204 DISEASES OF INSECTS. 
The maladies to which dees and s2/k-worms are subject 
are more interesting to us than those of, fives, on account 
of their utility as cultivated insects. One of the worst 
distempers which attacks the first of these animals is a 
kind of looseness or dysentery: this happens early in the 
year, when they are fed with too much honey without 
any portion of bee-bread, and sometimes destroys whole 
hives. Their excrements, instead of a yellowish red, 
then become black, and the odour they emit is insupport- 
able; the bees no longer observe their usual neatness, 
inducing them to leave the hive when they void their ex- 
crements, but they defile it, their cells, and each other. 
Several remedies have been prescribed for this disease. 
To prevent it, a syrup made by an equal mixture of 
good wine and honey is recommended; and as a cure, to 
place in the hive combs containing cells filled with bee- 
bread?. But one of the worst maladies to which these 
useful animals are subject, is that called by Schirach 
faux Couvain. It originates with the larve ; and is caused 
either by their being fed with unwholesome food, or when 
the queen, as sometimes happens, lays her eggs so that 
the head of the grub is not in a proper position for 
emerging from the cell when the period for its disclosure 
is arrived :—the consequence is, that in both cases it dies 
and becomes putrid, which sometimes produces a real 
pestilence in a hive. The remedy for this evil is to cut 
away the infected combs, and to make the bees undergo 
a fast of two days». The hive should be cleaned and 
fumigated, by burning under it aromatic plants. 
* Schirach Hist. &c. 54. Reaum. vy. 713. N. Dict. d? Hist. Nat.i. 42. 
> Ibid. and Schirach 56, 
