Why is speculating about sub-lethal effects of pesticides which may or
may not have some sort of impact under some conditions so much more
interesting than Randy's report about an apparently easy way to kill
colonies using only _the contents of those same colonies_?


Not that many of us are looking for easy ways to kill bees at this point, having lost 50% or more of our hives. But seriously, this sort of thing is not new. Finding the causative organism is the problem. We know that mad cow disease was traced back to the practice of feeding cattle dead cattle, which has since been halted. But it took a long time to find a putative cause. Last I heard it was put down to "prions" which are less alive than viruses. I have often wondered if CCD could be caused by some sort of prion or prion like agent. Killing bees with bees was reported here:

> In September, 1927, the writer's attention was attracted by the large number of adult worker bees dying in and about a certain hive in the apiary of the Bee Culture Laboratory at Somerset, Maryland. It was observed that a few of the infected bees crawled, of their own accord, from the hive, but the greater number were carried out by other workers during the early stages of infection. This condition existed until the first week of October, when it subsided without treatment. Dissection and microscopic examinations of dying and dead bees eliminated all the known ailments of adult bees (Nosema disease, Isle of Wight disease, Mycosis, Amoeba disease and the condition known among beekeepers as dysentery) as being the cause of the trouble. 

> inoculations were made by caging bees upon the macerated remains of dead bees wet with water, or by spraying or submerging bees in water suspensions of the organism taken from dead bees, from cultures, or from soil collected near colonies that showed infection. The highest death rate was obtained when inoculations were made with the organism in water. In two experiments, approximately 20 per cent and 30 per cent of the bees caged upon the macerated and wet remains of bees dead of septicemia were killed by this disease. Bees that were dampened by submerging them in a water suspension of the organism and kept in cages became infected in varied numbers. When heavy water suspensions of B. apisepticus taken from cultures or from bees dead of disease were used, 60 per cent to 100 per cent of the inoculated bees died. 

> That adult bees suffer from systemic infection by bacteria seems to have been suspected only by Cheshire. He found two rod-shaped organisms, varying much in size, in blood smears of bees. These organisms, which were incompletely described and figured, were thought to have been the cause of a "destructive attack." Cheshire's descriptions and illustrations are insufficient to identify the organisms; consequently one can not know, whether any of those described by him are identical with the one under observation by the writer.

> It seems desirable to emphasize the fact that this is not a new disease of bees, but is a disease which has not heretofore been definitely recognized. Additional losses are therefore not to be feared. Now that its presence is known, there is reason to hope that the losses from it may be reduced.


A SEPTICEMIC CONDITION OF ADULT BEES
By C. E. BURNSIDE, Assistant Apiculturist, Bureau of Entomology, United States Department of Agriculture
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY [Vol. 21 April, 1928]

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