The honey bee, its natural history, physiology, and management
Edward Bevan
Paperback
(RareBooksClub.com, May 16, 2012)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1827 Excerpt: ...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. Me. 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 sta...