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  AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL.

  EDITED AND PUBLISHED BY SAMUEL WAGNER, WASHINGTON, D. C.

  AT TWO DOLLARS PER ANNUM, PAYABLE IN ADVANCE.

  VOL. VI.      NOVEMBER, 1870.      No. 5.


  [For the American Bee Journal.]




Cure of Foulbrood.


Mr. EDITOR:--I promised, (vol. V., page 187,) to report how my
refrigerator wintered its colony. The frames were covered with a piece
of old carpeting, and the whole space outside the inner hive packed with
straw and shavings. This spring it was in splendid condition, and it was
found necessary to remove brood and cut out queen cells as early as the
20th of May; and, for this locality, the surplus would have been large,
if I had not been obliged to break up the colony on account of
_foulbrood_.

You can imagine my disappointment when my apiarian friend, Mr. Sweet of
West Mansfield, pointed out to me this loathsome disease in my choicest
Italian colony, early in June, when up to that time I had supposed that
everything was prosperous with my twelve colonies. After a thorough
examination I found six hives more or less affected, and according to
high authority, should be condemned to death. The other six appeared
free from disease at this time, although three more subsequently became
diseased.

This is my second summer of bee-keeping, and all the duties pertaining
to an apiary were entered into with the enthusiasm, and shall I confess
it, the ignorance and carelessness of a novice. Yes, ignorance and
culpable carelessness, for in gathering empty combs from various
quarters, the disease was introduced and spread among my pets. One hive,
in particular, of empty comb had the peculiar odor, perforated cells,
and brown viscid fluid, with which I have since become so familiar this
summer; and it seems unaccountable to me, how any person with the Bee
Journal wide open and Quinby’s instructions before him, could be so
careless as to give such combs to his bees.

But such was the fact, and foulbrood spreading right and left. What
shall be done to get rid of it? Shall Quinby be followed, purify the
hive and honey by scalding, and treat the colony as a new swarm; or
shall the heroic treatment of Alley be adopted; bury or burn bees and
hive, combs and all? The latter has sent me some fine queens; but the
former has always given reliable advice, and I shall follow his
instructions with two colonies which are past all cure, and reserve the
others for treatment, hoping that I may find some cure, or at least
palliative for the disease, and add my mite of experience, and, perhaps,
useful knowledge to our Bee Journal.

Accordingly, June 8th, the combs of the two condemned colonies were
melted into wax, the honey drained over and scalded, and the bees, after
a confinement of forty hours, were treated like new swarms; and now,
September 18th, are perfectly healthy and in fine condition for winter.

I will not occupy your valuable space with all the details of my
experiments and fights (which lasted through three months) with the
trials of doses of different strengths and kinds, with old comb and new,
with young queens and old ones, and with no queen at all, and how, in
doing this, I was obliged to keep up the strength of the colony for fear
of robbers and of spreading the disease to my neighbors. Suffice it to
say, that after two months I had made no apparent headway, although
still determined to “fight it out on this line, if it took all summer”
and my last hive. In fact, I devoted my apiary to the study of this
disease, and, perhaps, death.

Starting with, and holding to the theory that foulbrood is contagious
only by the diffusion of living germs of feeble vitality, (and I was
strengthened in my conjecture in microscopical examinations, by finding
the dead larvæ filled with nucleated cells,) I determined to try those
remedies which have the power of destroying the vitality of these
destructive germs, these living organisms. And no remedies seemed to me
more potent than carbolic acid and hyposulphite of soda. At first I used
both, making one application of each, with an interval of one day, and
with apparent benefit. But, attributing the improvement to the more
powerful of the two, I abandoned the hyposulphite and used the carbolic
acid alone, and I was so infatuated with the idea of its superiority,
that I did not give it up until three of the four hives had become so
hopelessly diseased, that the combs were destroyed and the colonies
treated to new combs (as it was late in the season,) and freely fed with
sugar and water. These are now in good condition for winter.

The fourth hive was carried a