Nosema apis and Acarapis (Tarsonemus) woodi in relation to Isle of Wight Bee Disease

Abstract

In former times when this country was dependent upon bees for its supply of sugar, a heavy mortality among these insects was of sufficient importance to be placed on record. In his Animal Plagues Fleming (1871) gives a number of references to such losses. In Ireland there was a “mortality of bees” in 950 A.D. and again in 992 A.D. there was a “great mortality upon men, cattle and bees.” In 1035 A.D. the destruction of bees afflicted the whole of Bavaria. An eclipse of the sun in 1124 A.D. was followed by a great pestilence amongst oxen, sheep, pigs, and bees. During the time of the “Black Death,” also, there appears to have been heavy losses of bees and at the Manor Court of Heacham in Norfolk, a statement was made on oath by the steward in the forty-fifth year of the reign of Edward III (1372 A.D.) to the effect that ten out of eleven stocks of bees had perished from the murrain. There is little doubt that this entry in the manorial court rolls refers to epidemic disease, but, as Fleming points out, “there is evidently no relationship between the morinâ of the bees and that of the sheep and cows.”