>
> >Those slowing down taking syrup *in my opinion* are a stage away from the
> *dying in feeder* stage.
>

Bob, I find your observations very interesting, and hope that you continue
to follow up on them.  Recent research has indicated that  *caged* bees
increase their syrup consumption when infected with N ceranae, but may also
go off feed for a few days.  The data is very confusing.

N ceranae is still a huge question to researchers.  I have recently spoken
at length to most of those doing research.  Most of the time, spore counts
do not appear to be correlated well with either poor performance, poor
wintering, or colony loss.  However, in some operations, N ceranae appears
to explode to harmful levels.  No one has any idea as to spore counts that
would constitute a treatment threshold.

There does not appear to be great differences in many operations whether one
treats with fumagillin or not.  So I'm very curious to see what you observe.

>
> >I spoke with a beekeeper in Texas which lost two loads when sprayed with a
> fungicide while in almonds.


I've never heard of fungicides causing those kinds of losses, and we get
sprayed heavily up in Northern California.  It is unfortunate that the
*system* is not set up for easy documentation of bee kills, or for
inexpensive testing for pesticides, which is necessary to finger the
culprit.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
ScientificBeekeeping.com

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