Bee lice may be found in a hive. This insect is another enemy of the bees. This little pest is not a very serious enemy and may better be called a nuisance.

The lice usually live on the body of the queen and can occasionally be found on the workers. They live on honey taken from the mouth parts of their hosts. Their eggs are laid in the cappings of the honey combs. When the young insect hatches, it burrows tunnels through the wax. These tunnels do no particular harm except when they are great in number. Of course, the appearance of fine combs is spoiled in this case, but the quality of the honey remains the same.

Carelessness is a forerunner of disease and ruin. Carelessness of beekeepers causes the most trouble to domesticated bees. In the early days of American bee culture, carelessness allowed the wax-worm or bee moth to gain a foothold in this country. The bee moth is most destructive among black bees. The stronger Italian bees clear their colonies of the moths.

When the bee moths gain a foothold, their larva hatch, eat everything in their pathway, and make webs as they move along. Whole combs are destroyed by the hungry enemy. A strong colony of healthy bees is the best protection for a hive.

Bees are injured, too, by some very serious diseases. Many of them attack all varieties of bees. American Foul-Brood and European Foul-brood are two of the worst maladies with which bees are inflicted. Each one of these evils may be found everywhere. The one disease was named American Foulbrood because the men who first studied it lived in the United States: and the other, European Foulbrood because those who first studied it lived in Europe. Each of them may be prevented if the bees are carefully watched.

American Foul-brood attacks the larva in the cells and kills them before they hatch. Naturally this causes the brood comb to rot. In the early stages, the beekeeper may learn that the disease is present in a hive by the sagging cell caps in the brood combs, the scarcity and scattered position of the cells, the holes in the cappings, and the small percentage of the bees that hatch. In advanced stages the disease will cause the comb to become a shapeless, offensive, dark mass covered with black scales.

European Foul-brood attacks the larva after it hatches from the egg. There is no foul odor and no putty-like mass of dead brood. This type of foulbrood may be known because the larva will dry up until the skin becomes hard and because it does not cling to the cell.

American Foul-brood may be cured by a planned process of removing the diseased comb and replacing it with new foundation comb.

European Foul-brood should be treated by removing the queen from the hive and replacing her with a new, healthy queen. All of the bees that are hatched within twenty-one days after the new queen is given to the hive should be removed.

Pickled Brood, May Disease, and Diarrhea are minor ailments common to unhealthy and run down colonies of bees.

Intelligent, experienced beekeepers do not allow disease to invade their colonies. They exercise care in the operation of the hive and always remember that disease cannot get a foothold when the bees are healthy and prosperous.