REMEDIES.
If we can find a substance that will prove fatal to the fungi, and yet not injure the bees, the problem is solved. Our German scientists—those masters in scientific research and discovery, have found this valuable fungicide in salicylic acid, an extract from the same willows that give us pollen and nectar. This cheap white powder is easily soluble in alcohol, and when mixed with borax in water.
Mr. Hilbert, one of the most thoughtful of German bee-keepers, was the first to effect a radical cure of foul brood in his apiary by the use of this substance. He dissolved fifty grains of the acid in five hundred grains of pure spirits. One drop of this in a grain of distilled water is the mixture he applied. Mr. C. F. Muth, from whom the above facts as to Herr Hilbert are gathered, suggests a variation in the mixture.
Mr. Muth suggests an improvement, which takes advantage of the fact that the acid, which alone is very insoluble in water, is, when mixed with borax, soluble. His recipe is as follows: One hundred and twenty-eight grains of salicylic acid, one hundred and twenty-eight grains of soda borax, and sixteen ounces distilled water. There is no reason why water without distillation should not do as well.
This remedy is applied as follows: First uncap all the brood, then throw the fluid over the comb in a fine spray. This will not injure the bees, but will prove fatal to the fungi.
If the bees are removed to an empty hive, and given no comb for three or four days, till they have digested all the honey in their stomachs, and then prevented visiting the affected hive, they are said to be out of danger. It would seem that the spores are in the honey, and by taking that, the contagion is administered to the young bees. The honey may be purified from these noxious germs, by subjecting it to the boiling temperature, which is generally, if not always, fatal to the spores of fungoid life. By immersing the combs in a salicylic acid solution, or sprinkling them with the same, they would be rendered sterile, and could be used without much fear of spreading contagion. The disease is probably spread by robber bees visiting affected hives, and carrying with them in the honey the fatal germs.
I have found that a paste made of gum tragacanth and water is very superior, and I much prefer it for either general or special use to gum Arabic. Yet it soon sours—which means that it is nourishing these fungoid plants—and thus becomes disagreeable. I have found that a very little salicylic acid will render it sterile, and thus preserve it indefinitely.