To those on BEE-L
 
   With all the exchanges about treatment for diseases going about, you
might be interested in an early folk remedy for nosema, one that rings a
bell today.
 
   My wife gave me a book (novel) last Christmas, one which I just managed
to finish.  Leo Perutz first published it in 1936 (DER SCHWEDISCHE REITER).
John Brownjohn translated it, and it came out in English in 1992 (Harper
Collins Pub.) as THE SWEDISH CAVALIER.
 
   In the middle of the book, one finds a short section on troubles with
beekeeping experienced by a priest-beekeeper.  I quote here some of the
relevant material dealing with the yield from three bee hives:
 
"I keep [the hives] in the meadow behind my house.'
 
Three, eh?  'They must yield eighteen or more measures of spring-gathered
honey.'
 
The priest sighed.  'This year, ten-and-a-half measures only.'
 
'That's very little for three hives,' the captain said.  'Yet it was just
the kind of year the beekeeper craves: a summer with cool winds and heavy
dews, a long, dry autumn, and a snowy winter.  What was amiss?'
 
'Alas,' the priest lamented, his thoughts flitting back and forth between
hives and the theft of his church's treasures, 'my bees were afflicted with
nosema.'
 
'And you did nothing to cure it?  You had no remedy [at] hand?'
 
'No,' the priest said sadly, 'there is none.  One must simply let the
disease take its course.'
 
'Mark this, sir', the robber captain told him.  'Wild thyme pounded up with
a little oil of lavender and addeded to the bees' sugar-water --- that's a
proven remedy for nosema.'
 
*******
 
                                                Adrian
 
 
 
Adrian M. Wenner                    (805) 963-8508 (home phone)
967 Garcia Road                     (805) 893-8062  (UCSB FAX)
Santa Barbara, CA  93106
 
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* "...in the drift of the years I by and by found out that a Consensus *
* examines a new [idea] with its feelings rather oftener than with its *
* mind.  You know, yourself, that is so.  Do those people examine with *
* feelings that are friendly to evidence?  You know they don't."       *
*                                                                      *
*                                                Mark Twain            *
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