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 larvee, 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 larve. 
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 bacillus 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 tc 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, anc 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 larve be 
removed by them from the cells, and all the new brood be 
