> Many things that appear obvious in retrospect by armchair quarterbacks,

Maybe we can quit the name-calling?  It lowers the tone.  Besides it is a
legitimate question.

 > may not have been so obvious until someone pointed out the differences.

Exactly.  Someone noticed -- finally.  How many had looked before then? 
Lots
was written, but the answer was before everyone's eyes.

 > Case in point--the differences between Nosema ceranae and N. apis are
 > obvious under a scope.  Yet no one noticed that N ceranae had displaced N
 > apis until molecular geneticist Dr. Joe DeRisi pointed out the fact.

Again, this is the point being made, exactly.  Nobody is blaming 
anybody.  We
are discussing how most people see what they expect to see and by 
implication
that maybe we should keep an eye on what we are being told -- and look for
ourselves.

And, at this point, we really don't know how far back Nosema ceranae has 
been
a player.  I've now heard decades, possibly and maybe more?  Much more?

(You may know more about this.  I have not been paying close attention 
since
I am a just a (lay) beekeeper and don't really care all that much what 
the technical
folks call a spore if the effects and the treatment are the same here on 
the ground).

I recall how Furgala was sounding the alarm about nosema back in the 
middle of
the last century and many who looked for the problems he saw could not 
find them.
I always wondered about that, including in posts here on BEE-L going 
back into
the '90s. Maybe he was dealing with Nosema ceranae?  Without current 
methods
could anyone know?  The shape thing in nosema is not as obvious as the 
difference
between varroas.  Seems to me that I heard pros say here they cannot be
absolutely certain about nosema by shape alone.

Maybe something has changed, too. Consider the divergence in the reports
from Spain and America.

FWIW, as far back as I've been looking at nosema spores, they have 
looked more
like the pictures of Nosema ceranae than the pictures we are shown of 
Nosema apis.

As for whether the name of the varroa killing my bees is jacobsoni or 
destructor,
I could care less.  I am glad though that somebody got around to 
noticing some
differences and could explain why the mite was harmless some places and not
others.

But it would not change the problem -- or the solution (or lack of one).

Peace.
---
(Heard Rodney King on CBC today.  He has a book out.)

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