Peter,

PCR testing can be very misleading, since mere presence of a virus may be
enough for a positive result.
qPCR (quantitative PCR) is more meaningful, since it counts how many copies
there are of the viral primer strand in the bee.

Even more meaningful is using negative-strand primers, since the majority
of bee viruses are positive strand, and produce negative strands only when
they're replicating.

We all carry latent virus infections, as do bees.  Nearly any honey bee in
a varroa region will test positive for DWV, as they inherit it from their
mother.  But their immune system keeps the virus in check.  Some viruses
may even have beneficial aspects to the host when kept in check--this is
something that is yet poorly understood.

Your result of 1.11E+05 copies/bee, if I read it right (that's not how they
are normally expressed in scientific literature) indicates 111,000 copies,
which is a fairly trivial amount of viral strands.  DWV, for example, isn't
a problem until it reaches around 10,000,000,000 - 100,000.000.000
copies..  For the paralytic viruses, perhaps 100,000,000.  Yeah, lots of
zeroes, that's why they use the logarithmic shorthand.

Sacbrood virus used to be the most common virus found in bees by Bailey in
England, yet was rarely symptomatic.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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