DISEASES OF BEES. 89 



also to districts where Sainfoin Clover is grown. Before many 

 days (about a fortnight after the White Clover commences to 

 blossom) the lime trees commence to blossom, and for about ten 

 days or a fortnight it is the very height of the honey harvest. If 

 there are some showers the honey-flow will keep on until the end 

 of July, but after this date little if any surplus will be stored — in 

 fact, it is pretty safe to remove the supers entirely by the first 

 few days in August. This applies to nine-tenths of the districts in 

 Britain ; but where heather or buckwheat flourishes the season is 

 not over until the commencement of September. In these districts 

 the last three weeks in August is the height of the honey-flow, so 

 that supers must remain on until the end of the first week in 

 September, and if very fine weather is experienced, until quite the 

 end of that month. To judge when the flow has ceased is 

 quite an easy matter. Watch the entrance to the hive. Instead 

 of the beea darting out with lightning-like rapidity they simply 

 "hang around" the entrance challenging every bee that enters 

 or endeavours to enter. Few comparatively fly abroad, and the 

 entrance to the hive, which but a day or two before was 

 pouring out bees going at a breakneck pace to gather in the 

 harvest, is simply choked with a few ventilating members and 

 a whole host of sentinels. This evidence of the cessation of the 

 honey-flow is unmistakable, even to the most casual of 

 observers. 



XII.— DISEASES OF BEES. 



Fortunately for the bee-keeper, bees are less liable to diseases 

 than any other description of stock, there being only two kinds 

 that claim careful attention — namely, dysentery and "foul brood." 

 To those who have studied bees and noted well all their little 

 failings, this short category of diseases is not the limit. Two 

 others which are found in America are " pickled brood " and 

 " black brood," and in recent years some cases of the latter disease 

 have occurred in England. Bee-paralysis is another malady 

 sometimes found in this country, and in the years 1906 and 1907 a 

 disease which went by this name, but the symptoms of which 

 differed from those met with in actual bee-paralysis, swept almost 

 entirely over the Isle of Wight, causing grave losses to the industry 

 there. However, most bee-keepers will be called upon to deal 

 with only the two common diseases, namely, dysentery and " foul 

 brood," the latter of which is gaining ground in these Islands. 

 Only those who by their duties are brought into communication 

 with the outside world of bee-keepers have any idea as to the 

 extent to which this plague has increased lately. In one district 

 we are cognisant of, it was imported with a single colony of bees 

 which the owner refused to destroy ; now it has spread in all 



