598 
tance from all other colonies, and moder- 
ate feeding with medicated syrup or 
honey should be continued for a few days 
thereafter. 
The combs of diseased colonies which 
contain brood may be assembled over a 
single one of these colonies, or, if the 
amount of brood be too great for one 
colony to care for, over several such dis- 
eased colonies, until the young bees have 
emerged. <All of the honey is then to be 
extracted. While it is wholesome as food, 
it should not be offered for sale, lest some 
of it be used in feeding bees or be in- 
advertently exposed where foraging bees 
might find it and carry to their hives the 
germs of this disease, harmless to other 
creatures but so fatal to bee life. A good 
use for this honey is to employ it in mak- 
ing vinegar. 
If the honey containing the germs is 
to be used for feeding bees, it is to be 
diluted with half its own quantity, by 
measure, of water and kept at the boiling 
point for three hours in a water bath—a 
vessel within another containing water. 
The combs frcm which the honey has 
been extracted, as well as all of the 
pieces built by the bees during their four 
days’ confinement, may be melted into 
wax, by thorough boiling in soft water. 
This wax should be kept liquid for 48 
hours or longer, to allow all impurities 
to settle. These will include the foul 
brood spores, which may then be removed 
with the impure wax by scraping or cut- 
ting away the bottom of the cake. These 
scrapings should be burned. The same 
disposition had better be made of the 
frames from which the combs containing 
germs were removed. 
In all of this work the utmost care 
should be exercised to avoid the dripping 
of honey about the apiary or the exposure 
of implements, receptacles, or combs 
smeared with or containing honey from 
the diseased colonies. The old hive and 
all utensils used about the diseased col- 
ony should be disinfected by washing in 
a solution of corrosive sublimate. If it 
be found that the diseased colonies are 
weak in numbers and seem, therefore, 
individually hardly worth saving, several 
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PRACTICAL HORTICULTURE 
colonies may be smoked and shaken to- 
gether into the same box to make a single 
strong colony, the best queen of the lot 
having been selected and caged in the 
box in such a way that the workers can 
release her within a few houis by eating 
through candy. 
Bee Paralysis 
Among other diseases of a bacterial 
nature paralysis 18 most noticeable, al- 
though not to be dreaded as foul brood. 
It affects the adult bees only, producing 
a paralyzed condition of their members 
and a swelling up of their bodies. The 
source from which the bees obtain the 
original infection is unknown, but, once 
in the apiary, it is spread mainly by the 
entrance of affected workers into healthy 
colonies, and probably also by the visits 
which bees from healthy colonies make to 
the diseased ones, the latter often being 
so weakened in numbers as to be unable 
to protect their stores from healthy bees 
out on robbing expeditions. 
Ordinary paralysis may generally be 
cured by strewing powdered sulphur over 
the combs, bees, and along the top bars 
of the frames, the precaution first having 
been taken of removing all unsealed 
brood. This brood would be killed by the 
application of sulphur, but as there is no 
danger whatever of spreading the disease 
by the transfer of brood or honey from 
one hive to another, provided absolutely 
every one of the adult bees has first been 
shaken or brushed from the combs, the 
latter may be given to healthy colonies 
which need strengthening. 
Another simple plan for getting rid of 
the disease and yet utilizing the available 
strength of the affected colonies is to close 
their hives at night and move them a 
mile or more, locating them, if possible, 
outside of the range of other bees. As 
the brood in these colonies remains 
healthy all that is sealed or even well 
advanced in the larval stage may have 
the bees shaken from it and be distributed 
among the remaining colonies of the 
apiary. The bees of the diseased col- 
onies thus become rapidly reduced in num- 
bers, and several of the colonies them- 
selves may soon be combined, the best 
