The Bee Preserver; or, Practical Directions for the Management and Preservation of Hives

Chapter 29: CHAPTER XXV. DISEASES OF THE BEES.

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About This Book

The book offers concise, practical guidance for establishing and maintaining productive apiaries, drawing on decades of observation. It addresses choosing and fixing an apiary site, preferred hive shapes and materials, entrance sizing and insulation, assessing stores, feeding and uniting weak or new swarms, forming artificial swarms, and techniques to counter pests, disease, and winter loss. Emphasis lies on simple, repeatable methods—hive construction, seasonal management, and targeted remedies—intended to help beekeepers preserve colonies through poor seasons and improve honey and wax yields.

CHAPTER XXV.
DISEASES OF THE BEES.

Bees have no real disease. Dysentery, about which so much noise has been made, and for which so many remedies are prescribed, never attacks the bees of a well-stocked hive, that is left open at all seasons, but only those that are too long and too closely confined. They are always in good health as long as they are at liberty, when they are warm enough, and have plenty of food. All their pretended diseases are the result of hunger, cold, or the infection produced by a too close and long confinement during the winter.

Some intelligent people have erroneously thought that the honey gathered from the flowers of the lime-tree caused dysentery, but experience convinced me to the contrary; for my hives were never in better condition than when the lime-tree flowers supplied them with honey in abundance.