For all of you who weren't in Orlando, you missed a great conference. It was a joint meeting of several organizations, including the American Beekeeping Federation (ABF), Canadian Honey Council (CHC), Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists (CAPA), American Association of Professional Apiculturists (AAPA), and Apiary Inspectors of America (AIA). 

For me the high point was the presentation by Medhat Nasr. I guess I wasn't the only one because he was handed an award at the Banquet for his service to the beekeepers of Alberta, CA. He previously received The Alberta Beekeepers 2009 Achievement Award in November. The title of his talk was Honey Bee Winter Kill From 2007-2009 in Alberta, Canada: Are Our Bees Healthy? Medhat showed some remarkable pie graphs that represented the percentage of hives in good condition from 2007 to 2009. This number went from 10% to 70% during those years. 

Dr. Nasr emphasizes the importance of monitoring and related that very few beekeepers were monitoring their hives for varroa and nosema when he began his inquiry. He attributes the steep decline in affected bees to the timely use of formic acid and fumagillin. I would suggest the change must be credited to Medhat's sharp focus and hard work getting to the bottom of the problem. 

The chief honey plant in the region is canola which, by the way, is treated with imidacloprid. They make huge crops of honey there. "Although there is an expressed concern by many beekeepers around the world about the use of systemics, the experience in Canada is that we have had 10 years of large scale use on canola with no observed ill effect. In the past there were more complaints from beekeepers about Lorsban and Sevin . For canola, the seed treatments, when applied according to label specifications do not appear to be an issue" - Heather Clay

Another presenter of note was Keith Deplane. He showed that coumaphos, fluvalinate and copper naphthalate caused significant increases in queen supersedure, which is a serious problem for beekeepers everywhere. In fact, many of the presentations showed the harmful effects of in-hive chemicals. A few years ago I contacted one of the researchers who was suggesting that in-hive chemicals might be causing hive failure, and I cautioned him against making such a claim without proof since it would lessen the public's sympathy for us beekeepers. Well, they have proof now. This stuff makes bees sick.

The issue of genetic diversity came up frequently with Sue Cobey outline the case for importing more stock from the regions that have high quality Carniolans and Caucasians. Marla Spivak voiced the opinion that the bees of the US are sufficiently diverse, a point of view supported by work by Dave Tarpy and Debbie Delaney. Speaking of Dave, he presented on the quality of queens, comparing measurements taken on queens over several decades. He stated that beekeepers rate queen quality at the top of the list of factors related to hive failure. Dave's work showed that queens today are good and that they have been of a good quality all along. This suggests that beekeepers may be attributing poor hive performance to the queen when in fact it may be caused by other factors, such as the health of the hives that these queens are being introduced into.

Nosema was discussed until it was coming out of our ears. There is a wide variety of opinion on whether nosema harms colonies. Geoff Williams (Nova Scotia) suggested that colonies with high spore levels performed as well as those with low. Frank Eischen showed data to support the idea that infected bees collect a lot less pollen, possibly only one third the amount that normal hives would. 

The reliability of counting spores was questioned, as it misses the vegetative stage (PCR tests would detect the vegetative stage). Also, there is some reason to think that counting the percentage of infected bees in a hive is a better predictor than the number of spores per bee. Data from New York State clearly showed that Nosema apis was almost totally replaced by N. Ceranae (96%). However, it does not appear to cause collapse in that state and frequently disappears on its own without drugs. 

Varroa sensitive hygiene was defined and offered as a tool for beekeepers to use in their efforts to select and propagate bees that can survive without chemicals, or at least with decreased dependence on them. It is pretty clear that everybody is sick of using chemicals, sick of finding it in the comb, sick of worrying about whether THIS  is what is making bees sick, and we are all greatly concerned about ruining honey's reputation as a natural pure product.

Jody Johnson discussed her work monitoring the effect of imidacloprid applications to trees to try kill the asian longhorn beetle. She has been placing hives in vacant lots in Staten Island and in cemeteries in Queens, NYC. I suggested to her that she might be able to link up with the NYC beekeepers.

Mention was made about Bee Health Videos on YouTube.  Go to: http://www.youtube.com/BeeHealth  -- Even more information can be found at http://www.extension.org/bee_health -- Sorry this is a bit rambling, but it's just cobbled together from my notes which I scribbled on a little yellow pad provided for us all by the Speedy Bee. I hope some of the other people that were there will share their impressions as well. 

Peter Loring Borst 
Ithaca, NY  USA 
peterloringborst.com

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Access BEE-L directly at:
http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A0=BEE-L