randy oliver wrote:
>> no one has offered anything more
> 
>> than speculation in this area [bee immune system] in specific regard to
>> bees.
> 
> 
> Actually, there is a substantial body of research.  I will be publishing an
> article on it soon.

I may have read the posts incorrectly since you came to a different conclusion, but it looked like Jim was 
referring to the speculation as to "weakened immune system".

I have been a bit troubled, as it seems so was Jim, by the cavalier use of the term when the writer obviously 
had no idea what an insects immune system is all about. I did a little reading on it when the bee's "immune 
system" was first mentioned several years ago.

Even more interesting is that honeybees have fewer immune genes than fruit flies and mosquitoes.

I would venture that what most are really talking about is a weakened bee, not an immune system. Think of what 
the bee has to endure from Varroa and Tracheal mites (punctures and loss of hemolymph); authorized (and 
unauthorized) pesticides added to the hive which attack their nervous system; beaten, battered and banged on 
long trips in an enclosed hive on a trailer which dislodges wings and legs; and have to forage on killer blooms 
like blueberries that both strip the hair off its body and give poor return on nectar.

After all that you have a weak bee. It can have a perfect immune system, but the damage it has sustained allows 
a pathogen to overwhelm it. From there you can easily cascade (nosema is easily handled with low spore counts) 
as the dead and dying act as pathogen factories. Again, every bee there can have a perfect immune system, but 
any immune system can be overwhelmed.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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