272 
9UMMEB. 
REASONS FOR THE OPINION. 
For instance, I had all the bees of a good swarm 
leave the hive in March ; after flying a time, they 
united with another good stock, making double the 
usual number of bees at this season ; enough to keep 
the brood sufficiently warm at any time ; if other stocks 
with half or a quarter of the number could. By the 
middle of June, the bees were much reduced, and had 
not cast a swarm. It was examined, and the brood 
was found badly diseased. My best and most popu- 
lous stocks, in spring, are just as liable, and I might 
add more so, than smaller or weaker families. I have 
had two large swarms unite, and were hived together, 
that were diseased the next autumn. These cases 
prove strongly, if not conclusively, that animal heat is 
not the only requisite. The fact that when I had 
pruned out all affected comb from a diseased stock, and 
left honey in the top and outside pieces, and the bees 
constructed new for breeding, and the brood in such 
were invariably affected, though only a few at first, 
and increasing as the combs were extended ; led me 
to suppose that it was a contagious disease, and the 
virus was contained in the honey. Some of it had 
been left in these stocks, and very probably the bees 
had fed it to the brood. To test this principle still 
further, I drove all the bees from such diseased stocks, 
strained the honey, and fed it to several young healthy 
swarms soon after being hived. When examined a 
few weeks after, every one, without an exception, had 
caught the contagion. 
Here then is a clue to the cause of this disease 
