The results were also published in another journal. There, they said: the data show that bees from colonies that survived winter in fact had significantly higher loads of N. ceranae in November than bees from failing colonies (P 0.001), strongly suggesting that this parasite is not responsible for colony collapse in winter, at least in certain parts of Europe. It is conceivable that Nosema loads were higher in surviving colonies because bees from these colonies lived significantly longer (10 to 15% longer) and older bees tend to accumulate more Nosema spores Dead or Alive: Deformed Wing Virus and Varroa destructor Reduce the Life Span of Winter Honeybees Benjamin Dainat, Jay D. Evans, Yan Ping Chen, Laurent Gauthier, and Peter Neumann Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 2012, 78(4):981 *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm