213 
yellow ; secondaries more broadly edged with the same, the in- 
nermost nearly wholly dark olive-yellow ; throat dull cinnamon, 
the feathers with paler shaft stripes, slightly washed with yel- 
low-olive in lower middle ; chest and breast dingy-smoke-gray, 
somewhat washed with olive, gradually passing into dark olive- 
yellow on belly ; under wing coverts, axillars, under tail coverts 
and a small patch in lower middle belly dilute rufous-cinnamon. 
The general pattern thus resembles that of the adult male, 
though the colors themselves are very different. Our two skins 
afford the following measurements (in mm.) : — 
No. Sex. Wing. Tail. Tarsus. Culmen. 
7i 
10995 ( O ad. ) 80 44 22 11 
10987 ( O ad. ) 73.5 41 21 10 
WORK OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ON 
BEE DISEASES. 
Washington, D. C, December 6, 1910. 
The honey bee annually produces a crop of honey valued 
at at least $20,000,000, and there are vast opportunities for 
increasing this output. The most serious handicap to bee- 
keeping in the United States is the fact that there are con- 
tagious diseases which attack the brood of the honey bee. 
There are now recognized two such diseases, known as Amer- 
ican foul brood and European foul brood. From data recently 
obtained by the United States Department of Agriculture, it 
is known that American foul brood exists in 282 counties in 
thirty-seven States, and European foul brood in 160 counties 
in twenty-four States, and it is estimated conservatively that 
these diseases are causing a loss to the beekeepers of the 
United States of at least $1,000,000 annually. This estimate 
is based on the probable value of the colonies which die, and 
the approximate loss of crop due to the weakened condition 
of disease colonies. The State in which the diseases are most 
prevalent are California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kan- 
sas, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Vork, 
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin, and it is unfor- 
tunate that these are the States in which honey production 
is most profitable, making the future outlook of the bee- 
keeping industry so much the worse unless active measures 
are taken to control the diseases. Furthermore, the distri- 
bution of these diseases is by no means fully known, and thev 
are constantly spreading. 
The cause of American foul brood has been found by the 
Department to be a specific bacterium, and enough is known 
of the cause and nature of European foul brood, which is also 
