towns and cities, ffhe wooden sides of the sections, and many of the 

 empty bottles, or washings from them, are thrown out by housekeepers 

 and cleaned up by bees of the neighborhood, and the disease is carried 

 home to their healthy brood. This is why our inspectors find more disease 

 in the apiaries around towns and cities than elsewhere. 



The Treatment. 



Now, to be cured of this disease a colony must be freed from all 

 this infected brood, comb and honey. To do this we simply take it away. 

 But in the operation some precautions are necessary. We must see that 

 the colony will get healthy food as soon as the unhealthy food is taken 

 away, and have means for building new comb at once. So the opera- 

 tion should be performed during a honey flow, and to make it perfectly 

 sure it is a good plan to insert a division board feeder of sugar syrup. 

 We must take precautions against starting robbing, or causing the treated 

 colony to scatter to other hives or swarm out, be lost, and carry infection 

 to other places. So the operation should be performed in the evening, 

 when the bees are settling down for the night, and the entrance should 

 be covered with queen-excluding metal to hold the queen in case of 

 swarming out the next morning. A regular queen-excluder laid on the 

 bottom board under the brood chamber will answer the latter purpose. 

 They should also be given a clustering space to occupy, as in the case 

 of a natural swarm. Whenever bees are disturbed in their hives they 

 will fill their honey sacs with honey from the comb. As this will happen 

 when the hive is being treated, and some of this diseased honey may be 

 stored in the new combs, it is thought best to remove these after three 

 or four days and require them to make a second start. 



Method oe Treatment. 



When there is a good honey flow on, go to the colony in the evening, 

 taking a set of frames with one-half inch starters of foundation in them. 

 Take the combs out of the hives, shaking the bees from them, back into 

 the hive. If any fresh nectar flies out, it will be necessary to brush 

 the bees off instead of shaking them. Get these combs immediately under 

 cover, and clean up very carefully any honey that may be about, so that 

 robbers from healthy colonies cannot carry home disease. If the honey 

 flow is at all uncertain, it is better to put in a feeder with thin sugar 

 syrup. 



On the third or fourth evening after the first operation, remove the 

 hive from its stand and set in its place a clean disinfected hive containing 

 frames with full sheets of foundation. Now brush the bees from what 

 combs have been built on the starters into the new hive. Even greater 

 care must be taken than at first to avoid leaving any honey or bits of 

 comb about. Positively no comb must be used or left in the Wve in either 

 the first or second treatment. 



