Jerry wrote:
We've no problem keeping the varroa levels down in our research colonies,  
that we check and audit frequently, keeping written records.  These are the  
colonies we infect with Nosema.  Our source colonies tend to have very high 
levels of N. ceranae.  When we inoculated our trial colonies with nosema,  
they soon die at levels far below those of the source colony.  Our original 
goal was to wait until the nosema levels in the treated colonies reached 5 
M  spores (a fraction of what we see in the source colony).  We had to back 
down from that, we kept killing colonies with Nosema alone - never got to 
adding  the virus, and no detectable varroa.

I am confused by the paragraph above.  If I am reading that correctly:
1) You have some colonies (the "source colonies") with very high levels of infection with N. ceranae.  You don't say but presumably they have a normal load of varroa, virus, etc?  Despite all that, they live.
2) You have other colonies (the "research colonies") which start with little or no N.ceranae, and little or no varroa.  I assume they are happy and healthy, too.
3) When you add N. ceranae from the source to the research colonies (still with no varroa), the research colonies die BEFORE the source.  That is, they die with LESS stress than the ones above.
 
How is that possible?  Assuming the bees are constant (and that you've controlled for everything else), how is less N. ceranae more lethal to a colony?  If that's so, how did the source colony get badly infected in the first place?  Presumably it also would have had to go from uninfected to partially-infected to badly-infected.  Why didn't the source colony die at the level that the research colonies are dying?
 
Or am I completely misunderstanding that paragraph?

Mike Rossander

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