> The idea of putting ANYTHING into our hives except wood, wax, and bees was unthinkable.
Not true, not at all. When I started beekeeping (1974), my employer was routinely moving AFB hives to a "hospital yard" and dosing them with sulfathiazole. We used benzaldehyde to remove honey supers, despite the fact that it reeked and didn't work very well.
When I moved from NY to California (still 1974) I was introduced to Terramycin "extender patties" which were left in the hives year round, a clear violation. I worked at a bee supply store and we routinely sold Phenol for taking off honey, in unmarked gallon cans. The owner of the store stashed a large quantity of Chlordane to have to sell after it was no longer legal.
But beyond that, the use of chemicals to "control disease" in hives was introduced in the 1800s. I put it in quotes because a lot of the cures didn't work. This is from Aspinwall's Bee-keeper's Magazine (1888):
Foul Brood Cure
Those advocating salicylic acid : Now recommend its use in a fumigator, as devised by Monsieur Bertrand. This apparatus, which looks like a small still, containing a spirit lamp, the frame of which rises beneath a metal dish. Surrounding the latter is a cylinder of stout tin, covered by an inverted funnel form, the neck of which is bent to the horizontal, and made in cross section an oblong 5 inches by 1 1/4 inches. The hive is raised from its floor-board until the mouth of the funnel passes in at the entrance, and the corner of the quilt is lifted to permit a free circulation of the vaporized acid 1 gram of which is placed in the dish, over the burning lamp. Every portion of the hive is reached by the vapor ; and when the fumigation is repeated every few days, early in the morning or late in the evening so as to have all the bees at home under its influence, it is said to be very effective.
PLB
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