I was browsing Frank Pellett's 1938 History of American Beekeeping recently and this passage is so relevant I thought it deserved to be posted. It's a bit eerie it was written 70 years long ago about events that transpired 120 years ago. It's an excellent history lesson on EFB but also as relevant to beekeeping today as it was to beekeeping then. 

To summarize pages 186-190 in my own words: Pellet is discussing the historic confusion between AFB and EFB and how this confusion has caused beekeepers and "officials" to think the remedies are the same. 

Around 1853, Quinby figured out through trial and error that (American) foulbrood was transmitted through honey and wax; when he realized this, he put the bees into brand new hives and succeeded in getting rid of the problem. This was the first time in documented recent history that someone tried a shook swarm. 

This became the preferred method of dealing with foulbrood, but several decades later, beekeepers began recognizing there were more brood diseases than simply one generic foulbrood. 

Scientists discovered the organism behind AFB in 1903 and behind EFB in 1912. However, Pellett credits the discovery of how to control European foulbrood to an observant and experimental beekeeper named E.W. Alexander, who published his findings in 1905 and whose name is remarkably similar to the person who started this thread. To quote Pellett directly: 

<Soon after the turn of the century there were frequent outbreaks of this disease which proved disastrous. It would appear suddenly in early spring and, within a very short time, would be present in nearly every colony of bees in an entire neighbourhood. Entire apiaries were wiped out within a few weeks of time. Colonies which were shaken according to the prescribed methods would be as badly diseased as before by the time the new combs were built.

[Alexander tried everything he had heard of to get rid of EFB but did not manage to rid his apiary of the disease]. After a time it was noticed that the trouble was worse in weak colonies and that strong colonies often removed the dead larvae and freed themselves of the disease. Finding that some bees were better housekeepers than others, he began looking for new blood. In Italian bees he found efficient resistance. Finally, he observed that, where brood rearing was discontinued until all brood had emerged, the strong colonies cleaned house so completely the disease was eradicated. In 1905, he published his method in Gleanings in Bee Culture, with definite instructions for control. He advised that all diseased colonies be strengthened either by giving frames of maturing brood or by uniting two or more colonies. Queens were then removed, and at the end of nine days all queen cells were destroyed, thus leaving the bees hopelessly queenless. The object, of course, was to stop all brood rearing until every undeveloped larva should have come to maturity. On the twentieth day a ripe queen cell was given, so that a period of about 27 days would elapse from the time the old queen was removed and the time when eggs again would be laid. He found that by requeening the common bees with Italian queens, which did not begin to lay for three or four days after the brood had emerged, the disease was cured and the colony remained free from it. >

Pellett then goes on to describe how in 1909, Dr. C.C. Miller tried Alexander's method after the shook swarm method also failed for him because the bees absconded from the new equipment. He discovered a much shorter break in the brood cycle worked just as well. Caging a queen for six days solved his EFB problem in strong colonies. 

Pellett writes many beekeepers simply began requeening affected colonies to solve their EFB problems at that point and "within a few years European foulbrood all but disappeared from the commercial apiaries of many states." 

Among other things, this passage makes me wonder why we're always assuming EFB is more virulent now. The strain Pellett describes sounds very virulent as well. We humans have a tendency to think if we've never seen it before then it must be new. And I think we may be underestimating the power of a break in the brood cycle in this thread so far.

In reference to the question about when bees started being shipped around the continent in large numbers: Pellett's History of American Beekeeping (1938) has a whole chapter dedicated to the subject of shipping bees. I believe the US large scale migratory pollination industry developed in the 1950s but bees were being shipped around the continent in large numbers long before then. 

-Tracey
Alberta, Canada

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