Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/181

Rh their enemies. "Who will hesitate," he asks, "to fumigate with thyme and to cut away the empty comb?" He gives, in two divisions, a list of those apicultural pests whose depredations the beekeeper should try to prevent, or at least to control. Among the minor dangers that threaten bees in the form of insects or small animals that have a taste for honey or that eat the bees themselves, he mentions swallows, bee-martins, newts, lizards, hornets, and spiders. When one considers the number of bees in a single colony, however,—upwards of ten thousand in the winter and several times as many in the summer—one can easily see that the combined losses from these sources are insignificant.

He mentions also the bee-moth, "shunning the light;" an accurate description, since its custom is to remain hidden during the day. It does not attempt to enter the hive until dusk, when the bees can not see to attack it. This moth is a really dangerous enemy, being able to harass seriously a strong colony, and often to destroy entirely one that has lost its queen. As Langstroth says of it:

It is rather curious that Virgil nowhere makes any mention of the bee-louse, which, to-day at least, is a source of considerable trouble to the beekeepers of Italy, although in this country it is almost unknown.

His description of that disease of the bees already referred to—so serious a scourge as to make it one of the chief dangers that threaten them—completes his list. For there is very little reason to doubt that this disease of which he speaks is the same as that now known as foul brood, or else closely analogous to it. This is a highly contagious disease, attacking first the brood, which decays instead of hatching; the bees also become infected, and presently die. This malady was doubtless known to apiculturists as long ago as Virgil's time; Aristotle, in his "History of Animals," describes it briefly but in no doubtful terms. Even to-day it is a justly dreaded enemy to apicultural prosperity. It is scarcely to be wondered at that, when we have not yet devised a very satisfactory method of dealing with it, Virgil's remedies should be of no avail. To stamp it out, its spores and bacilli must be destroyed by fire or some other equally efficient agent. His directions as to the various herbs steeped in liquids, and the roots boiled in wine, which were to be fed to the bees to cure this fell disease, were worthless. This treatment, like certain precautions that he advises taking for the welfare of the bees, such as being careful to cut down all the yew-trees near the beeyard, and never to burn red crabs in the fire, could not have been of the slightest use save perchance to afford to the zealous beekeeper of those times, who conscientiously followed these instructions, the salutary sensations that follow duty done.