RELATION OF ETIOLOGY OF BEE DISEASES TO TREATMENT. 39 
cause the disease. Honey extractors, honey tanks, and wax ex- 
tractors which have been used in infected apiaries are also a fruitful 
source of infection. Therefore if you are to keep the disease-pro- 
ducing bacteria out of your apiary, and thereby keep out disease, 
you must not feed honey unless you are positive that it did not come 
from an infected apiary or that it has been thoroughly boiled. 
Neither must you use old combs unless you are positive that they 
have not been in an infected apiary. Use no bee supplies from an in- 
fected apiary unless they are thoroughly disinfected. 
These things being true of the infectious disease American foul 
brood, of which we know the cause, until the cause of any other in- 
fectious disease can be determined we can do no better than to suggest 
the use of the same principles in the treatment of such a disease as 
must be used in the successful treatment of American foul brood. 
CURATIVE TREATMENT. 
In the curative treatment, considering the colony as a unit, use is 
made of two widely different principles — the removal of the disease- 
producing material, thereby removing the germs, and the use of drugs. 
In separating the disease-producing germs from the colony, all the 
combs are removed. This removes the principal sources from which 
the brood is infected — foul-brood larvae and honey. It is always 
safer to allow the bees to go into a new hive or a hive which has been 
thoroughly disinfected. The greatest care should be exercised in 
protecting all infectious material which has been removed, that it may 
not be robbed by the bees. 
The principle involved in the treatment by drugs is that of an anti- 
septic. The theory is that a small amount of some drug — like beta 
naphthol, salicylic acid, carbolic acid, eucalyptus, formic acid, etc. — is 
sufficient, when taken with the larval food, to inhibit the growth of 
the pathogenic bacteria. 
Having thus in a general way considered the subject of the etiology 
of disease and the treatment in accordance with such knowledge, let 
us consider the different diseases separately. 
AMERICAN FOUL BROOD. 
That Bacillus laroce is the cause of American foul brood has been 
demonstrated conclusively. It is a species of bacteria which when 
it is introduced into the healthy larvae multiplies rapidly and causes 
the death of a large amount of the brood. When the larva dies the body 
decomposes and the remains dry down to a tongue-like scale on the 
lower side wall of the cell. In this scale are millions of spores which 
are able to produce disease in other larvae should they be fed to them. 
