> As I have said, the use of antibiotics is frequently 
> justified, as in the paper by Woyke, by increases 
> in production.

Woyke "justified" no such thing.  He tested for, and found Nosema apis, he
then treated the test colonies, leaving the control colonies to continue to
suffer from verified cases of Nosema apis.  The differences between the
colonies were the difference between sick and healthy colonies.  The paper
is very clear.  

> This is an indirect way of showing that 
> fumagillin controls nosema, of course, 

And this is all it is.  He was using easy-to-measure health metrics, nothing
more.

> I don't know if a counter study has been done on hives 
> without nosema, to see if similar boosts would occur. 

As Woyke said, others who did similar tests found far less stark differences
between treated colonies and controls, so it seems clear that even when
curing verified disease, Fumagillin will not "reliably" increase production
in honey bees.  The reason for this is simple - some cases of Nosema apis
are worse than others, and thereby, have a greater negative impact on colony
health, and hence, productivity.  One can only "gain" the "improvement"
resulting from curing disease, so the "performance enhancement" varies with
the severity of the disease cured.  In fact, one has merely restored the
colony to a normal healthy state.

From this, it seems clear that speculation about antibiotics having any
beneficial impact on productivity in bee colonies is based upon a profound
misunderstanding of the work done in this area to date.

> However, sub-therapeutic doses are being applied to other livestock for
this purpose.

I feel forced to repeat myself - there is negligible similarity between the
digestive tract of a ruminant and a bee.

As I find myself repeating myself, I think I have said enough - the very
idea of using antibiotics to do more than cure disease is absolutely without
basis in fact.  Yes, healthy colonies out-produce sick ones in many
measureable ways, but that's not news.  Fumagillin treatments often have
short-term NEGATIVE impact on the treated colony, and these are also easy to
measure, but the cure is better than the disease.

Here's an idea - why not ask Woyke what his paper says?  Eric Mussen has
also done a lot of work with Nosema, he'd be another good one to ask.



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