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From:
Peter Borst <[log in to unmask]>
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Peter Borst <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 11 Jan 2001 02:39:54 -0500
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"Given the present regulatory climate concerning antibiotic use, the chances of developing alternative legal treatments for foulbrood are dicey at best. Fortunately, there are alternatives. ... Dr. Marla Spivak at the University of Minnesota asks beekeepers to consider investing in new foundation and hygienic queens rather than antibiotics. There may be greater payoffs in end, she says, resulting in healthier bees, and this can provide a good way to exit the chemical treadmill. Thus, she concludes,  ... the last thing we need are more antibiotics for bees"
     -- excerpt from article by Tom Sanford, in Apis, Dec 2000

This is what many of us want: disease resistant stock. However, there are serious problems with such a scenario -- number one being supercedure. From my view, today's commercially produced queens are rapidly superceded, some within weeks or months of purchase. And for the beekeeper who raises his own queens in order to minimize supercedure, there arises the problem of lack of control over the drone line.

Regular queens can cost US $10.00 and undoubtedly special lines will cost more. Can we afford to requeen every hive every year at that price -- to say nothing of the time and effort involved? No wonder beekeepers -- like other agriculturists -- want to be able to use antibiotics. There is no reason that the bee industry should be singled out and prevented from having access to a variety of antibiotics, just as we now have (in the US) at least three chemicals to use against mites (apistan, formic acid, coumaphos).

"There is no registered treatment [in Canada] that will kill the resistant AFB. Beekeepers are faced with burning thousands of hives, millions of dollars in bees and equipment and hundreds of millions of dollars in lost pollination potential. Together with low honey prices this crisis may cause some beekeepers to consider bankruptcy, and many will give up keeping bees. It is a huge problem and one that will without doubt spread to other regions."
     -- excerpt from "American Foul Brood is Back" by Heather Clay, in Hive Notes, Nov 2000

posted by Peter Borst
Ithaca NY  USA

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