>
>
> >It can be concluded
> that traditional, natural way of beekeeping provides
> significantly better conditions for maintenance of
> bee health and their resistance to pathogens.


Brother Adam, many years ago, often looked for differences in signs of
disease between managed hives and wild colonies in tree or other cavities.
He often noted that he observed fewer signs of disease in wild hives.  This
does not surprise me at all, for a couple of reasons: there is transfer of
pathogens by human handling of hive parts in apiaries, plus the fact that
sick wild hives often quickly die, leaving only the healthy ones.

 The authors of the paper cited surveyed 120 DB (Dadant-Blatt?) hives in 15
commercial apiaries in Serbia, and 24 woven, apparently mud-covered hives
in three apiaries.

The queens of the commercial hives had all been purchased; those in the
woven hives were apparently of local stock--"The replacement of the queens
took place by natural means."

What bothers me about the authors' conclusion, is that the study was not
designed to *test* anything.  It did not in any way *test* the effect of
hive type or management.  It was simply a survey of pathogen presence,
between different apiaries, of different size colonies in different size
hives, under different management, with different queen stocks.  There was
no record of colony survival rates.

So although the results of their survey are of interest, little was
actually learned.

--
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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