Bee-keeping in Victoria. 87 



perish. Thy cause, as already indicated, is the consumption of watery 

 honey during cold weather. Honey may be too thin for winter food, 

 because it was gathered so late in the season that the bees were not able 

 to evaporate it to its proper density on account of low temperature and 

 humidity of the atmosphere, or it may have absorbed water from the 

 air because it was not sealed and not covered by the cluster of bees. 



With the approach of warm weather, colonies suffering from this 

 type of d.ysenterj' will recover, provided sufficient bees are left. As a 

 preventive, I would recommend removing all surplus combs and boxes 

 from the hives at the approach of cold weather, and confining the bees 

 to just the number of combs they can cover. If this is done the bees 

 will be prevented from storing outside the cluster honey which they 

 may gather on odd fine days, also the loss by radiation of the heat 

 generated by the bees will be reduced to a minimum, thus economizing 

 in the consumption of stores and avoiding an excessive accumulation 

 of waste matter in the bodies of the bees. 



Infectious Dysentery. 



This is a disease which has caused enormous losses of bees in Great 

 Britain and Germany. Dr. Zander, of Erlangen, Bavaria, first drew 

 attention to it at a meeting of German bee-keepers held at Weissenfels 

 in August 1909. The d iseasejs a malignant type of dysentery, caused 

 by the invasion of the digestive tract of the bee by an animal parasite 

 of oval shape, \vhich multiplies with great rapidity, and by the destruc- 

 tion of the cell wall of tlie_chyle stomach causes the death of the bee 

 Dr. Zander discovered this organism during 1907 in the intestines of 

 bees suffering from malignant dysentery, and named it Nosema apis. 

 This parasite, when in the spore (dormant) stage, is oval in shape, and 

 measures about 1-200 mm. in length by 1-500 mm. in breadth (Figs. 

 1, 2, 3, 4). ^Infection is spread by means of the spores voided with the 

 excreta of diseased bees coming into contact with the bees' food or 

 drinking water. , The visible symptoms are described by Dr. Zander 

 as follows: — " Sudden mortality of large numbers of bees within or 

 outside the hive. The bees become restless, separate from the cluster, 

 fall off the combs, crawl excitedly out at the entrance, and, unable to 

 fly, collect on blades of grass and other objects, and sooner or later die, 

 the abdomen being more or less inflated. 



In May, 1912, the British Board of Agriculture published a report 

 on the bee mortality, known in Great Britain as the Isle of AVight Bee 

 Disease, giving the results of the investigations of Dr. Graham-Smith, 

 H. B. Fantham, Annie Porter, G. W. Bullamore, and Dr. W. Maiden 

 In this report the name of microsporidiosis is given to the Isle of "Wight 

 Disease and Nosema apis as its cause. In regard to symptoms, the 

 authors state— Inability of some of the diseased bees to fly, the presence 

 of numerous bees crawling on the ground in front of the hives, and the 

 gradual dwindling of stocks are common, but many other symptoms 

 have been recorded, and no one symptom is characteristic of the dis- 

 ease. jThe only essential feature is the death of large numbers of bees, 

 and often of the whole stock, especially during wet and cold periods of 

 the year or during the winter months. 



