It was late in the century before American beemen began to realize that the presence of dead brood did not, of necessity, indicate that the bees had American foulbrood. Differences were noted, and there was talk of "black brood" and "pickled brood, " as well as of "starved brood" and "chilled brood. " Slowly they learned to recognize the different symptoms and the more progressive were able to tell whether American foulbrood was present, or whether some other disorder affected his bees. The so-called black brood later came to be known as European foulbrood, and the pickled brood as Sacbrood. Authority is often far behind practice, and so it was in this case. Officials recognized only the one treatment used for American foulbrood, and disapproved the experiments which indicated success with less drastic methods for the others.

E. W. Alexander, an extensive beekeeper of Delanson, New York, found the way to control European foulbrood in much the same way that Quinby had worked out for himself a method of dealing with the other disease. Soon after the turn of the century there were frequent outbreaks of this disease which proved very disastrous. It would appear suddenly in early spring and, within a very short time, would be present in nearly every colony of bees in an entire neighborhood. Entire apiaries were wiped out within a few weeks of time. Colonies which were shaken according to the prescribed methods would be as badly diseased as before by the time the new combs were built.

Alexander reported that it was one of the hardest problems which he had ever met. Unmindful of official advice, for a period of three years he tried every disinfectant which he heard of to no avail. During that time he lost most of his honey crop and more than a thousand colonies of bees before he conquered the disorder.

After a time it was noticed that the trouble was worse in weak colonies and that strong colonies often removed the dead larvae and freed themselves of the disease. Finding that some bees were better housekeepers than others, he began looking for new blood. In Italian bees he found efficient resistance. Finally he observed that, where brood rearing was discontinued until all brood had emerged, the strong colonies cleaned house so completely that the disease was eradicated. In November, 1905, he published his method in Gleanings in Bee Culture, with definite instructions for control. He advised that all diseased colonies be strengthened either by giving frames of maturing brood or by uniting two or more colonies. Queens were then removed, and at the end of nine days all queen cells were destroyed, thus leaving the bees hopelessly queenless. The object, of course, was to stop all brood rearing until every undeveloped larva should have come to maturity. On the twentieth day a ripe queen cell was given, so that a period of about 27 days would elapse from the time the old queen was removed and the time when eggs again would be laid. He found that by requeening the common bees with Italian queens, which did not begin to lay for three or four days after the brood had emerged, the disease was cured and the colony remained free from it.

Quite naturally such revolutionary recommendations aroused wide interest on the part of the beekeepers and, as already stated, much opposition on the part of those in authority. The editor of Gleanings was severely criticized for making public the Alexander methods.

In 1909, Dr. C. C. Miller found that European foulbrood was present in nearly all his colonies.. It was an unfavorable season for honey, just the kind of year in which that disease spreads most rapidly. With a good honey flow the bees are often able to clean it out without assistance from the beekeeper, but with a failure of the early flow, the Doctor was faced with a serious. condition. He started to use the shaking treatment, then commonly called the "McEvoy" treatment, and many of the treated colonies swarmed out and left without ceremony. He then decided to try the Alexander treatment and, through misunderstanding of the recommendations, gave a virgin queen to the colony after ten days of queenlessness. In each case where the colony was strong, the result was an entire success. This led to further experiment and Miller tried the expedient of merely caging the queen of the diseased colony for a period of six days and was, likewise, successful.

It did not take long to demonstrate the fact that European foulbrood is easily conquered by giving a young Italian queen and by stopping brood rearing for a short period. As a result of the publicity which attended Doctor Miller's experiments, wholesale requeening of the apiaries in localities where this disease was present was accomplished.

Within a few years, European foulbrood all but disappeared from the commercial apiaries of many states. Inspectors no longer bothered about it and there was seldom a discussion of the subject in the columns of the bee magazines. Thus Alexander and Doctor Miller were responsible for removing a serious threat to the honey producers of America.

The third disease, then called "Pickled Brood, " now known as Sacbrood, never was a serious menace except in rare cases, but it responded to the same treatment as European foulbrood. The change in practice that resulted from dealing with the latter disease largely eliminated it from the apiaries.

The Scientist Appears

It was not until Cheshire and Cheney, in England, in 1885, began a study of the disease which they called "foulbrood, " that any progress was made toward clearing up the confusion. They were dealing with the disease afterwards called "European foulbrood, " because it was first studied in Europe. All forms of bee disease came originally from the old world along with the bees, which are not indigenous to America. Bacillus Alvei is the organism to which they ascribed European foulbrood.

In 1903 Dr. G. F. White, a bacteriologist in the United States Department of Agriculture, isolated the organism responsible for the disease now called "American foulbrood" and named it Bacillus larvae. It was not until 1912 that the same man published the results of his work, which definitely proved that Bacillus pluton is the cause of European foulbrood. Later it has been claimed that both alvei and pluton are forms of the same organism at different stages.