Roman Beekeeping: Part 14

Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.

The next thing is that remedies are needed for those which are suffering from disease or pestilence. The ruinous disease of ‘pestilence' is rare in bees, nor can I find anything which ought to be done other than what we have prescribed in the case of the other animals (except that the hives should be moved far away); but the causes of common ailments in bees are more easily diagnosed and remedies found for them.

The most serious is their annual distemper at the beginning of spring, when the spurge-bush flowers and the elms put forth their bitter blossoms; for as by fresh apples, so are they allured by these early flowers and eat greedily of them after their winter hunger, such food not being hurtful when not eaten beyond satiety, but when they have gorged themselves abundantly with it, they die from a flux of the belly, unless help is quickly given. For spurge produces looseness of the bowels in the larger animals also, but elm has this effect particularly on bees. This is the reason why bees rarely continue numerous in the districts of Italy which are planted with trees of this kind. And so at the beginning of spring, if you supply them with medicated food, by means of the same remedies it is possible both to provide against their being troubled by plague of this kind and also to cure them when they are already suffering from it.

Now I myself do not venture to insist on the treatment which Hyginus, following ancient authorities, has recorded, since I have not tried it; but it is open to those who wish to do so to test it. For his instructions are : when a plague of this kind has attacked the bees, and the bodies are found for dead in heaps under the honeycombs, lay them aside in a dry place through the winter, and, at about the time of the spring equinox, when the mildness of the day invites us, bring them out into the sunshine, after the third hour, and cover them with rig-wood ashes. If this is done, he declares that within two hours, brought to life by the quickening breath of the heat, they begin to breathe again and crawl into a vessel provided for this purpose, if it is placed in their way.

We rather, that they may not perish, are of opinion that the diet, which we will forthwith describe, should be put before the swarms when they are sick. For they ought to be given either seeds of pomegranate, bruised and sprinkled with Aminean a wine, or raisins with an equal quantity of Syrian sumach and soaked in rough wine; or, if these are without effect taken separately, all the same ingredients should be pounded in equal quantities into a single mass and boiled in an earthenware vessel with Aminean wine and then allowed to cool right away and placed before the bees in wooden troughs.

Some people boil rosemary in honey-water and, when it has cooled, pour it into troughs and give it to the bees to sip. Others put the urine either of oxen or of human beings near the hives, as Hyginus declares. Moreover also, that disease is particularly remarkable which makes them hideous and shrunken and consumes them, when some often carry out from their abodes the bodies of those which have died, while others remain listless within their dwellings in sad silence, as though in time of public mourning. When this happens food is offered them poured into troughs made of reeds, especially boiled honey pounded up with an oak-apple or a dried rose. It is also a good plan to burn galbanum that they may be cured by its odour, and to keep up their strength, when they are exhausted, with raisin-wine and boiled-down must. The root of the starwort, the bushy part of which is yellow and its flower purple, has the best effect of all ; it is boiled with old Aminean wine and pressed and then the juice is strained and given as a remedy.

Hyginus indeed, in the book which he wrote about bees, says: "Aristomachus is of opinion that help ought to be brought to bees which are sick in the following manner: first, all the diseased combs should be removed and entirely fresh food placed for the bees, and then they should be fumigated." He thinks also that it is beneficial to add a new swarm to the bees who are wasted by old age, although there is a danger that they may be destroyed by sedition, nevertheless they are likely to rejoice because their number is increased. But that they may remain in a state of concord, the kings of those bees which are being transferred from another hive ought to be put out of the way as rulers of an alien people.

There is, however, no doubt that the honey-combs of the most populous swarms, which have young bees already matured in them, ought to be transferred and made subject to the less populous swarms that their families may be strengthened by the adoption, as it were, of fresh progeny. But,when this is going to be done, we must remember to put in the care of the old swarm those honey-combs in which the young ones are already opening their cells and putting out their heads and eating away the wax which was laid upon the top as a kind of covering for their holes. For if we transfer the honey-combs when the brood has not come to maturity, the young bees will die when they cease to be kept warm. For they often die of a distemper which the Greeks call phagedaina.

For since it is the habit of bees to construct beforehand as many cells as they think they can fill, it sometimes happens that, when their waxen structures are finished, the swarm, while it is roaming too far afield in search of honey, is overwhelmed in the woods by sudden showers and whirlwinds and loses most of the ordinary bees. When this has happened, the few that remain are not enough to fill the combs and then the empty parts of the wax cells become rotten, and since diseases gradually creep in, the honey becomes corrupted and the bees, too, themselves die.

To prevent this, either the populations of two hives ought to be united, so that they can fill the waxen cells which are still sound, or, if a second swarm is not available, we must remove the honey-combs from the uninhabited parts, before they go rotten, with a very sharp knife. For it is very important also that a very blunt iron tool, because it does not easily penetrate, should notbe pressed with great force and- dislodge the honey-combs from their places; for if this has happened, the bees desert their abode.

There is also this cause of mortality among bees that sometimes very many flowers come up during several continuous years and the bees are more eager to make honey than to produce offspring. And so some people, whose knowledge of these matters is defective, are delighted at the large production of honey, not being aware of the destruction which is threatening the bees ; for, exhausted by too much labour, very many of them are perishing and, as their numbers are not being increased by the addition of young stock, the rest at last die off. And so, if such a spring comes on that both the meadows and the cornfields abound in flowers, it is most expedient every third day to close the exits from the hives (small openings having been left through which the bees cannot pass), so that, called from the activity of making honey, since they have no hope of being able to fill up the waxen cells with liquid honey, they may fill them with offspring. Such then in general are the remedies for swarms suffering from some distemper.

Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, On Agriculture, trans. E. S. Forster and Edward H. Heffner, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954), 473-481.

Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (4-70 CE)

Historic Beekeeping

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