70 Bee-keeping for Beginners. 



as to make the bees forsake their hive, and will not 

 hesitate to give the bees suffering from it a clean 

 hive as soon as he wisely can. Foul brood in 

 a bee-hive is as dangerous and destructive of 

 health and life as foul air or choke-damp is in a 

 coal-pit. We are not going to waste time and 

 space in theorising as to the cause of this distemper 

 in bee-hives, which is not understood. Long and 

 elaborate essays on foul brood have been printed 

 from the pens of great and distinguished apiarians 

 of both Europe and America during the last few 

 years, a careful perusal of which will convince 

 any man of ordinary intelligence that the writers 

 themselves are not quite certain as to the correctness 

 of their opinions. The best of them, to say the most, 

 are but ' good guesses. ' But the last, and every 

 attempt made to clear up the mystery of foul brood, 

 indicates that the person who makes it thinks that 

 all who have gone before him have failed in their 

 attempts. Though we are unable to speak with 

 authority or certainty on this subject, we may be 

 excused for saying that we are yet to be convinced 

 that it is in its nature infectious or self-communicat- 

 ing, or that it is ever carried in honey from one hive 

 to another. That it spreads in an infected hive of 

 living bees, all will admit ; but a satisfactory explana- 

 tion of the law or process by which it spreads we have 

 never seen. Many single cells of foul brood, far 

 asunder in a hive, often appear. These cells are 



