84 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



February 



No. 5.— Among Eastern Bee- 

 keepers 



BY THE EDITOR. 



AS Stated in my last article, I re- 

 turned to Amherst Aug. 16, to 

 meet iMr. Bocock, the English 

 apiarist, microscopist and scientist, 

 who is making a special study of adult 

 worker-bee diseases. Mr. Bocock had 

 visited the West and had just returned 

 to New England. 



Most of our readers know of the 

 dreaded disease called "Isle of Wight" 

 or "Microsporidiosis,"but few of them 

 know that 80% of the bees of the 

 British Isles have been destroyed by 

 it. It started in 1904, in the south- 

 east corner of the Isle of Wight, 

 reaching the nearest parts of the 

 main land in 1909, spreading across 

 it in the direction of the prevailing 

 wind. 



"Nosema apis" discovered by the 

 German, Dr. Zander, in 1909, is 

 thought to be the cause of the disease, 

 as it is found in large numbers in the 

 intestine of the diseased bees. Most 

 of us have thought that what is here 

 called "bee paralysis" was the same 

 disease. But aside from the fact 

 that "nasema apis" is not usually 

 found in cases of bee paralysis, Mr. 

 Bocock holds that the symptoms are 

 different. In "Isle Of Wight" there 

 are none of the tremulous motions 

 seen in the other disease which are 

 responsible for the name given: 

 "paralysis". The bees simply drag 

 themselves out of the hive unable to 

 fly, and die by the thousands, in 

 front of the hive. By a singular co- 

 incidence, this trouble was seen at 

 the Amherst experimental apiary 

 shortly after the arrival there of Mr. 

 Bocock, in June. But it did not 

 last and when I came all symptoms 

 of it had disappeared. Nosema apis 

 has been found in healthy bees in the 



United States and it is probable that 

 the climate has something to do with 

 its wide spread in England. The 

 bees diseased with paralysis rarely 

 discharge their feces, and for that 

 reason the disease has been called 

 "constipation", but in Isle Of Wight 

 disease Mr. Bocock stated to me that 

 diseased bees could often be induced 

 to discharge the contents of their 

 abdomen by simply touching them 

 with a blade of grass or a light stick. 



Mr. Bocock is authority for the 

 statement that, within a radius of 10 

 miles of Cambridge, England, more 

 than 5,000 colonies of bees have died 

 of that disease in the past 10 years. 

 He says that Italian bees make a 

 better fight against it than the com- 

 mon bees. 



As to a remedy, none of positive ef- 

 ficacy has yet been found, although 

 several claims to the efficiency of 

 "bacterol", "izal", and "dioxogen or 

 peroxide of hydrogen" have been 

 made in the British Bee Journal. Mr. 

 Bocock was very careful and con- 

 servative in his statements, as all 

 scientists are, and confined himself 

 to the assertion that no remedy that 

 he knew of was as yet proven ef- 

 ficacious. 



Since the above was written, some 

 interesting information has been fur- 

 nished in Australia, concerning 

 Nosema apis. Investigations made and 

 reported in the December number of 

 the "Australasian Beekeeper," page 

 10.5, indicate that this parasite is 

 "present in almost every apiary, that 

 even wild bees in trees are affected, 

 that it is merely a casual inhabitant 

 of the alimentary canal of the bee." 

 Yet the diseases ascribed to Nosema 

 in Europe have but little force in 

 Australia, probably owing to climatic 

 conditions, "the drier atmosphere and 

 the greater heat of the sun during 

 the summer arresting the progress 

 of the disease." It is also held that, 

 owing to the universal presence of 

 the parasite in question, it would be 



"hopeless to attempt the eradication 

 of the disease by destroying the in- 

 fected combs and bees." 



Mr. Bocock himself expresses doubts 

 concerning the actual influence of 

 Nosema apis in adult bee diseases. 

 He wrote me under date of December 

 13: 



"I am sending you by a later post 

 Part I of Volume XX of the Proceed- 

 ings of the Royal Physical Society 

 in which you will find two papers 

 dealing witli researches and experi- 

 ments in the matter of I. O. W. 

 disease that have been conducted In 

 Scotland. The investigators seem to 

 have reached about the same con- 



Prospect Pine— Jacob's Ladder Roadway 

 AT Becket, Mass, 



P. 2, Crane 



Son and partner of J, E Crane, with his 



little dauehter 



MR, BOCOCK AND THE EDITOR DISCUSSING ISLE OF WIGHT DISEASE 

 NOSEMA APIS AT THE AMHERST EXPERIMENTAL APIARY 



