Hello All,
I looked through current issues of both Hive and the Honey Bee and ABC XYZ
and only minor reference to Rothenbuhler. Many beekeepers which have only
been around beekeeping for a decade or so might not realize the weight  the
voice of Dr. Rothenbuhler carried in his day.

In my opinion he was decades ahead of his time.

Rothenbuhler *successfully* selected lines of bees which were resistant to
the *virus* which causes hairless -black syndrome using instrumental
insemination ( II) and was one of the first researchers to embrace the new
beekeeping tool II.

 Page was his student.


One of the first beekeeping problems I read about years ago was
"disappearing Disease". Bill Wilson (USDA-ARS) told beekeepers he was going
to solve the mystery but as time went on he never could find the source of
the problem.

 Then beekeepers started calling "disappearing disease "Bill Wilson's
disease" (sound familiar to today's CCD issue?).

The CCD team quickly wanted to call the new problem other than "disappearing
disease" ( and now you know the rest of the story as Paul Harvey would say)


Then the highly respected Dr. Rothenbuhler came to Bill's rescue and the
industry thought for sure the source of Disappearing disease would be found 
.

I personally never saw a case of disappearing disease or knew a beekeeper 
with the described symptoms at the time ( but like CCD does not mean the 
problem was not real).
.

 We waited but no smoking gun.  many articles said Wilson was close to
solving the mystery!

The final word from Dr. Rothenbuhler ( Dr. R.) was disappearing disease was 
caused by
a genetic problem.

Dr. R. saw genetics as the solution for all our bee problems even way back
then. Page and Tabor agreed.  Many researchers of the period felt opening
our borders to new genetics was needed.  Possibly Tabor could be said as to
have opened our borders without permission but a subject for another post.

Even the import of Buckfast semen was opposed by many beekeepers. The U.S.
beekeeping industry would crash they said. Think of the possible problems 
from semen import.

If you do a BEE-L archive search using my name and Rothenbuhler I think you
will find I quote Dr. R. quite a bit. In my opinion his ideas and research
has stood the test of time.

Sincerely,
Bob Harrison


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