572 
BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 
Fig. 123. This strange organism was found in millions 
in the blood of a queen sent me, with a statement 
that, although not old, she was useless, as she scarcely 
laid at all. These organisms clearly multiply by fissu- 
ration, and carry a thick envelope, while within they 
have darker cross markings, exceedingly difficult to 
define. 
A distinction — as stated at page 525 — should be 
drawn between an overloading of the bowel with 
pollen residues, due to protracted cold in winter, and 
a condition of distension resulting from the presence 
and multiplication of fermentative germs. At F, Fig. 
123, is represented an organism found in multitudes 
in the fluids of dysenteric, or, rather, diarrhoetic, bees, 
the bodies of which were tremendously swollen. The 
organism, under cultivation in a peptone and sugar 
medium, showed itself to be one of the phycomycetes, 
known by the produced mycelium* and its manner 
of fructification. The question is too technical to be 
followed here in extenso^ especially as at present 
further investigation is necessary. Other dysenteric 
bees have contained a true torula (as at G), while 
their uncapped honey had thinned by alcoholic fermen- 
tation, and was frothing out with the underlying 
pollen from the mouths of the cells. 
The catalogue of germs observed in bees is by no 
means exhausted, and I have now under experiment 
one which has recently presented itself in the apiary 
of the Rev. G. Raynor, which seems to be only 
second to alvei in destructiveness, and respecting 
* See Sachs’ “Text-book of Botany,” Second Edition, page 266. 
