Page:Bee-Culture Hopkins 2nd ed revised Dec 1907.pdf/31



The Department of Agriculture of the United States of America is taking the lead and carrying out a great work just now in the investigation of bee-diseases. At the latter part of 1906 the Department issued a pamphlet of some forty-five pages, entitled The Bacteria of the Apiary, in which some startling announcements were made, quite upsetting the results of many previous investigations. The statements were challenged by some able men, and this has put the American authorities on their mettle, with the good result that they are now prosecuting their investigations more thoroughly than ever, and, whatever may be the outcome of them, the beekeeping world must benefit more or less.

The economic value of the beekeeping industry is being generally recognised in all countries, and the knowledge of the losses sustained through the disease has caused an energetic movement in the direction of stamping it out if possible, or, at all events, to bring it more under control. The good resulting from the action of the Canadian Government in this respect has given a great impetus to legislation on the same lines in other countries. The necessity for forcing careless beekeepers to either stamp out the disease from their apiaries or give up beekeeping is now recognised everywhere, including New Zealand, where foul-brood in the past has caused incalculable loss from one end of the colony to the other.

As the treatment is the same in either case, we need not feel concerned as to any distinction of germs, or whether we have in New Zealand the European or the American foul-brood. Experienced beekeepers know our own disease when they see it, and that is sufficient at present. The following description of the symptoms is given for the benefit of beginners:—

Healthy brood in the larva stage—that is, before it is sealed or capped—presents a clear pearly whiteness, but when attacked by foul-brood it rapidly changes to light buff, then to brown, coffee-and-milk colour, and finally to black, at which stage nothing is to be seen in the cell but a flattish scale-like substance when examined closely. It is, however, when the brood has been attacked after it has advanced to the pupa period of its existence—that is, when it has been capped over—that the novice is better able to detect the presence of foul-brood.

In the early stage of an attack a capped cell here and there will appear somewhat different from the surrounding healthy brood. Instead of the cappings or seals being bright, full, and of convex form, characteristic of healthy brood, they will be of a dull blackish-brown colour, and flat or sunken (see Plate II), an indication that the cells contain dead pupæ. The disease rapidly spreads to surrounding cells and combs, if allowed to take its course, till finally no brood can hatch, and the colony succumbs. On opening some of the cells a thin glue-like coffee-coloured mass will be