456 



DISEASES OF BEES. 



capable of battling against any disease, whether contagious' 

 or not. 



800. Foul-brood is transmitted from one hive to another 

 ■ — like Asiatic cholera among men, — by different means. 

 Robbing (664) is probably one of the main helps to con- 

 tamination, as the robber bees may take the bacillus home, 

 among their hair, unawares. Working bees may even gather 

 the scourge from some sweet-scented blossom contaminated 

 by previous visitors. The transportation, or shipping, of 

 bees, from one part of the country to another, is often a 

 mean of spreading the disease, and some of our State legis- 

 latures have made very stringent laws on the subject. 



Contagious diseases were once the scourge of the land. 

 Who has not heard of the plague, the dread disease of the 

 dark ages ? According to Chambers' Encyclopedia, the 

 plague of 1665 destroyed seventy thousand people, in Lon- 

 don alone. Earlier still, in 1348, according to Sismondi, 

 the plague destroyed three-fifths of the entire population of 

 Europe, extending even up into Iceland. It was during 

 that terrible scourge that the city of Florence lost over one 

 hundred thousand people. If those dreaded diseases are 

 now but little feared, we owe it to seientific discoveries. 

 The microscope has shown that nearly all contagious dis- 

 eases, which men or animals are subject to, are caused by 

 Hving organisms, and medical science now teaches how they 

 may be avoided by inoculation, or other means. More dis- 

 coveries are daily made, and we can hope that the day is 

 not far, when the advancement of science will have put an 

 end to all these ills, and the bacillus alvei will be a thing 

 of the past. 



801. Aside from foul-brood, accidents may cause the 

 brood to die, and even to rot in the cells, without special 

 damage to the bees. Sudden and cold weather, in a promis- 

 ing Spring, when the bees have been spreading their brood, 

 and are compelled to leave a part of it uncovered ; the ne- 



