- 

 medial treatment serves to provide conditions such that these may 

 be removed by the bees during a period when no new diseased ma- 

 terial is appearing in the combs. Usually the queen is removed from 

 the colony, and, since a queen whose colony becomes badly infected is 

 rarely of any value, she is killed. In five or six days all queen cells 

 are removed, so that the colony is hopelessly queenless. The workers 

 do not clean out the diseased cells so rapidly unless they have a queen 



1 For a description of this treatment the reader is referred to Farmers' Bulletin 442, 

 " The Treatment of Bee Diseases." 



