THE AUSTRALIAN BEEKEEPERS’ JOURNAL. 
41 
ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTIONS. 
Management of Bees in Boxes. 
( Continued from Page 20.) 
It is quite possible to cure foul brood even in 
a box hive by adopting Mr. Cheshire’s plan of 
pouring medicated syrup over the combs. If 
any one would try it, the following plan may 
be recommended. Prepare some syrup made 
rather thin, one pound of sugar to the pint of 
water would do, put into each pint of such 
syrup 25 grains of pure phenol (pure carbolic 
acid in colourless crystals ) and shake up 
thoroughly. Now smoke the bees slightly, 
turn up the box, and hold it so that the combs 
are inclined a little. If the medicated syrup 
is poured gently on the sides of the brood 
combs thus exposed, it will run slowly over 
the cells and much will drip into them, the 
rest will trickle among the bees, and be 
taken and stored by them for feeding the 
larvse. Of course, some care will be necessary 
to avoid smothering a lot of bees, but if the 
hive is properly inclined and the syrup 
allowed to trickle down towards the top of the 
combs, over their whole breadth, it will be easy 
to dispose of a wineglass full on each of the 
combs tenanted by brood, without drowning 
or smothering a single bee. The nurse bees 
use this food for the young grubs, and it soon 
kills all disease germs, healthy bees are 
hatched, and the foul decayed brood becoming 
disinfected, and in a great measure deodorised, 
is soon cleared away by the bees, which seem 
to have new life instilled into them as healthy 
brood increases. 
It will be necessary to repeat this operation 
several times, at intervals of a few days ; in 
three weeks the stocks should regain some- 
thing of their proper life and vigour. Some 
of the Continental beekeepers fumigate the 
diseased hives with the smoke of dried thyme, 
and it is stated that they have very good 
success by this method. ” In this way, 
Thymol, the essential principle of the thyme, 
does the same work in the shape of vapour, 
and no doubt Thymol would do as well as 
phenol, but the latter is the cheapest and most 
easily obtainable. Nevertheless, thyme fumi- 
gation is an easy process, and one Victorian 
apiarist assures me he has succeeded well 
with it. 
Foul brood is a very contagious disease, 
and spreads from stock to stock very readily j 
perhaps by robber bees carrying the germs 
from one hive to another, or, as Mr. Cheshire 
suggests, bees from the infected hive carrying 
the disease germs sticking to the minute hairs 
of their feelers (antennae) from flower to 
flower, most probably leave some behind, 
which are accidentally picked up by bees from 
other hives, and so the disease spreads. It is 
very essential then, to keep bees from healthy 
hives away from combs, honey, or boxes of 
diseased stocks, and the following precautions 
should always be taken : — 
After handling a diseased stock, or even its 
hive, touch no other stock till your hands are 
well washed. If you use gloves, use a special 
pair for diseased hives, and never by any 
chance use them in handling healthy ones, 
unless you disinfect them first by diluted 
carbolic acid. Never by any chance leave 
ever so small a piece of comb from a foul 
brood stock so that other bees can get at it. 
Everything that has belonged to a foul broody 
hive should be disinfected or destroyed 
directly the bees have been moved out. 
Before treating a stock with syrup, it would 
be well to move it away from other stocks if 
many bees are flying, as the odour of an 
upturned hive is almost sure to attract bees 
from neighbouring hives. 
The signs of returning vigour as the disease 
gets checked, are, greater activity of the bees 
generally, healthy young bees appearing out- 
side on warm days, and if the brood combs can 
be seen, it will be found that all the young 
grubs look a bright pearly white, and not the 
pale stone-colour white presented when they 
are getting diseased — all sealed cells have 
their covers standing well up above the surface 
of the combs, and the hive itself no longer 
giving off the faint sickly odour of rotting 
brood. This disease is even now much dreaded 
by apiarists, and no wonder, for before the 
modern methods of treatment were discovered, 
it was no uncommon thing to hear of 20, 50 
or 100 stocks having been lost in one year. 
Dr. Dzierzon, in Germany, once lost 500 
stocks by this disease, which he was powerless 
to arrest. But it may now be considered a 
controllable disease, but one that should be 
always watched for, especially when taking 
new stocks into your apiary, and promptly 
dealt with immediately the first signs appear. 
We will now return to consider what had 
best be done in such a case as 'the first hive 
examined, and where the bees were found to 
be queenless. It has already been stated that 
a new queen should be introduced or the bees 
united to some thriving stock. The course to 
be followed must depend uponjwhat resources 
the beekeeper has at his command. If he have 
a hive preparing for swarming, he would 
perhaps be able to cut out a mature queen 
cell and insert it into a comb of the queenless 
stock, or he may have a spare queen, or a weak 
stock with a laying queen. If he has a spare 
queen (one that has been laying) he can easily 
introduce it, but without some precautions 
