I recently wrote up what I could find relating to the history of paraffin wax dipping:
Paraffin Wax Dipping
As with a lot of my writing, I didn't focus on the use of the article, and write to the audience and purpose. The text is mostly what I was preparing for a more formal article, so you might want to skip down to the summary toward the bottom. I do much prefer to write in such a way that I can easily provide the links to the "old" material for people to evaluate for themselves.
In collecting the information, three things in particular stood out for me:
Paraffin Wax Dipping
As with a lot of my writing, I didn't focus on the use of the article, and write to the audience and purpose. The text is mostly what I was preparing for a more formal article, so you might want to skip down to the summary toward the bottom. I do much prefer to write in such a way that I can easily provide the links to the "old" material for people to evaluate for themselves.
In collecting the information, three things in particular stood out for me:
- The consistency in recommended time and temperature, even long before it was confirmed in the late 1990s. 160 deg C for 10 minutes was the recommendation in almost all these articles over time (for AFB sterilisation).
- The realisation that there probably wasn't anyone who "discovered" the use of hot paraffin dipping for AFB gear sterilisation. It probably came over quite a period time as bkprs realised that gear wasn't causing reinfections.
- The persistence of allowing the treatment of AFB-infected gear with scorching and boiling in caustic. As late as *1975* the classic "Beekeeping in New Zealand" book described those methods, though advising against them. Fair enough, the book was for the most part a reprint of an earlier book, and may not have had the editorial rigour to pick up on that. The first bkpr I worked for (in 1974) had some boxes that were scorched on the inside by a previous owner, but even then I was under the impression that it had been outlawed as ineffective.
