G. W. Bitllamore 
59 
In the record of another stock we read that “the hying workers were 
frequently more heavily parasitised than were the bees of the same stock 
which were unable to fly.” 
In an interesting case which was under the writer’s own observation in 
April, 1921, the crawling symptom was manifested but no mites were to be 
found. The crawling disappeared during the summer but reappeared in the 
autumn when the symptom was accompanied by the presence of mites in the 
tracheae. 
As an example of the recovery of a stock we have the following from a 
letter received by Dr Rennie (1921): 
On January 9th T received your report that the bees from one of my stocks had Tarso- 
nemus woodi. 
From this stock reported diseased on that date 1 had a swarm on the 23rd of May and 
this swarm swarmed on the 28th of June. 1 have taken off 150 sections and have three 
very strong stocks. 
Dr Rennie’s explanation is that early diagnosis enables us to recognise 
such recoveries and that formerly this was not possible. We only recognised 
the presence of the disease after it was irretrievably established. This “gave 
us an erroneous idea as to the gravity of the disease.” 
Such an explanation is not altogether satisfactory. When Isle of Wight 
disease reached an apiary the loss of colonies was usually 100 per cent, and 
the margin of error in forming an estimate of its gravity must have been very 
slight. 
In the Report of the Hants and Isle of Wight Beekeepers’ Association for 
1906 we read: 
Twenty-five years’ acquaintance with bees, bee men and bee life has not revealed any¬ 
thing so deadly or mysterious as this so-called bee paralysis of the Island. 
Silver (1907), who toured the Island in 1907, gives his impressions in these 
words: 
The sight of whole apiaries of 10 to 20 hives standing desolate and deserted in the middle 
of May is a most distressing one, and standing as I did, under a horse-chestnut tree in full 
blossom, in the grounds of the Rev. John Vicars, of Colbourne, situated in the centre of the 
Island, not a bee was visible on a beautiful spring day. 
Complete apiaries died out in May and June just after swarming and when 
the hives must have been tenanted with young bees. 
In support of the thesis that Tarsonemus woodi has been entirely responsible 
for the losses known as Isle of Wight disease, Dr Rennie suggests that T. woodi 
is at present a parasite of bees in this country only. He assumes that Isle of 
Wight disease has never been clearly shown to exist in any other country and 
that no such persistent losses have ever occurred before in this or any other 
country, and discusses the possibility that a new disease has arisen through 
the migration of the mite from some other insect to the hive bee as host. 
The evidence that the mite is not to be found in bees of other countries 
is confined to the negative results obtained by the examination of a few 
