deknow wrote: "the paper we wrote was (i think) well referenced ...
martha gilliam's work especially comes to mind."

These are rather obscure papers that most beekeepers cannot access.
Are sure your conclusions flow from her work; or are you perhaps
embellishing it a bit?

deknow wrote: "People who buy honey (especially from a beekeeper) have
no concept that anything at all goes into the hive"

Gilliam wrote: "Over 6000 microbial strains associated with bees and
their food have been isolated and identi¢ed. Newly emerged adult
worker bees are inoculated with microorganisms when they begin to
feed. Microbial inoculation and colonization of the gut occur
within 4 days after emergence as a result of pollen consumption and
through food exchange with older bees in the colony. Gram-variable
pleomorphic bacteria are the most common intestinal microorganisms in
adult worker and queen honey bees ...

I am not sure that the public is going to be enchanted with the idea
that honey bees are swapping bacteria and yeasts from their guts and
adding it to honey and pollen.

> There is a growing appreciation for the potentially beneficial roles of bacteria in honey bee colonies. Evans and Lopez recently showed that non-pathogenic bacteria can stimulate the innate immune response of honey bee larvae, perhaps helping bees survive exposure to pathogens. Further, Reynaldi et al. recently showed that bacteria isolated from bees in Argentina are inhibitory of the important bee fungal pathogen, Ascosphaera apis. It will be interesting to determine whether these species, in addition, are also inhibitory toward P. larvae, and to contrast the microbes associated with bees across different continents.

"Antagonistic interactions between honey bee bacterial symbionts and
implications for disease"
Jay D Evans  and Tamieka-Nicole Armstrong

http://tinyurl.com/57t7sc

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