448 



DISEASES OF BEES. 



fill them with honey, covering up this dried foul-brood matter 

 at the bottom. 



Sometimes the larvae do not die until sealed over. We have 

 been told that such may be easily detected by a sunken cap- 

 ping perforated by a " pin-hole ". This is by no means invariably 

 the case. Such larvae will often dry up entirely, without the 

 cap being perforated or perceptibly sunken, although it usually 

 becomes darker in color than those covering healthy larvae. 



The most fatal misapprehension has been in regard to the smell 

 of the disease. In its first stages there is no perceptible smell, 

 and it is not until the disease has made a considerable progress 



mm 





Fig 186. (Fiom Cowao.) 

 APPEARANCE OF FOUL-BROODY COMBS. 



that any unusual smell would be noticed by most persons. In 

 the last stages, when sometimes half or more of the cells in the 

 hive are filled with rotten brood, the odor becomes suflSciently 

 pronounced, but the nose is not to be relied on to decide whether 

 a colony has foul brood or not. Long before it can be detected 

 by the sense of smell, the colony is in a condition to communi- 

 cate the disease to others. 



The eye alone can be depended on, and it must be a sharp and 

 trained eye too, if any headway is to be made in curing the 

 disease. (J. A. Green, in " Gleanings, " January 1887.1 



790. " Foul-brood can be detected in the Spring, either 

 through an unusual spreading of the brood, resulting from an 



