BEE MANUAL. 259 



and to mix with syrup as food for the bees was recommended, 

 and has in some cases proved to be efficient as a cure ; but the 

 successful application of this treatment was so uncertain, that 

 many very experienced bee-keepers in America still held to 

 the opinion that the only safe and effectual course to be followed- 

 was to stamp out the plague and prevent its ruinous spreading 

 by burning everything supposed to be infected — bees, combs, 

 larvse, and hives. New and very important discoveries have, 

 however, been made, and the bee-keeping world is now relieved 

 from much of the dread caused by the apprehension of this 

 disease, owing to the 



INVESTIGATIONS OF ME. FRANK CHESHIRE. 



This distinguished English scientist, in the month of July, 1884, 

 read a paper before the International Conference of Bee-keepers 

 at the International Health Exhibition at Kensington, giving 

 the results of his long-continued investigations into the nature 

 of this disease, " the means of its propagation, and the method 

 of its cure " — results which bid fair to solve all the difficulties 

 of the case, and to lay all apiculturists under a deep debt of 

 gratitude to the investigator. It would be out of place here 

 to give anything like a risumi of the paper referred to ; it has 

 been published at length in the Bee Journals ; but it is neces- 

 sary to state as shortly as possible the conclusions arrived at 

 by Mr. Cheshire. After mentioning the fact that " science has 

 recently shown that all putrefactive changes, fermentations, 

 and very many diseases are brought about entirely by minute 

 organisms, which are, in fact, rudimentary vegetables," and to 

 which the general name of Schizomycetes is given, divided into 

 four genera, micrococcus, bacterium, bacillus, and spirillum, he 

 proceeds to point out the chief characteristic differences between 

 bacilli and micrococci in the following words : — 



" Under certain conditions the bacilli produce spores, or seeds (Fig. 

 119), which the micrococci never do; while in addition bacilli, unlike 

 micrococci, are provided at their extremities with wondrously delicate 

 filaments, called flagella, with which they strike the fluid containing 

 them, and so swim much as a fish does by the use of its fins ; so that 

 shape and the power of locomotion sharply divide one from the other." 



It must be remembered that although the powerful micro- 

 scopes now used enable the observer to discern these peculiar- 



