> When pressed by Dewey and another gentleman from the
> Bee Lab in Beltsville (I think), she clarified that
> without varroa infestation, that the bees had developed
> an uncanny ability to "deal" with most of the viruses
> on their own.

The current state-of-the-art work indicates that viruses
have little opportunity to spread within a colony without
varroa to act as a "carrier", and spread the viruses
between bees.

Judy Chen of the USDA Beltsville Bee Lab has done
quite a bit of work showing that while small numbers
of bees in colonies certainly can and do get viruses
without mites, that the mites spread viruses with
alarming certainty.

"Molecular Evidence for Transmission of Kashmir Bee
Virus in Honey Bee Colonies by Ectoparasitic Mite,
Varroa Destructor"
http://tinyurl.com/nfvro

"Quantitative Real-Time Reverse Transcription-PCR
Analysis of Deformed Wing Virus Infection in the
Honeybee (Apis mellifera L.)"
http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/full/71/1/436

The interesting thing here is that INDIVIDUAL bees
and mites were checked for the viruses at issue,
and that there was a clear and compelling correlation
between "mites per larvae" and "odds of the virus
being transmitted".

The other interesting thing was that if the bee
larvae was given the virus by one mite, all other
mites that fed on that larvae were also given the
virus.

Now, if we could only stumble across a virus that
was harmless to bees, but killed mites!
(Hey - a boy can dream, can't he?)

-- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l for rules, FAQ and  other info ---