On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 3:48 PM, Peter L Borst <[log in to unmask]>
 wrote:

> > From our experience, if bees go off feed, you've already  gone too far.
>  That's a crisis mode.
>
> But what I am asking is: How do we know this is *caused* by Nosema? Is
> Nosema a cause of illness, or a symptom of bees sick from some other cause?
> I don't see anybody nailing this down.
>

I am with you Pete, but  from a practical perspective it doesn't matter, .
I am convinced that - as with varroa - there should be an association with
given viruses and nosema.

That is the only explanation I have for my experiences first with bleach
and now with orego-stim.
In both of this products there is circunstantial evidence that they control
viruses (I am assuming orego-stim as an essential oil in this reasoning
http://beeculture.com/storycms/index.cfm?cat=Story&recordID=697).

I stoped feeding bleach to the colonies because I got worried about
affecting the gut bacteria, however,
eventough I have excellent colonies this season, I am watching a high
presence of "black hairless bees"
that for me is an indication of viruses. I will in the near future drench
them with bleach-syrup to see if I can stop further development of those
black hairless bees.

Our monitoring show a very low presence of varroa and also nosema. We will
do a deeper analisis starting next week as we have to be inspeccted by our
Ag Service for being able to export queen to France. We haven't
artificially feed this colonies since past september (early spring for us)
except a group of colonies that we are using for late queen breading, and
those colonies took really good the "oregostimed" syrup (we used though top
feeder rather than internal frame ones).

So yes it could be virus first, nosema latter, the other way around or both
at the same time. But how to know from a practical, fast and unexpensive
way?.

We do not have at Chile a way to know which are the viruses. There is only
one study done on one location and they found Acute and Chronic Paralisis
virus, apart from BQCV, DWV and Sac brood. I wrote about it here (again in
spanish)
http://apiaraucania.blogspot.com/2011/05/combate-al-despoblamiento.html

Which are/is the virus/es associated with those "black hairless" bees?




Juanse Barros J.
APIZUR S.A.
Carrera 695
Gorbea - CHILE
+56-45-271693
08-3613310
http://apiaraucania.blogspot.com/
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