36 HISTORICAL NOTES ON BEE DISEASES. 
him to be certain. The origin and the means of its transmission, 
however, were not entirely clear. That the germs of the disease 
may be carried from apiary to apiary upon the clothing of the apiarist 
and in or upon the bodies of bees, that in the same apiary these 
germs may be borne by the winds from one hive to another, and that 
they may be liberated from the decomposing bodies of other insects 
and scattered to objects with which the bees come in contact, seemed 
to McLain to be probable. It appeared to him that foul brood 
attacked adult bees as well as brood, that live pollen is the medium 
by which the contagion is most commonly and most rapidly spread, 
and that the disease yields readily to a drug treatment. 
In discussing the idea that the clothing and hands of an individual 
going from one aplary to another might probably be a means by 
which disease germs are transmitted, he writes: 
That the disease germs may be carried upon the clothing and hands appears probable, 
from the fact that in one neighborhood the disease appeared in only two apiaries, the 
owners of which had spent some time working among diseased colonies at some distance 
from home, while other apiarists in that locality who had kept away from the con- 
tagion had no trouble from foul brood. 
In support of his supposition that, the wind might be considered 
as a medium by which the germs of the disease may be carried, he 
writes: 
That the contagion may sometimes be borne from hive to hive by the wind appears 
to be true, as it was observed in one of the apiaries which I treated for this disease 
during the past summer that of a large number of diseased colonies in the apiary, with 
the exception of two colonies, all were located to the northeast of the colony in which 
the disease first appeared. The prevailing wind had been from the southwest. 
The report covers the work done by McLain in one year on bee 
diseases. He was conducting at the same time some experiments 
relative to the control of the mating of the queen. Most of his con- 
clusions concerning diseases were drawn, apparently, from three 
experiments performed by an apiarist who reported his results to 
McLain. 
The following is a summary of his report pertaining to bee diseases: 
1. He made no pretense at a study of bee diseases bacteriologically. 
2. He included at least three distinct conditions in the disease of 
adult bees which he referred to as ‘‘quaking disease.” 
3. He probably included in the ‘‘quaking disease” the disorder 
which is now known to many bee keepers as ‘‘paralysis.”’ 
4. He recognized the virulence, wide distribution, and, conse- 
quently, the destructiveness of foul brood. 
5. He probably was not aware that at least two infectious diseases 
of bees were being referred to as foul brood. 
6. Since American foul brood has been the prevailing disease in 
the region in which his experiments were made, and since the descrip- 
