BEE MANUAL. 263 



to the bees, is only of use as a solvent for the salicylic acid, if 

 used for spraying ; and when mixed with it in the food, only 

 reduces its curative effect, and renders the treatment somewhat 

 dangerous. 



Mr. Cheshire's principle is, that as the disease originates with 

 the adult bee, and is conveyed by it to the larvse, so the fungi- 

 cide intended to cure it must be administered in food to the 

 adult bee, and be transmitted in the same way to the larvse. 

 On the suggestion, as he informs us, of Mr. Robert Sproule, he 

 tried experiments with phenol as a fungicide, and has come to 

 the conclusion that when used in the proper manner, which he 

 has taken great pains to arrive at, it is a thoroughly effective 

 cure for lacillus alvei. Phenol is generally known as " pure 

 carbolic acid," but care must be taken to obtain the really pure 

 article— absolute phenol, sold as Calvert's phenol No. 1, Mr. 

 Cheshire warns us to be cautious about this. " Carbolic acid 

 is an impure phenol, and is useless. It contains creosote and 

 creosols, and bees abhor it." 



Having obtained the pure article, the next point is to know 

 how to administer it. Mixed with syrup or honey, in the pro- 

 portion of one part in two hundred, it will be refused by the 

 bees altogether. In the proportion of 1 to 400 it might be 

 administered to a sound stock without any injurious conse- 

 quences ; but Mr. Cheshire found that " 1 to 500 dissipated 

 foul brood quickly, even while honey was coming in," and that 

 " 1 in 750 appeared enough when it was not being gathered." 



These, then, are established as the correct quantities under 

 the circumstances mentioned. If honey be coming in, it will 

 be useless to place the medicated syrup in a food bottle in 

 the hive, as the bees will not touch it ; but he recommends 

 to 



" Take out the brood combs, and to pour from a bottle having a drop- 

 ping-tube loosely placed in its neck the medicated syrup into those 

 cells immediately around and over the brood, and the bees will use a 

 curative quantity of phenol. The syrup is best poured in by holding 

 the comb at an inclination of ordinary writing, not by placing it on its 

 side." 



By pursuing this course of treatment for some time, the 

 adult bees should become all sound, the diseased larvse be 

 removed by them from the cells, and all the new brood be 



