"There had come most alarming tales from the South of a new and devastating plague. Whole apiaries had been wiped out in the Isle of Wight; the trouble had spread to the mainland, was rapidly travelling north and spreading far and wide. Towards the end of this most glorious of English summers for beekeeping, I noticed a large number of bees running about in front of their hives unable to fly, and these towards evening tended to bunch on grass and lumps of earth. Even then, being inexperienced, I did not quite realize what was coming, and like all amateurs, I looked about for someone to tell me what to do about it."
"In the autumn of 1912 I moved what few bees I had left to my new home near Abingdon and by the following June every stock but one had died out and for the time being I could hardly call myself a beekeeper any longer. But the next year I started off again. I found a swarm on my farm and hived it. Every bee was dead in a few weeks of Isle of Wight disease. I had one stock that had for some reason survived the holocaust, and from it I managed to stock several of my hives, and in 1915 I had quite a little honey to sell. The plague seemed to have been to some extent stayed: in fact it never returned with the same devastating virulence so far as my bees were concerned. It was, however, still present, and seemed likely to remain so."
HONEY FARMING, R. O. B. Manley, 1945
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