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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
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Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:32:38 +0000
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Re hydrogen peroxide disinfection, I have wondered if it would "work", which is a factor of biology meeting  practicality. Re: biology, nosema infects bees when it is ingested, then sporulates and in so doing injects material into a bee gut cell. I saw a paper that stated  that hydrogen peroxide will induce sporulation. So my hypothesis was that if sporulation could be induced outside of the gut, and further that if the bug would then become non infective, then effectively contamination would be reduced.
Biology is only part of the question of course. Like any active pharmaceutical ingredient ( API), there is still a big leap to becoming a "drug". The API has to be delivered  safely ( to the worker),  harmless ( to the "body" ( the comb)), in a  practical way, then has to get to the site of activity ( the nosema which may be caked under wax, cocoons, etc) then has the be "metabolized and excreted" (disappear or otherwise rendered un-harmful) to the "body" ( the comb, bees, beekeepers, honey etc).  Then it needs to go thru a "clinical trial" so that there is sufficient information to know how effective and reliable the treatment will be so that beekeepers have some guidance to develop their expectations with. This last part is a probelm. A reliable, repeatable, and validated infection model of nosema infection has to be developed, and short of that, some other proxy that makes sense biologically, and that reflects the conditions of use. That may have been done but I dont have a reference. I'd love to know of one if anybody can provide it. The same model could be used to study acetic acid fumigation. 
Anyways, if H2O2 would work, yes, it may be that comb could simply be sprayed, left to dry and returned to service quickly, compared to what we beleive is required of acetic acid fumigation (a week to evaporate and a week to air out). But thats the point, with a good infection model, maybe we'd find that acetic acid, maybe even formic acid,  could be used differently, or on balance may be better etc. 

Greg Hawkins
Everton, ON, Canada

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