Hi James Fischer,

 

Thanks for joining this debate. I was surprised it took you so long to come aboard! In order to be fair, I prefer to see first the glass half full, so I must acknowledge that:

 

I fully agree with port-of-entry inspections that work in Australia, New Zealand and.in Argentina, of course! And I also agree that some level of inspection and pests screening is essential. This is what the O.I.E. recommends and what member countries should do, but it is certainly not the fault of the O.I.E. neither of the WTO that the US fails to accomplish these inspections.

 

However, regarding your comment below:



>Certainly Martin cannot deny the USA the same level of concern that his own country has about invasive >exotic diseases and pests, can he? Argentina has done actual surveys to support their contention that they >are free of Small Hive Beetle and the Tropilaelaps mite, and they have set up a national vet authority to >comply with WTO rules, so they are interested  enough in blocking imports to declare themselves "pest free"  >for both those pests.  (Pity about the AHB, though. Hope you can somehow still keep from finding them in the >province of Buenos Aires.)



I am more than glad to refute your statement. Not only myself but other local queen breeders as well, enjoy the benefits of importing genetic stock to improve our different strains and hybrids. We need different strains, unavailable in Argentina, to ensure the breeding of true hybrids and to obtain other strains for suitable crossings.



Last year for example, I had a rough time trying to import very valuable stock from the US, raised by Dr. Steve Sheppard at Washington State University, so we could set up a cooperative agreement basically focused at crossing his Italian strains with our Italian drones. Nevertheless, both APHIS, the Washington State Dept. of Agriculture plus several other bureaucrats, made almost impossible this task, because nobody was willing to sign an export health certificate according to O.I.E. guidelines. So how come you suggest we want to block the import of live bees? The US itself jeopardizes its own bee exports! My help is not necessary!



Before enacting our own bee import legislation, which indeed pretends to avoid the introduction of exotic diseases as well undesirable bee species, it was submitted to the WTO-SPS Committee so all member countries could challenge it for a period of 60 days. Thus I am happy to say that in Argentina, we can import honeybees, given the proper certification of absence of diseases in the exporting country, region or compartment.



The O.I.E. Terrestrial Code and its specific chapters provide clear guidelines to certify an export shipment of bees. By the way, under the O.I.E. epidemiological directives, a country can declare the total extent of its territory, a region or a compartment as free of a certain disease or diseases. Nevertheless, this declaration must be based on epidemiological principles as well as qualitative and quantitative risk estimates.



Regarding your concern about Africanized Honey Bees (AHB) in Buenos Aires province where I live, it is evident that your library is either a bit outdated or that you quit your subscription to some scientific bee journals long ago, didn`t you? Have you read the Journal of Apicultural Research 46(3): 191-194 (2007). It refers to a paper published on August 2007, entitled «Assessment of the mitochondrial origin of honey bees from Argentina». Well, I will save you a £50 subscription and send this paper to you for free under separate cover.

 

I know how much you enjoy to read peer-reviewed papers so, before you get the PDF file by e-mail, I wish to say that the province of Buenos Aires holds now approximately 2.5 million beehives from an estimated 3.5 million beehives in Argentina. This represents not only 71% of the total colony count in my country, but it also represents the largest sanctuary and reservoir of European honey bees in the southern hemisphere.  

 

Please consider that Australia has about 600,000 hives, New Zealand 330,000 and Chile about 500,000 colonies. You cannot imagine (maybe if you try hard you could) the treasure of genetic diversity we have in Argentina. If you do not trust me, please ask Dr. Marla Spivak (University of Minnesota) who`s been here two weeks ago or Dr. Steve Sheppard, who wrote several papers about the honeybees of Argentina, or Dr. Al Dietz who was the first scientist to do some taxonomical bee work here before PCR become popular.

 

For this recent mitochondrial assessment, 300 samples out of 150 apiaries from all across the province of Buenos Aires were taken for lab determination. The samples were analyzed through PCR to obtain the different haplotypes. Although we knew beforehand that some AHB would show up, we were happy to confirm results demonstrating that less than 3% of the samples were actually «A» haplotypes matching Subsaharan African haplotypes.  We had some «M» haplotypes matching black Apis mellifera mellifera and a few intermissa, while the remaining 95% were all «C» haplotypes matching eastern European honeybees. 

 

I am not aware of any other federal state anywhere in the world performing such extensive test. On the other hand, California which has some 700,000 permanent hives suffers a  higher incidence of AHB,  but it is still allowed to ship bees to the entire US and Canada as well. By the way Texas, which is home of several reputable queen breeders is fairly invaded by AHB and they still supply their queens to plenty of customers all across the US. So Jim, instead of looking at the speck of sawdust in Buenos Aires, you should look at your plank in the US.  Don`t feel pity for our tiny AHB outbreaks, feel pity for yourself! 



Another of your comments deserves a rebuttal:

>Martin is simply unaware of the actual history.  There were quite a few imports >of bees" into the USA between 1992 and 2005, but there were multiple factors >behind them: Needless to say, the odds of swarms being delivered along with >the goods were rather high. (The odds were good that the goods were odd!)



Come on Jim! Your detail of events does not prove anything and you know that. You are a man of hard data and facts, how come you surprise us now with odds, probabilities and beliefs? Did you ask a palm reader to obtain this information? Did you become a believer now for the first time?



I can imagine with some degree of likelihood, a swarm of Apis cerana or Apis dorsata (attached to an oceanfreight container) making it successfully from Indonesia or Thailand to Brisbane or Sidney. But unless, these are ninja bees able to produce heat resistant super wax and collect several pounds of honey in their stomachs, I cannot think of a fair chance of survival for any such Asian swarm to any US port, especially after passing through the Equator, and after enduring the melting of the comb in the middle of either the Atlantic or Pacific ocean, in a transit time of at least 16 days.



Package bee exporters know how hard,  difficult and expensive it is to make a successful airfreight exportation of package bees, and to have them arrive in good shape to its final destination.  I cannot imagine how a fugitive and clandestine swarm might even survive two weeks across the ocean unfed and unsheltered, can you?



However, given your thorough and impressive knowledge of swarms sea freight transportation, I do not deny the possibility that you have devised a successful method to ship package bees by ocean freight. Your contribution will be greatly appreciated, by the many silly package bee shippers who spend thousands of dollars exporting their bees by expensive airfreight carriers.



On the other hand, trucks and trains connecting the US with Mexico and Canada, could not have been a reasonable vector for bee diseases from these two countries into the US either. Varroa showed up in Mexico during 1992, five years after it was first detected in the US (during 1987) at both Wisconsin and Florida. Therefore it is possible to consider that either the US transmitted Varroa mites to Mexico and Canada rather than the opposite. Eventually there may be independent events of introduction at each of these three NAFTA countries, unrelated to each other.



The same applies to tracheal mites and the Canadian situation. It is possible that US swarms, packages and queens were unfortunately responsible for the spread of  tracheal mites in Canada. But the US got tracheal mites in 1984 before the Canadian`s did. Why do you want to convince this fine audience here in Bee-L that the opposite is true.? How can a healthy organism transmit a disease which it is not present in its body? Have you ever heard of the Koch postulates which are the basis of modern bacteriology?



Another of your comments:

>The Canadian border closure of 1987.  What resulted was    Canada buying >bees from overseas, yet bees still were allowed   to be sold in queen and >package form to the USA with   nothing more than a cursory level of >paperwork.



You are quite right! After the border closure, the Canadians were indeed able to import bees. And I assume that some of those bees, may have been eventually (legally  or illegally) transhipped to the US. But the Canadian got their bees from New Zealand and Australia, both countries were free (at that time) of both Varroa and tracheal mites. I am not aware of another supplier of live bees to Canada during that period. Do you have another information?



I want to remind you that the Kiwis got Varroa in April 2000, but they are still free of tracheal mites as well as the Australian who still lack both mites. So your statement is again unsubstantiated, because none of the Canadian bee imports (even if transhipped to US customers), could vector any new disease or pest not already present in the US during the period 1987-2005.



Although last year I stayed one month benchmarking myself against the best Australian and New Zealand queen breeders, I do not know much about Apis cerana. However, I wish the  Australians much luck to keep it under control because I would not want to have these undesirable bees to coexist with commercial beekeepers making a living with European honeybees.

Happy Janukah! Martin Braunstein - www.malkaqueens.com

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