Excerpt from The Occurence of Diseases of Adult Bees

This protozoan has been found to be widely distributed in the United States and elsewhere throughout the world, without causing the serious conditions described for the Isle of Wight disease, and for this reason some doubt was cast on the results of the English workers in this field. Furthermore, the organism was found not to be present in all colonies suffering from Isle of Wight disease. Later Anderson and Rennie (1, 2) called these results in question, without, however, giving the cause of the disease, but Nosema apis came to be looked upon as a relatively harmless parasite. In December, 1920, Rennie and his associates announced that the Isle of Wight disease is caused by the parasitic mite Tarsonemus woodi Rennie, and the results of their work were published early in 1921 (9, 17, 18, 19, 21). Later the mite was placed in a new genus, Acarapis (figs. 1 and 2) by Hirst (10).

Search for Isle of Wight disease in the United States. - During the period when the Isle of Wight disease was attributed to Nosema apis there seemed to be no cause for alarm in the United States, but when this theory was disproven and another organism was given as the cause of the trouble, fears regarding the introduction of the disease were renewed. On the receipt of the published results of the work by Rennie (18), steps were at once taken to determine whether Acarapis woodi is present in the United States. Requests were sent out widely to beekeepers, asking that they send to the Bureau of Entomology samples of any adult bees which showed any unusual symptoms or any disease. During the summer of 1921 there were, no reports from any part of the United States that indicated any serious diseases of adult bees. During the summer 200 samples were received, all of which were examined for all known causes of disease among adult bees. The examinations for the mites were made by J. B. Moorman, and A. P. Sturtevant examined the bees for Nosema apis. Certain samples were examined for arsenic, when there seemed reason to suspect poisoning as the cause of death, this work being done by the Bureau of Chemistry.

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