2 BULLETIN 431, U. S. DEPARTMENT OE AGRICULTURE. 



Until recently no laboratory study has been made of this disease. 

 Circular No. 169, Bureau of Entomology, is a preliminary report on 

 recent studies made by the writer. The present bulletin represents 

 the results obtained from a continuation of these studies. In it are 

 included only such results as it is believed can be applied by the 

 beekeeper directly to his needs or as will be otherwise of particular 

 interest to him. 



HISTORICAL ACCOUNT. 



There are a number of references in beekeeping literature to a dis- 

 order of the brood of bees which had been recognized by the presence 

 of dead brood that was different from that dead of "foulbrood." 

 It will be profitable to cite here a few of these articles: 



Langstroth (1857) writes as follows: 



There are two kinds of foul-brood, one of which the Germans call the dry and the 

 other the moist or foetid. The dry appears to be only partial in its effects and not 

 contagious, the brood simply dying and drying up in certain parts of the combs. The 

 moist differs from the dry in this that the brood dies and speedily rots and softens, 

 diffusing a noisome stench through the hive. 



In this statement it will be seen that beekeepers had already 

 recognized differences in the brood diseases which caused Langstroth 

 to write that there were two kinds of ' ' foulbrood." The kind referred 

 to as "dry" foulbrood might easily have been sacbrood. 



Doolittle (1881), following a description of "foulbrood," writes: 



We have been thus particular in describing the disease [foulbrood] so none can 

 mistake it; and also because there is another disease similar, called foul brood, which 

 is not foul brood. With this last-named, the caps to the cells have very much the 

 same appearance as in the genuine, but the dead larva is of a grayish color, and instead 

 of being stretched out at full length in the cell, it is drawn up in a more compact shape. 

 After a time it so dries up that the bees remove it, and no harm seems to arise from it, 

 only as there are a few larvse that die here and there through the combs at different 

 periods; sometimes never to appear again, and sometimes appearing with the next 

 season; * * *. 



Doolittle, therefore, as early as 1881, had also observed a brood 

 disease which he says is similar to foulbrood and called foulbrood, but 

 which is different from the genuine foulbrood. From his description 

 one can readily believe that the disease which he says was not foul- 

 brood was sacbrood. 



Jones (1883), of Beeton, Ontario, Canada, writes the following: 



There is also another disease of the larvse which is sometimes found both in Europe 

 and America, which is more like foul brood than any of the above [chilled, starved, 

 or neglected, brood] and which frequently deceives those who we might claim should 

 be good judges, but which, however, is not the genuine article. It is a dying of the 

 brood both before and after it has been capped over. The appearance of this and the 

 genuine is much the same during the earlier stages of their existence, but the former 

 is usually removed by the bees and no further trouble ensues. 



