CHAPTER XXIV.. Diseases of Bees.

DISEASES OF BEES.

I suspect that much which has been written upon this subject is fanciful, and that most of the ailments of bees originate from want of cleanliness or want of food; for if bees be not kept clean, and be not supplied with food in backward springs, particularly in those which succeed mild winters, a mortality among them is usually experienced; and it is in spring that their alleged maladies prevail.

"For late the lynx-ey'd scout, in nice survey, Had mark'd the ravage of ungenial May, Where the lorn bee-herd wail'd his empty shed, Its stores exhausted, and its tenants dead."

"So mourn'd Arcadia's swain his honey'd host, By keen disease or keener famine lost. Till his fond mother, on her glassy throne, Heard through deep Peneus' wave the filial moan."

+Evans.+

During a mild winter the stock of honey is often exhausted, such a season encouraging the bees to be active, without affording any resources beyond their own domicile; yet it is not uncommon to hear the keepers of bees speak of a mild winter as favourable for the bees. It is most unfavourable to them; and if feeding be not duly attended to, frequently fatal. Hence a northern aspect has been recommended for hives during winter; and if guarded by proper coverings, and contrivances against snow and other bad weather, such an aspect is highly proper. The +Rev. Stephen White+ observes, that if hives be placed on the northern side of a building, the bees will seldom be induced to come out, and will eat much less than if exposed to the winter's sun. +Mr. Gedde+ recommends keeping them during winter, not only in a cold, but in a dark situation, in order to lessen the consumption of honey. He even suggests the use of an ice-house, having found that bees survive the cold in Siberia, and render Russia somewhat remarkable for its productiveness of honey. "A very observing gentleman," says +Dr. Darwin+, "at my request, put two hives for many weeks into a dry cellar, and observed, during all that time, that they did not consume any of their provision, for their weight did not decrease, as it had done when they were kept in the open air." The same observation is made in the Annual Register for 1768, p. 113. The sudden transitions from heat to cold, and from cold to heat, experienced in this country, are detrimental to bees; but these vicissitudes would not alarm me, if the bees were well sheltered, and had a convenient supply of water, salt and sugar, in the early part of the spring.

Keys thought they were not fond of salt: from my own experience as well as from that of my apiarian friends, I am satisfied that he was mistaken, and my opinion is confirmed by the following observation in Crevecœur's Travels. "One day, having remarked that my bees frequently settled on spots, where brine had been spilt, I placed some grains of salt before their hives. What was my astonishment, when I saw them repeatedly tasting it with eagerness, and carrying it away with them! Before this experiment, I could not have believed that the manufacturers of honey could taste with pleasure, a substance so different from the nectar of flowers."

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 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 difficulty of collecting pollen was ascribed to the continual closing of the flowers over the anthers, the want of sun to burst the anthers, and the washing away of the pollen by the frequent showers after they did burst. The fatal influence ascribed to the wetness of the spring of 1782 seems to be improbable; though the wet 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.

A similar incident occurred among the wasps in the year 1824. The queen wasps were unusually numerous in the spring of that year, and yet scarcely a wasp could be seen of any sort in the ensuing summer and autumn, though there was a great deal of fine weather and plenty of sunshine, the fruits having ripened remarkably well. In both cases, it seems probable that the mortality arose from some unfavourable circumstance at the breeding season, with which we are unacquainted. I am not aware that it has been attributed to any specific distemper of an epidemical nature. +Mr. Knight+ noticed a similar occurrence, as to wasps, in the year 1806 (Philosophical Transactions 1807, p. 243); and in 1815, +Messrs. Kirby+ and +Spence+ made the same observation. Mr. Knight supposed the scarcity to arise from a want of males to impregnate the queens.

I shall now proceed to notice the maladies of bees; and state their causes, symptoms and remedies, as I have collected them from ancient and modern authors.

+Dysentery.+

This malady was attributed by +Columella+ to the bees extracting and feeding upon honey collected from the blossoms of elms and spurge; he regarded it as an annual distemper. By others it has been ascribed to their feeding too freely upon the vernal honey, from whatever source derived; or from their being obliged to eat wax, through want of other food, in the early part of the spring. +Madame Vicat+ supposed it to arise from the feeding upon honey that had been candied, in consequence of the hive being exposed to a severe winter. +Reaumur+ instituted some experiments to ascertain the cause of dysentery, but they were not satisfactory.

The presence of this disorder is indicated by the appearance of the excrement, which, instead of a reddish yellow, exhibits a muddy black colour, and has an intolerably offensive smell. Also by its being voided upon the floors, and at the entrance of the hives, which bees, in a healthy State, are particularly careful to preserve clean. +Huish+ compares the morbid excrement to linseed.

+Vertigo.+

Vertige, as +Du Carne de Blangy+ calls it, is supposed to arise from the bees extracting the honey of deleterious plants. I have treated fully upon this subject under the head of Pasturage. In addition to what has been there stated I will give an extract from +Dr. Barton's+ Paper, who after observing that there is more poetry than philosophy in the following lines of Pope--

"In the nice bee what sense so subtly true From poisonous herbs extracts the healing dew?"

says: "It is however much to be questioned whether this noxious honey proves so to the bees themselves." Sir J. E. Smith asserts that "the nectar of plants is not poisonous to bees." Syllabus to Botan. Lect. And Dr. Barton, though disposed to adopt the contrary opinion, gives instances to the same effect. Thus a party of young men, induced by the prospect of gain, having removed their hives from Pennsylvania to the Jerseys, whose vast savannahs were finely painted with the flowers of the Kalmia angustifolia, could not use or dispose of their honey, on account of its intoxicating quality; yet, "the bees increased prodigiously," an increase only to be explained by their being well and harmlessly fed.

This disorder is marked, we are told, by a dizzy manner of flying, and by irregular motions, such as starting, falling down, &c. when the bees are pursuing their usual occupations. To these symptoms succeed lassitude and death. No remedy has hitherto been discovered for this malady.

+Huber+ says that vertigo attacks ants, and causes them to lose the power of moving in a straight line, and occasions the performance of rapid gyrations always in the same direction: he observed one insect make about 1000 turns in an hour, describing a circle of about an inch in diameter; this continued for seven days: he does not say whether he ever knew any instance of a recovery.

In Dr. Barton's ingenious paper, to which I have already referred in the chapter on Pasturage, the plants enumerated as yielding poisonous honey are Kalmia angustifolia, latifolia, and hirsuta; Rhododendron maximum, Azalea nudiflora, and Andromeda mariana. The honey of these is stated to have proved injurious both to dogs and the human species. The symptoms it usually produces are dimness of sight or vertigo, delirium, ebriety, pain in the stomach and bowels, convulsions, profuse perspiration, foaming at the mouth, vomiting and purging; in some instances, temporary palsy of the limbs, but very seldom death. The best mode of treatment is not yet ascertained; though the similarity of the symptoms, the Doctor says, would induce us to pursue the same plan as in counteracting other narcotic poisons. In those cases, early vomiting, whether spontaneous or induced by art, removes the disease at once; and cold bathing, so useful in other spasmodic or convulsive affections, is employed with considerable advantage by both Natives and Europeans. This should seem to be one of those cases in which the stomach-pump would be peculiarly beneficial, from the promptness and certainty of its action.

To the credit of the genus of plants last named, it should be mentioned that one species (Andromeda nitida or lucida of +Bartram+) affords abundance of excellent honey; hence the name of honey-flower is given to it, by the country people in Georgia and Carolina, not however merely from the circumstance just mentioned, but from the regular position of the flowers on the peduncle, which open like the cells of a honey-comb, and from the odour of these flowers, which greatly resembles that of honey."--Barton.

"As most of the plants enumerated in the above list are now introduced into our gardens, and the Datura (common Thorn Apple) has long become perfectly naturalized, they might be supposed to injure the British honey. Most probably, however, their proportion to the whole of the flowers in bloom, is too small to produce any such inconvenience; whereas on their native continent they exclusively cover whole tracts of country, as instanced above in the Jerseys." Evans, B. ii. p. 95.

+Tumefaction of the Antennæ.+

The antennæ, in this disorder, become swelled at their extremities, which resemble the bud of a flower ready to open, and they assume a yellow colour, of which the forepart of the head shortly partakes; the bees becoming gradually languid and dying, if they have not timely assistance.--This malady occurs about the month of May.

+Pestilence+, or +Faux Couvain+ (as Schirach calls it).

Pestilence has been reckoned among bee-maladies, and attributed to the residence of dead larvæ in the cells, from a careless deposition of ova by the queen, (the head of the grub not being placed in a proper position for exclusion, when that period has arrived,) it has also been ascribed to cold, and to bad nursing, that is, feeding with unwholesome food.

+Treatment.+

The remedies which have been found most successful in all these maladies, excepting vertigo, are cordials, namely wine and sugar. This circumstance, taken in conjunction with their occurring at the spring of the year, tends to confirm my opinion that the ailments of bees arise from hunger and filth.

Cleanliness and timely supplies of sugared ale, particularly during the months of February and March, are the preventive remedies which have hitherto preserved my bees in a state of healthful activity. In ungenial springs, feeding should be continued even through a considerable part of May, if the preceding autumn have been unfavourable, or if a cold May have succeeded to warm weather in early spring,--the earliest vernal flowers affording but a scanty supply of honey. The apiarian is sometimes astonished that he should lose his bees at this advanced season of the year, when but a short time before he had seen them in full health and activity. Had he afforded that food which his bees could not obtain from a comparatively immature and honeyless vegetation, their hives would still have gladdened him with the spectacle of a thriving population.

"If e'er dank autumn, with untimely storm, The honey'd harvest of the year deform, Or the chill blast, from Eurus' mildew wing, Blight the fair promise of returning spring, Full many a hive but late alert and gay, Droops in the lap of all-inspiring May."

+Evans.+

The reader must now perceive the importance of feeding, and that the transition from health to languor and death is less frequently to be ascribed to disease, than to the want of the necessary means to continue the vital energy. The suddenness of the unhappy change may reasonably lead the uninformed or improvident to suppose that an incurable malady has visited their hives:--so long as the store of honey lasted, there were health and prosperity; but that gone, famine commenced its ravages, and an extinction of the bees of course followed. A little foresight and a little trouble would have kept off the calamity. I am perhaps tediously particular in this notice. I wish to impress my noviciate bee-friends with the necessity of thus providing for their hives, that the most frequent agent of mischief,--hunger,--may be kept out of them. Still further let me also recommend to them, on the approach of winter to have the floors of their hives or boxes well cleaned from insects and their eggs, and from all heterogeneous matter. This is a business which the bees themselves, when the weather admits of it, are particularly attentive to; indeed they refrain, as much as possible, from dropping their excrement upon the floors, taking advantage of every fine day in winter to sally forth and get rid of it. This was proved by the experiments of Mr. Hunter: indeed they sometimes fall a sacrifice to their personal neatness in this respect, their bodies becoming so swelled, from the accumulation of fæces, as completely to disable them from flying, when the weather is sufficiently favourable to admit of their going out; in consequence of which, they fall to the ground and perish.

+Schirach+ and others recommend, in cases of Faux Couvain, to cut out the infected combs, and to clean and fumigate the hive by burning aromatics under it.

In +Butler's+ Feminine Monarchie, we are gravely told of a certain bee-mistress, who, finding her hives fruitless, and their tenants pining away with sickness, by the advice of another female, went to receive the eucharist, and having kept it in her mouth, placed it, on her return home, in one of the diseased hives. The plague ceased; honey accumulated; and, on examining the inside, she found a waxen chapel and altar, of wondrous architecture, and even bells of the same materials.--Gent. Mag. 1809. p. 316.

To prove that there is much of fancy in the traditional accounts respecting bee-maladies, I will mention the various hypotheses concerning dysentery. +Columella+ speaks of its arising from the bees feeding upon honey collected from elm and spurge blossoms; my own neighbourhood abounds with both; but I never met with nor scarcely heard of dysentery among the bees here. +Evelyn+ in his Sylva expresses doubts upon the subject; and +Dr. Evans+ says he made particular inquiries of some friends in Worcestershire, which (like this county--Herefordshire) abounds with elms, without obtaining satisfactory information.

Dysentery has also been said to be produced by a surfeit of vernal honey, simply as such, from whatever flowers derived: were this true it would occur in all neighbourhoods. With respect to its proceeding from their eating wax, I am decidedly of opinion that wax never constitutes any part of their food, under any circumstances; not a tittle of evidence can be adduced in support of such an assertion. Wax is an excrementitious matter, secreted among the abdominal folds of the bees for the sole purpose of constructing the honey and brood-combs: the scraps of wax that are observed in winter and spring upon the hive floors, and which, to the minds of common observers, convey the idea that they are crumbs caused by the bees consuming the wax for food, are produced by their nibbling the lids of the cells to uncover the honey. If +Madame Vicat's+ theory were correct, what would become of all the bees in Siberia and other northern regions? Huish says he never found honey in this country to candy in the combs, but adds that Bonner assured him that he had experienced it. Vide chapter on Honey.

+Kirby+ and +Spence+ have given it as their opinion, that dysentery arises from the bees having an insufficiency of pollen or bee-bread to eat with their honey. We have no evidence that pollen constitutes any part of the food of adult bees; and if it did, they have generally opportunities of storing it very abundantly, in the autumn, as well as in the spring: and such is the provident industry of bees, that a considerable surplus is always found in every stock-hive.

+Wildman+ and +Huish+ recommend salt for preserving the health of bees; and their frequenting stable drains and other receptacles of urine gives countenance to this recommendation, as it seems probable that the saline matter contained in those fluids attracts the bees, their desire for it overcoming that repugnance to offensive odours which would otherwise occasion them to avoid such places. Even fresh urine has been recommended by +Ranconi+, an Italian author, in case the bees should be attacked by dysentery;--in all probability a weak solution of salt would be more acceptable and equally efficacious. I always introduce a small portion of it into the syrup with which I feed my bees. +Keys+ says that they are not fond of salt. Vide Page 186.

I will close this chapter on the Diseases of Bees with an extract from Nicholson's Journal, vol. xxiii. p. 234: Scientific Intelligence.

"A large swarm of bees having settled on a branch of the poison ash, (Rhus Vernix,) in the county of West Chester in America, was taken into a hive of fir at three o'clock in the afternoon, and removed to the place where it was to remain, at nine. About five the next morning the bees were found dead, swelled to double their natural size, and black, except a few, which appeared torpid and feeble, and soon died on exposure to the air." This was attributed to their being poisoned by the effluvia of the Rhus Vernix.