BEE MANUAL. WAST 
wholesome as food. The ventilation of hives, both in summer 
and winter, should receive close attention. Owing to the 
disease usually appearing in the northern part of New Zealand 
about the time when peach trees commence to blossom, it has 
sometimes been wrongly attributed to the honey gathered from 
that source. There is, however, reason to believe that it is 
sometimes caused by the honey gathered from the wharangi 
shrub, which blossoms about the same time, and which will be 
found more particularly mentioned in Chapter XVIII. 
The best preventive measure that can be taken is to provide 
the bees with clean, warm, tight, well-ventilated hives, and the 
surest cure is a spell of warm, genial weather. 
BACILLUS ALVEI (FOUL BROOD). 
This disease is the most fatal to bees, and if prompt action 
is not taken to stamp it out on its first appearance it may very 
rapidly lead to the loss of the whole apiary. The disease 
appears to have taken a pretty firm hold in a few districts in 
both Australia and New Zealand, and the difficulty of getting 
rid of it in these places is increased by the carelessness and 
wilfulness of box-hive bee-keepers, who, in the utter disregard 
of the advice given them by more careful men, will persist in 
leaving the old boxes with their combs lying about in which 
diseased colonies have died for other bees to enter, and occa- 
sionally hiving stray swarms in them, only to propagate the 
disease and finally perish as the others have done before them. 
A gentleman who went to much trouble to assist some box-hive 
bee-keepers in his neighbourhood to get rid of the disease, and 
supplied them with a remedy free of cost, wrote me some short 
time since, that as they would not follow on with the work he 
had commenced, he had given the whole thing up in disgust, 
and that he had no hopes of the district ever being clear of the 
disease while such men remained in it. Fortunately, I have 
had no experience of the disease beyond inspecting pieces of 
diseased combs that have been sent to me. 
SYMPTOMS OF BACILLUS ALVEI. 
Dr. Dzierzon, who once lost 500 colonies by it, describes the 
symptoms as follows :— 
“¢ An infallible symptom of the presence of foul brood (bacillus alvet) 
is the discovery of dead, dried-up, shrivelled larve or nymphs in 
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