All of these symptoms may, however, be present when no foul brood exists; but if, upon opening some of the cells whose caps are sunken or slightly punctured, a brown, ropy, putrid mass is found, which, when lifted on the end of a sliver of wood, glides back into the cell or strings down from the mass like thick sirup, it is pretty certain that foul brood is present. Caution is necessary or it maybe spread all through the apiary. The hands, as well as all tools used about the infected colony, should be cleansed by washing in a solution of corrosive sublimate (one-eighth ounce dissolved in 1 gallon water) before going to another hive. If but few are found diseased they should be burned at once—at night, when all the bees are at home. If all or nearly all are affected, or if the disease does not seem virulent and other apiaries in the neighborhood are not endangered thereby, a cure may be attempted. Removal of all of the combs and confinement of the bees in an empty box, obliging them to fast until some drop from hunger, followed after releasing them by liberal feeding, will frequently effect a cure, as indicated many years since by Mr. M. Quinby. The hives may be disinfected by washing in carbolic-acid water and used again. A second removal of the bees and fasting may be necessary in some cases. It will also be well to feed medicated sirup—1 part of carbolic acid, or phenol, to 600 or 700 parts of sirup. Many omit the fasting, but destroy all combs and frames and supply comb-foundation starters, removing four days later all combs built and giving a second lot of starters. It is well to supplement this treatment with feeding of medicated sirup. Phenol having been suggested to Professor Cheshire as a remedy, he experimented until he found that if a sirup containing 1 part of phenol to 400 or 500 parts of the food be poured in the cells adjacent to the brood, and the diseased brood, after brushing off the bees, sprayed with a solution of 1 phenol to 50 water, a cure was speedily effected. The great risk of spreading the disease, as well as the time and expense which a cure by drugs by the fasting process involves, will cause immediate destruction to be resorted to as the cheapest in the end if taken in time.
Bacillus gaytoni, also described by Professor Cheshire, is characterized by loss of hairy covering on the part of the workers and their crawling out of the hives over the ground, constantly wriggling their bodies until death occurs. It yields, according to Professor Cheshire, to the same remedies as Bacillus alvei, but having been less destructive and being far more likely to disappear without effort to cure it, less attention has been given to it. Lately, however, it has been alarmingly destructive in some of the extensive apiaries of California. Colorado, and Texas, so that some simple remedy would be very welcome.
THE WAX OR BEE MOTH.
The larva of a moth known to entomologists as Galleria mellonella Linn. gnaws passages through the combs of the bees, especially those in or near the brood nest, often proving very destructive in weak or neglected colonies. The popular name, wax moth, was doubtless given on the supposition that the food of the larva was chiefly wax; but when an attempt to rear them on this substance in its usual commercial purity is made slight development only results. Probably chemically pure wax would not be touched by the larva; but in combs containing the larval skins left by developing bees, or containing brood or pollen, they reach their highest development if left undisturbed during warm weather, finding ample nourishment in the nitrogen-containing pollen and animal tissues left by the molting larvæ. To protect themselves from the bees they line their galleries through the combs with a strong web of silk and are able to retreat or advance rapidly through them when attacked. The observing bee keeper will occasionally notice the moths resting during the daytime on the corners of the hives or under the roof projections or edges of the bottom boards. Its color is dull or ashy gray, with light and dark streaks, making it so nearly like a protruding sliver of a weather-beaten board as to protect it materially from its enemies when resting on any unpainted surface that has been long exposed. At nightfall the moths may be seen flitting about the hive entrances, seeking an opportunity to enter and deposit their eggs. If prevented by the bees, which are then instinctively on the alert, they deposit in the crevices between the hive and stand or between the hive and cap. The minute larvæ as they emerge soon make their way into the interior of the hive. It is possible also that some of the eggs of the moth may be left where the bees crawling over them carry them into the hive by accident, the freshly laid egg adhering readily to any substance it touches. In the northern and middle sections of the United States two broods are reared, the first appearing in May, the second and larger brood in midsummer or even August. The eggs deposited by the last brood develop slowly in the cooler autumn weather, but usually reach the pupal stage, in which they normally pass the winter. Individual moths may, however, be seen about the apiary during June and July, and even into the autumn, so that egg deposition is constantly going on, and any combs removed from the hive and left unprotected by bees, especially if in a warm apartment or a closed box, will soon be in complete possession of the destructive larvæ, which wax fat and soon reduce them to a mass of webs. The only remedies are to keep the combs under the constant protection of the bees, or, if the colonies are not populous enough to cover them fairly, the combs should be hung so as to leave a space between them in a cupboard or large box which can be closed tightly, so as to subject them for some time to the fumes generated by throwing a handful or two of sulphur on live coals, or to the odors of bisulphide of carbon in an open vial. Caution is needed in the use of the latter, since it is highly inflammable.
Oriental races of bees are more energetic than others in clearing out wax-moth larvæ, and Carniolans and Italians more so than the common bees. But in colonies always supplied with good queens the wax-moth larvæ make little headway, and it is therefore only the neglected hives that are seriously troubled. Moth-trap attachments or moth-proof hives are therefore of no use, unless, in the case of the former, larvæ seeking a secure place in which to pupate may be caught; but that implies frequent examination, and the same or less attention to the colony itself will suffice to do away with almost any breeding of moths. Hives proof against the entrance of wax-moth larvæ would, as the statements here made regarding the breeding habits of the moth indicate, exclude the bees also. From the foregoing it can be readily seen that the attentive apiarist no longer regards the wax moth as a serious pest.
BRAULA OR "BEE LOUSE."
A wingless dipteron, Braula cæca Nitsch, known under the common name of "bee louse," is a troublesome parasite on bees in Mediterranean countries, the adults, which are very large in proportion to the host, gathering on the thoraces of the workers, rarely of the drones, but in great numbers on the queens. The writer has removed seventy-five at one time from a queen, though ordinarily the numbers do not exceed a dozen. When numerous they render the queen weak by the removal of vital fluids. The insect has frequently been imported to this country on queens with attendant bees, but thus far has probably gained no foothold. Likely it will never do so in the North, but the case might be different in any region resembling southern Europe in climate, and it is by all means advisable to remove every one from any queen or worker arriving here infested with them.
OTHER ENEMIES.
Robber flies, dragon flies, etc.—Several species of Asilus and related predaceous Diptera do not live upon injurious insects alone, but also capture and devour honey bees. They are more destructive in the South than elsewhere. The same is true of the neuropterous insects known as mosquito hawks, dragon flies, or devil's darning needles. There seems to be no remedy for any of these except that of frightening them away when noticed about the apiary. The "stinging bugs," belonging in the hemipterous family Phymatidæ, often capture and destroy workers as they visit the flowers. No remedy is practicable.