Greetings
With a front page article in the NY Times, bees are back in the news. Naturally, their plight will be attached to everone's cause celebre. I shant say much, as I am at work on an article on the "History of Bee Disease". Of course, bees have always had diseases; they become more or less important as people attach value to them or their products. This is of interest:

in the winter of 1782-3, a general mortality took place among the bees in this country,
which was attributed to various causes; want of honey was not one of them; for in some
hives considerable store was found after the bees were gone. Some were of opinion that it
arose from the preceding being a bad breeding year and thought that the bees died of old
age. Others attributed it to the moistness of the spring of 1783 which rendered the providing
of pollen difficult, for without pollen no brood can be raised. ... The fatal influence
ascribed to the wetness of the spring of 1782 seems to be improbable; though it might have
affected the quantity of bees bred, it was not likely to put a stop to their breeding altogether,
and the young bees ought at any rate to have escaped the desolating evil, if it were old
age alone; yet wherever the mortality once made its appearance, every bee became its
victim.   -- Bevan (1837)

PLB

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