Hello Brian & All,
Jim Fischer made some excellent points in his post and points I agree with.

Bob said:
>None of know how long breeding a nosema ceranae tolerant bee might take.
>Over 20 years for varroa tolerant and still not the forever varroa tolerant
>bee.

  I might amend the above a bit. I find it very useful to incorporate stock
which is tolerant of whatever problems i find in beekeeping. When your line
of bees are even halfway varroa tolerant ( nosema tolerant) and you for one
of countless reasons can not check and say control your mites or check and
treat for nosema ceranae the few weeks which the tolerant bee gives you over
the non varroa tolerant bee can save you from a serious crash.


>
the Russians I wintered and others in the region don't appear to have high
spores counts and winter
very very well.

appear is deceiving. Spore counts tell the tale. I have not done testing for
nosema ceranae spores in the hives headed by this years Russian queens but
several went off feed so I drenched. They are back taking feed now but
behind the others. I put those bees on deadouts from nosema ceranae killed
hives which had not been treated with acetic acid.

I will know before long if the Russian bee is nosema ceranae tolerant.

>If this bee coexisted with the varroa mite for 160 years that jumped host
>from Apis Ceranae why
would they not also have been exposed to Nosema Ceranae?

My Russian bees usually will go three years untreated for varroa. I thought
varroa only jumped around a 100 years ago but I doubt researchers know for
sure.

We know very little about nosema ceranae and bees. Spain has fought the
problem the longest and most of what we know comes from Spain.

Nosema effects many insects and we do know quite a bit about nosema.

bob

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