Disease among Bees.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XVIII, Issue 1660, 14 January 1885, Page 2

Disease among Bees.

To (he Editor of the Standard. Dear Sir.—Seeing a short article in your paper (ho other day on “ foul brood ” (the correct name is Bacillus alvei), I would like to give you my experience with the disease. There is no doubt bee-keeping in the Wairarapa valley can be made a paying concern with all the modern appliances we have at hand, foremost of which are the improved Langstroth hives, artificial comb foundation, and the honey extractor : with all of these appliances beekeeping icill pay if-ah, that little word, if - we only unite onr efforts and get rid of the disease that is now raging through this distrxt. I mean (Bacillus alvei) during the last month I have discovered the disease in 14 hives in Greytown, at different places, and it just means this that if we do not get the better of the disease, it will eventually kill all of the bees in Greytown. Want of ventilation seems to lie to a great extent the cause of the disease, in the ordinary boxes there is no ventilation. Fancy shutting a number of persons up in a room without ventilation. Well, we know what the result would be ;but there is no fancy about shutting 24.000 bees (an average swarm) up in a candle box ; it is being done nearly every day just now, about here. The disease is so contagions that it a bee from a diseased slock fettles on a flower, and another bee from a healthy stock settles on the same flower, the chances are that it will carry the disease home with it, and it spreads so rapidly that in about five weeks after contracting the disease the colony will become extinct. Under a powerful microscope the disease presents the appearance of strings of sausages breaking oft in twos and twos and then they grow in length andjbrenkjofl in a similar manner and so on, until in a short time, in one cell alone, they are innumerable ; these are called spores ai d in this condition they affect the young grubs, and cause them to putrify and the eaps of the cells to sink in and give off a very disagreeable smell. It will be easily seen then that if the larvae is continually putrifying and the old bees live only 50 days, it will not take long for your bees to die out ; besides, these spores affect the living bees also. The disease is incurable in any form of box but a frame hive, for this reason, that you must take the combs out and fill the cells round the brood with the medicated syrup, which is made by putting one part of pure carbolic acid to 500 parts syrup (phenol is the French name for it ; not phenal as you had it) or twenty drops to one pint syrup. 1 will here make an offer to inspect anybody’s stocks gratis, and if they like to try a frame hive I will transfer the bees gratis. I hope anyone who notices their bees dwindling will at once take advantage of this offer. I have thoroughly tested this cure in ene of my own stocks, having cured it in about ten days. I am, &c,, J. Baevaed,