DISEASES OF BEES. 
257 
tain parts of the combs. In the moist, the brood, instead 
of drying up, decays, and produces a noisome stench, 
which may be perceived at some distance from the 
hive.* 
In the Spring or Summer, when the weather is fine 
and pasturage abounds, the following cure for foul-brood 
is recommended by a German Apiarian : — “ Drive out 
the bees into any clean hive, and shut them up in a dark 
place without food for twenty-four hours; prepare for 
them a clean hive, properly fitted up with comb from 
healthy colonies, transfer the bees into it, and confine 
them two days longer, feeding them with pure honey.” 
My readers are indebted to Mr. Samuel Wagner for 
a translation of Dzierzon’s mode of treating foul-brood : 
“ I admit that I can furnish no prescriptions by which a 
diseased colony may be forthwith cured. Nay, I consider 
it highly improbable that a colony, in which the disease 
has made marked progress, can be cured by any medica- 
ments. The removal of the putrid and infectious matter, 
already so abundant in the cells, must at least be simul- 
taneously effected — and this seems to be altogether 
impracticable. Nevertheless, there would be much gained 
if we could neutralize or destroy the virus in the bees 
themselves, and also render the infected honey harmless, 
A bee-keeping friend recently informed me that, if such 
honey be somewhat diluted with water, and then well 
boiled and skimmed, it maybe safely used in feeding bees. 
Suspected honey should invariably be boiled and skimmed 
before it is fed to bees. For the hive itself, chloride of 
lime might prove an efficient disinfectant. I simply let 
the hives, which contained diseased colonies, stand exposed 
* As Aristotle (History of Animals, Book IX., Chap. 40' speaks of a disease 
which is accompanied by a disgusting smell of the hive, there is reason to believe 
that foul-brood was common more than twe thousand years ago. 
