Lloyd writes:
>Even if early 1900's is a better reference date, why did it take until the
>1940's for American bees to become so infected that AFB was threatening
>the existence of beekeeping in the US?
Some History of AFB
From "A Short History of the Empire State Honey Producers' Association",
by Roger Morse (1967) :
AFB was rampant in New York State in the 1920's. In NYS, Mr. A. C. Gould
must be credited with demonstrating how American Foulbrood can be
controlled through a rigid inspection program. He served as state inspector
from 1928 till 1965. When Mr. Gould assumed responsibility for bee disease
inspection *in 1928* the records show that well over *six* per cent of the
colonies in the state were infected with AFB.
Gould advocated burning infected colonies, and after ten years, reduced the
degree of infection to slightly more than one per cent. The Second World
War resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of hobby beekeepers and
in fewer inspectors being available to check colonies, As a result, the
number of infected colonies increased and 1946 four per cent had AFB. By
1958 it was less than 1 per cent.
Mr. Gould felt that it probably would be impossible to reduce the level to
much less than one per cent without greatly increasing the number of
inspectors. The spore stage may remain alive in old equipment for more than
30 years.
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In Gleanings, July, 1875: "It was not until 1870 that I got nicely into
movable frames and Italian bees. ... In the fall of '72 I bought a large
stock of bees and material for hives... Everything went well until Feb.,
when that universal disease seated itself in my apiary and in spring I had
6 left and two hundred empty hives and nothing 'to pay the undertaker.'"
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In Gleanings, Sept, 1875: "My treatment consist of two parts; first , the
removal of all the brood and the extracting of all the honey of all of the
affected hives. Perhaps this last might not be essential."
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In Gleanings, Apr 1876: "All seemed to go well for a time, but after a
while some of his colonies did not seem to be doing well, and on
examination he found their combs contained dead larvae which the bees did
not clean out, so he exchanged combs with stronger swarms, thinking they
would clean them up and make it all right. ... some of our best apiarians
visited him and pronounced his trouble to be foul brood. ... Mr. Krushke
adopted the heroic treatment and destroyed his bees, melted his combs into
wax and piled up the hives and frames for sale or future use."
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In Gleanings, Nov 1876, I found the first mention of the use of salicylic
acid for foul brood. "The discoverer of the remedy cured 25 badly affected
stocks, and other beekeepers have cure 30 and 40 without a single failure."
The recipe is "Put 50 gramms of the best crystallized acid into a bottle
with eight times the weight of good spirits of wine... mix with water in
the proportion of one drop of the spirits of wine and acid to one gramm of
water. ... an affected stock should be sprinkled ... it will be found that,
thought the young brood will not have been in the least injured, yet the
virus of the disease will have been efficiently destroyed. [they] used the
salicylic acid as a preventative against foul brood, having mixed it with
the sirup."
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In "The Hive and the Honeybee", Dadant, 1913:
Foul-brood
786. There are other important diseases, but all are nothing, when compared
to the dreaded contagious malady, already known thousands of years ago* and
commonly call foul-brood because it shows its effects mainly by the dying
of the brood.
* As Aristotle (History of Animals, Book IX, Chap. 40) speaks of a disease
which is accompanied by a disgusting smell of the hive, there is reason to
believe that foul-brood was common more than two thousand years ago.
In the 1913 book many *cures* are described, including honey mixed with
salicylic acid, salicylic fumigants, carbolic acid, shaking method, etc.
E. R. Root was quoted: "We did not get very satisfactory results by the use
of drugs, when foul-brood visited our apiary some years ago. We did find,
however, that they invariably held the disease in check; but as soon as
their use was discontinued, the disease broke out again."
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PS. I have access to Gleanings from Issue #1 in 1873 to the present.
Peter Borst <[log in to unmask]>
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