Gr. AY. Bullamore 
0/ 
of the nineteenth century. The organism found in bees was named Nosema apis 
and Zander looked upon it as the cause of heavy losses in Bavaria. The essen¬ 
tial feature of the trouble was a sudden and extensive mortality among the 
bees inside and outside the hive. Dysentery was an occasional accompaniment. 
BerlepsclTs description of the epidemic of 1859 (see p. 54) is considered by 
Zander to be a typical description of the ravages of unchecked Nosema 
disease. 
The discovery attracted considerable attention. Maassen (1911) found 
Nosema to be widely prevalent in German apiaries, but although he looks 
upon the parasite as pathogenic he considers that unfavourable conditions 
are necessary for the manifestation of disease. 
Nussbaumer (1912) found Nosema in association with heavy losses in 
Switzerland. 
Beuhne (1916) states that Nosema was first discovered in Australia in 
1909, but that observation showed that it was 
doubtful whether the presence of the parasite is in itself necessarily fatal, or that it greatly 
interferes with the productiveness of the hives excepting under certain conditions due to 
climatic influence....In fact under ordinary conditions the disease is endemic, and becomes 
epidemic only when the vitality of the bee is impaired by the malnutrition during the bees’ 
larval development which is caused by a dearth, or the inferior quality of the nitrogenous 
food which bees obtain solely from the pollen of the flowers of plants. 
As the result of investigation at Cambridge (Graham-Smith, Fantham, 
Porter, Malden, and Bullamore 1912) a report was issued showing that Nosema 
was present in a large percentage of stocks affected with Isle of Wight disease 
and the disease was attributed to the presence of this parasite. 
Later, Anderson and Rennie (1916) working on the Isle of Lewis took up 
the question of Nosema and Isle of Wight disease. They were unable to cor¬ 
roborate the findings of the Cambridge investigation and state that Nosema 
was found to be present in stocks without disease symptoms appearing. They 
did not find Nosema distributed in the bees of all the stocks but only in a 
few stocks at any one time, and when it occurred “Isle of Wight disease was 
not present.” 
The result is somewhat surprising as, assuming that Nosema is a com¬ 
paratively harmless parasite, its non-occurrence in stocks suffering from Isle 
of Wight disease seems to require some explanation. 
While the work on the Isle of Lewis was being carried on, continuous 
importations of bees were being made from all parts of the country. Bees, 
assumed to be healthy, were introduced into the apiary from Scotland, Eng¬ 
land, Wales, Ireland, America, Switzerland, Austria, and Holland. These bees 
developed crawling symptoms at periods varying from a week to a month or 
more after arrival. Consequently it is difficult to determine the disease with 
which Anderson and Rennie were actually working or to feel sure that im¬ 
portations of other diseases were not being made. The following are the 
particulars of what is described as a spontaneous recovery. 
