98 
DR. MILLER'S 
European foulbrood? If so, state time to do it. Clover flow from 
June 20 to July 20. 
A. A cure would be likely to follow. Better not wait until 
the last half of the flow, as the case would be getting worse all 
the time, but act at the beginning of the flow. But if only two 
or three diseased cells are present, and the queen is good, all you 
need to do is to cage her in the hive for ten days. 
Q. If caging a queen for a certain length of time, in case of 
European foulbrood, stops the disease, should the disease not 
come to an end in fall, as all brood-rearing stops entirely for 
several months? 
If an apiary has foulbrood one season, will it be free from it 
next year? There are no young diseased larvae from which the 
nurse bees can suck the juice and feed it to healthy ones the 
next spring. 
A. The shortest answer to your question would be to say I 
don t know. And that s the truth. I don't know why caging a 
queen should stop the disease. If caging a queen stops the dis- 
ease, I don’t know why the winter’s rest from brood-rearing does 
not stop it. But here is the important fact that I do know. I 
know that in a large number of cases cessation of brood-rearing 
for a week or so has stopped the disease. Note that I don’t say 
in all cases, but in the large majority of cases. I don’t know that 
in the great majority of cases the disease is conveyed from one 
cell to another by the nurse-bees sucking the juices of recently- 
diseased larvae, but it is a pretty satisfactory theory until a bet- 
ter theory is advanced. 
I think, however, that no one has advanced the theory that 
the disease is in all cases conveyed by means of larvae that have 
been dead only a short time. It may in some cases be conveyed 
through spores in dried-up scales of larvae that have been dead a 
long time. But I suppose these last cases are exceptional. Now, 
although I don’t know all about it, if you will allow me to 
theorize, I’ll tell you what I think is possible in the case you 
mention. In early spring or winter, when the brood-rearing be- 
gins, there are no diseased larvae present. But there are dried 
scales containing spores. One would expect that the disease 
would begin rather slowly from these. And observation con- 
firms that supposition. In a colony which has not been badly 
diseased in the previous year, the first examination in the follow- 
ing spring shows very little disease — possibly none. Subsequent 
examinations will show it on the increase, although if I am not 
mistaken there are some cases in which a colony will remain 
