In a message dated 12/02/1999 11:56:06 AM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< Allen probably has a good point, in the SAFB is a distinctly new and
 different disease.  It probably did arise, however, from ordinary AFB
 which by genetic mutation picked up resistance to OTC.  >>

This strain of Foul Brood reminds me of a situation I had a number of years
ago when I was raising show chickens.  Don't laugh, I will bring this full
circle.  I was so interested in genetics that I would read everything I could
get my hands on involving the subject.  Chickens have diseases too.  Some of
the diseases are just as devastating to the commercial poultry producers as
AFB is to our bees.  The big universities and commercial guys spent lots of
time and money developing  chickens to produce either meat or eggs.  Those
were the goals, their productivity.  Vaccines and medications followed to
keep the prodctive birds going and all was well until some evil microbe or
virus popped up and started wiping out the super productive chickens.  The
'super' chickens just didn't have much resistance because it was not a
priority in their development.

The hobbiest kept his chickens in the back yard and didn't have the resources
to vaccinate and medicate like the big boys.  He would raise his birds from
stock that had no "commercial" value, but they did have disease resistance.
They were not bred for resistance, they just ended up that way because the
hobbiest raised his birds from the survivors of the various poultry plagues.
Later on, the hobbiests got into medicating and that is another story.

I knew this because I had read about it and I was determined to have
resistant stock.  The first year I had my flock of Dutch Bantams (little show
chickens) I lost about half of the flock when some kind of plague came
through.  I didn't medicate.  The next year I lost about 25% to the same
thing.  I didn't medicate.  The next year was a repeat but I only lost about
10% and in the years to follow, I only lost a bird here and there.  I never
experienced a "plague" again.  My friends in the hobby were always medicating
and always had a few birds that would get sick.  They would save them with
medications and breed more birds from them, which would also "need"
medicating.  Here's the point.   We know that bees cand have a resistance to
the various diseases or we would have lost them all a long time ago.

I do advocate the use of medications when the situation warrants it but we
are now seeming to enter into a era where the decision to medicate or not
will not be ours any more.  Breeding for resistance would seem to be a
priority for all of us at this time.  Breeding for genetic traits is not a
new thing.  It has been done for centuries.  Some of our domestic animals
don't even look like the wild type they came from anymore because weve been
dinking around with the gene pool for centuries.  We can develop stock that
will be resistant to all of the maladies, in my opinion.  We just need to be
observant and develop our stock to stand against the maladies affecting us at
this time.  There may not be (or probably isn't)  a single gene responsible
for various types of disease resistance.  It may be a combination of genes
that form the "trait" we need.  I am confident we can do it or it may just be
done for us if we wait long enough.

Bob Bassett