Foul Brood 141 



brood is once introduced into the apiary, it is disseminated by robbing, b\- 

 the careless exposure of infected honey, by changing combs from hive 

 to hive, or by extracting honey from infected combs, thus contaminating 

 the extractor and other combs that may be brought in contact with it. 



When foul brood is discovered in an apiary, what shall be done? In 

 the first place, don't "lose your head," as the saying is. Don't be in 

 such haste to be rid of the pest that a crop of honey is lost, and the work 

 of eradication imperfectly performed. Curative operations can be carried 

 on only during a successful honey-flow, when bees will not rob. If foul 

 brood is discovered after the honey season is over, treatment must be 

 postponed until the following year. 



The entrances of all weak colonies should be contracted, and any 

 colony too weak to make the proper defense, or so weak that it is not 

 likely to pass the winter, had better be destroyed at once. 



The spraying of the combs with acids, the fumigating of them 

 with formalin gas, the feeding of the bees with medicated honey, are 

 all of little avail. Weak colonies had better be united, but there must 

 be caution in doing the work, gradually bringing them together that 

 the bees may not be scattered into other hives until they are side by 

 side before the union is made. 



Finally, the main honey-flow comes on. With us this is the last 

 of May or fore part of June. Now is the time for treating the dis- 

 eased colonies. Any colony that is strong, and almost or nearly in 

 a condition to cast a swarm, may be treated as follows : Set the 

 colony just back of its old stand, and upon the stand place a hive 

 the frames of which are furnished either with full sheets of comb 

 foundation or with starters of the same. Remove the combs from the 

 old hive and shake off most of the bees in front of the new hive. 

 Nothing more need be done to the colony in the new hive. Ere it 

 can rear brood it will have consumed any infected honey that the bees 

 may have brought with them. Don't use drawn combs instead of 

 starters or foundation, because the bees might §tore some of the in- 

 fected honey in the comb, where it might remain until brood was 

 being reared, when, if this honey should be fed to the brood, the dis- 

 ease would be again started. I have never found it necessary to give 

 the bees a second set of frames and a second shaking, as is practiced 

 by some. Neither have I found it necessary to boil or otherwise dis- 

 infect the hives. The old hive, with the combs of brood, is placed upon 

 a new stand. Sometimes two sets of combs from which the bees have 

 been shaken are united. In ten days a young queen or a ripe queen- 

 cell may be given the old colony. In twenty-one days from the time 

 the bees were shaken off, just as all of the healthy brood has hatched, 

 and the young queen is beginning to lay, the colony may be again 



