-- Peter L Borst <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>But the advent of such a relationship is by no means assured as evidenced by the experiment on Santa Cruz Island. It has taken place in populations of Apis cerana and Apis mellifera scutellata.

well peter, are you claiming here that this is proof that if left to their own devices, varroa would kill off all honeybees in north america?  it's been 100 million years (and an asteroid impact to boot) and the bees are still here despite all the physical and biological challenges they have faced...only recently have they had any help from humans.

>My point was that while humans can use foresight to avoid killing the
goose that lays the golden egg, "microbes" cannot.

this is of course correct...but microbes use something much more effective than foresight to avoid killing the host...they use hindsight.  the only microbes that are on/in a given organism are ones that are born from microbes that have survived, reproduced, and transferred to another organism...humans are pretty close to being microbe free before birth (and they pick up different microbes depending on the birthing process), so any microbe on you is survivor stock, and probably didn't kill it's host.  do consider that there are 500-1000 different kinds of microbes living in your gut alone..and many thousands more throughout your body...all without killing you (in fact they are feeding you).  add to that the millions that we encounter every day..that a bee encounters every day...and how few we are scared of.  it is just a fact that the vast vast vast majority of microbes are beneficial/necessary or benign.

only some percentage of microbes that are alive today will be alive tomorrow...some strategies will not work for some microbes in some circumstances, and they will not reproduce.  100% of the microbes that are alive tomorrow were either alive today, or descended from microbes that are alive today.  this is the difference between foresight and hindsight.  foresight only works some of the time, hindsight works all the time.  same thing applies to the host/parasite relationship...parasites that are alive today may or may not have traits that allow them to reproduce...those alive tomorrow are descended from those that did.

aside from the current "ccd", and a few cases of disappearing diseases and spring/fall dwindle....most actual pathogenic bee diseases can be counted on your fingers.  compare this to the at least 6000 microbes that live in a healthy hive...and especially since several of these are pathogens, but keep each other in balance, and are present in most hives without showing symptoms.

ramona has been doing a ton of research on this topic...and we have been talking non-stop about microbes...both in and out of the beehive.

we see where we got things wrong in "No Bee Is An Island".  it isn't that the pollen grain needs to ferment in order to just "pop open"...it is the progression of many fermentation processes, each setting the stage for the next, that produces necessary substances for the other microbes, and for the bees.  think of the fermentation of pollen as a tree rotting in the forest...there is a progression of bugs living underneath it, a few tunneling inside, molds and fungi, sow bugs, centipedes.....

the exact makeup of this culture of microorganisms is a heritable thing...perhaps more so than the genetics of the bees, and perhaps more important.  antibiotics, pesticides, and other treatments that disrupt the microbial balance (which seems to include sugar as a winter feed) will, over time, erode the diversity and functionality of this culture.

the key (regardless of cell size) is not so much to breed a varroa (or nosema) resistant bee, but to allow the bees to build up their microbial culture without interference.  keeping the bees alive long enough for this to happen is the trick....and perhaps that's what sc has to offer...perhaps it's a red herring, but we are both convinced that the microbes are the key.  we think that sc might well give a  head start (our experience suggests this).

it may be that in some areas, some of the essential microbes have become extinct and/or rare due to the impacts of varroa, tracheal mite, and beekeeper practices...perhaps this points to why some have success and other failure.  it's more than likely that these microbial cultures have some things in common, and some are localized.

in any case, this is what ramona is going to be giving a talk on at the nebraska state conference...and it's going to be exciting.  she will cover this stuff in much more detail.  if you are interested in attending, the last day to register is the 14th OF THIS MONTH...and it's only $95.

all the speakers are excellent (i won't speak for myself), and i can tell you that you won't think about bees the same way after ramona gets done with you :)

deknow

i should also say that i know that some parasites transfer to new hosts after they kill their old host.  generally, this seems to be successful than moving from one live host to the next.

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