DYSENTERY. —This is really a form of diarrhea that afflicts bees. It is not a disease as would be the ease in real dysentery, but a functional disorder due to too long retention of the feces during winter, caused by bad food or improper protection, or both. The term "dysentery" is here retained, not because it is accurate, but because it has been used so generally in bee literature.  

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If the affected colonies are outdoors, about the only real remedy is settled warm weather. Even one good warm day will often serve to alleviate the trouble, as it gives the bees a chance to void their excrement out in the open air, away from the hives and the combs. Other wise the continued confinement during an extended cold spell sometimes compels the bees to retain their feces so long that they are finally forced to void it over the combs and over the hives. 

Package Bees to Cure Dysentery 

As one of the primal causes of dysentery is weakness or lack of sufficient strength to the colony, the deficiency can be corrected by giving it a package of two or three pounds of young, vigorous bees just from the South. If there is sufficient protection and good stores this fresh infusion of new life will clean up the combs and save the bees that are left. As a rule, a very weak nucleus, unless the queen is valuable, is hardly worth saving. It can, of course, be united with one or more other nuclei, but it will do little good. The several bunches of bees will re turn to their old stand if from the same apiary. (See Spring Dwindling.) 

[this is from the 1935 edition of the ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture. Seems pretty accurate to me]

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