1909.] Disease of Bees in the Isle of Wight. 821 



The impossibility of determining, either by clinical 

 observation or by dissection, whether any individual is suffer- 

 ing from the disease renders investigation peculiarly difficult. 

 From the clinical point of view the most characteristic 

 features are : a more or less sudden and rapid mortality 

 amongst the bees, disinclination to work, some distention 

 of the abdomen, frequently dislocation of the wings, and 

 later inability to fly. These symptoms are unaccompanied 

 by any disease of the brood or combs. The disease therefore 

 can only be recognised by observing the general condition 

 of the stock, since the individual bees, apart from their con- 

 nection with the diseased stock, do not exhibit any constant 

 and characteristic symptoms which are not occasionally to 

 be met with in other conditions. 



Anatomically the majority of diseased bees show great 

 distention of the colon, and a fragile condition of the chyle 

 stomach. In many obtained from diseased stocks, and 

 apparently suffering from the disease, distention of the colon 

 is absent. All the organs, except those just mentioned, are 

 normal. Healthy bees confined to their hives for a few days 

 very closely resemble diseased bees in regard to the condition 

 of their intestinal canals. It is impossible, therefore, both 

 from the clinical and anatomical points of view, to diagnose 

 whether any given bee is suffering from the disease or not* 



Histologically the chyle stomach appears to be the only 

 organ affected, and bacteriologically plague-like bacilli were 

 frequently encountered in it, in some cases apparently within 

 the epithelial cells. These bacilli were not found either in 

 the brood of diseased hives or in the chyle stomachs of 

 healthy bees. For these reasons I am inclined to regard these 

 organisms as the cause of the disease. I am, however, well 

 aware that I have not fully established their relationship to 

 the disease, since I have not been able to demonstrate them 

 in every case either microscopically or by culture, or to find, 

 except in very advanced cases, any very definite lesions 

 constantly associated with their presence. I feel that my 

 inability to discover any means of cultivating the organism 

 with certainty even from chyle stomachs, in which it was 

 present in abundance as shown by microscopical prepara- 

 tions, constitutes the most serious difficulty in establishing 



