Von. VIII Washington, D. C., March 12, 1917 No. 11 
SPORE-FORMING BACTERIA OF THE APIARY 
By Arthur H. McCray, 
Apicultural Assistant , Bureau of Entomology, United States 
Department of Agriculture 
PART I.—DESCRIPTION AND COMPARISON OF SPECIES 
INTRODUCTION 
In a paper by Lambotte in 1902 (7) 1 the statement is made that “foul- 
brood” of bees can be produced by feeding the insects cultures of Bacillus 
mesentericus vulgatus grown upon a special medium prepared from the 
juices of bee larvae. In explanation it is stated further that, by the 
use of this special medium, B . alvei arises as a special variety of B. 
mesentericus vulgatus and produces, on feeding, the tissue changes char¬ 
acteristic of the disease. Lambotte does not describe the disease ade¬ 
quately to make it possible to determine whether he worked v£th Ameri¬ 
can foulbrood or European foulbrood, and at the time his paper appeared 
these two diseases were not differentiated clearly. This comparison of 
the two organisms disagreed so materially from the observations of the 
author that feeding experiments with B. mesentericus vulgatus were be¬ 
gun in 1911. At the outset it was observed that of the organisms of the 
B . vulgatus group, which are isolated in the course of the examination 
of specimens of bee comb and brood sent to the Bureau of Entomology 
for diagnosis, it was not possible to identify all as one species. Conse¬ 
quently, it was realized that the first task would be the identification 
of the various organisms of this group and a comparison of them, for pur¬ 
poses of easy identification, with the other known spore-forming bacteria 
of the apiary: B. alvei , B. larvae , and B. orpheus. Only B. vulgatus , B. 
mesentericus , and B. orpheus will be described in detail. For descriptions 
of B. alvei and B. larvae the reader is referred to White (16). The illus¬ 
trations and summary at the end of the paper should aid in differenti¬ 
ating the five known spore-forming bacteria of the apiary. The results 
of the feeding experiments are given in Part II of this paper. 
1 Reference is made by number to “literature cited,” p. 419-420. 
Journal of Agricultural Research, 
Washington, D. C. 
hk 
(399) 
Vol. VIII, No. 11 
Mar. 12, 1917 
Key No. K—51 
