450 DISEASES OF BEES. 



method, it has not proved effective in every ease, for, since 

 the bees and the queen may be contaminated in their or- 

 gans (798), the disease, after a time, may reappear. Every 

 means should be used to kill all the spores of the bacilli. 

 Mr. Cheshire has kept some of them in a glass tube (" Bees 

 and Beekeeping," page 560), and exposed them on several 

 occasions to a temperature below frost, and they were alive 

 after sixteen and a-half months. Mr. Jones reports having 

 kept foul-brood combs exposed a whole winter to a temper- 

 ature of 35° below zero, — in Canada, — without succeed- 

 ing in killing the spores. ("Gleanings inBee-Culture," 1884, 

 page 767.) 



792. We will now give the method of Hilbert, as prac- 

 ticed by Chas. F. Muth and described in his "Practical 

 Hints:" 



" In April, I discovered two colonies in my Apiary, affected 

 with the disease. 1 brimstoned the bees the same evening, 

 burned up the combs and frames, and disinfected the hives. 

 Another colony showed it in May. Feeling sorry to kill a 

 beautiful queen, besides a very strong colony of pure Italians, I 

 brushed them on ten frames of corab-foundatlon, into a clean hive, 

 and placed over them a jar with food, as I shall describe hereaf- 

 ter. The old combs and frames were burned up, and the hives 

 disinfected. This feeding was kept up until all the sheets of 

 comb-foundation were built out nicely and filled with brood and 

 honey. It was a beautiful colony of bees about four weeks after- 

 wards, full of healthy brood, and with combs as regular as can 

 only be made by the aid of comb-foundation. Four more colonies 

 were discovered infected, one after another. All went through 

 the same process, and every one is a healthy colony at present. 

 I was so convinced of the completeness of this cure, that I intro- 

 duced into one of these colonies my first Cyprian queen sent me 

 by friend Dadant. 



" All are doing finely now, and no more foul-brood. Should, 

 however, another one of my colonies show signs of the disease, 

 it would not be because it had caught it from its neighbor which 

 I had attempted to cure, but because the germ of foul-brood was 

 hidden somewhere in the hive, and of late had come in contact 

 with a larva. 



