Reading Kim's "Catch the Buzz" re the AIA survey, I looked at the following two statements:-

1.  The second strain is more frequent in sampled colonies from the western U.S..  This strain matches more closely to several isolates sequenced to date from Australian package bees.

2.  Extensive variation in the genetic sequence of the virus suggests that the virus is rapidly changing in the U.S. or has been present as multiple lineages for some time.

When the debate on the IAPV coming from Australia first raised its head, I wondered where Australia would have got the IAPV.  The most logical place was the USA as we imported a lot of stock from the USA prior to the quarantine station going in place around 1983.

So if the virus is rapidly changing, couldn't it have been the case that Australia got the IAPV from stock imported from the western USA prior to 1983, the virus has changed since then and what came back to the USA in bees is a mutated version of what came out in the first place?  The statement says the Australian and western USA isolates are a close matches.

Food for thought.  Not wanting to lay blame but just interested in where IAPV came from in Australia.

Trevor Weatherhead
AUSTRALIA


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