.Ill BACTERIOLOGY OF BEE DI8EASE8, L5 



cause of death, naturally the plain would be selected which waj 

 Pound on the farm where the animals were sick and which was not 

 found on the farm where the animals remained well. This is 

 exactly the kind of reasoning used when we arc looking for the 

 bacteria which arc causing the diseases among bees, This neces 

 sitates, as you see, the study of all the bacteria which are present in 

 any apiary, whether diseased or uot, as well as those m diseased 

 apiaries. 



Ai the time we began the work on bee diseases, in June. L902, the 

 disorders which were causing the greatest trouble were known to 

 bee keepers as black brood, foul brood, pickle brood, and paralysis. 

 After the study of a large number of samples of brood affected by 

 disease which was being called black brood and the finding of 

 Bacillus alvei in all of them, it is very clear that this disease is 

 the sinic as that investigated by Cheyne in L885 and called by him 

 M foul brood;" he first described Bacillus alvei. " Black brood" was 

 a name given by Dr. William R. Howard, of Fort Worth. Tex., to a 

 disease which he thought existed in New York State, and he described 

 as its cause Bacillus milii. After a careful search in New'- York State 

 for a disease containing Bacillus milii we were unable to find it. and 

 there seems to he no around for the description of a new disease. 

 What has been called black brood by Doctor Howard is obviously the 

 type of foul brood which we now distinguish as European foul brood. 



In the decaying larvae and dried scales found in the cell- in the 

 disease which was receiving the name of foul brood there were -ecu 

 by the use of the microscope a very large number of the -pore- of bac- 

 teria, and in the larva? in the early stage of the disease there were 

 observed bacteria in the rod form. When these spores were planted 

 upon the media or -oil- which have been explained earlier in this 

 paper, they would not grow. It became necessary, then, to devise a 

 -oil in which the growth could be obtained. After a number of im 

 successful attempts, a medium or soil was made from healthy bee 

 larvae in which the -pore- would germinate and the bacteria would 

 grow. By a study of this species, which was found in the dead larvae 

 of this disease and which was not found in the healthy apiary, it was 

 evident that it was not Bacillus alvei, and. since Bacillus alvei i- not 

 present at all. we know that this disease is not the foul brood which 

 Cheyne had reported in his work in L885. Since it i- not this type »f 

 foul brood, what could it be? By carefully reviewing all the work 

 which had been done by others, the conclusion was inevitable that this 

 diseased condition had not been described properly from a bacterial 

 standpoint a- a disease separate and distinct from the foul brood of 

 Cheyne, but that the mi-take had been made for a long time of calling 

 two different and distinct diseases which affected the brood of '. 

 by one name. This condition was reported to the Jfew York State 



