Bob writes:
> then I suggest wiping out nosema ceranae completely from our bees

Here is a case where it was attempted to raise small numbers of nosema free bees

> International bee decline is strongly linked to nosema and has reached an economically damaging proportions, thus the need for a supply of healthy bees has never been so desperate. The change in the quarantine laws in Japan currently poses a financial loss for queen breeders in Australia. If nosema-free bees can be produced, Western Australia would be able to resume queen export to Japan. This project investigated whether nosema-free escort nurse bees could be produced by raising them in cages.

> Despite carefully isolating combs from hives, newly emerged bees became contaminated with N. apis so nosema-free nurse bees could not be produced. The cage-raised nurse bees fed 16 different pollen and artificial feeds were not able to keep 100 % of the queen bees alive during export for 8 days. Bees that were fed pollen and artificial feed had median survival time of 4 days or less. Queens caged with nurse bees that fed on icing sugar survived much longer than queens caged with nurse bees that fed on pollen and artificial feed.

> Nosema spores are in virtually all hives, that means to truly produce nosema-free bees, research should focus on breeding naturally resistant nurse bees or genetically modify bees to become resistant to Nosema. Therefore, it is clear that isolating newly hatched bees from the apiary bees is not sufficient in preventing the disease. In order to prevent the disease the comb would have to be decontaminated prior to hatching nurse bees or nurse bees must be immediately removed from the comb as they hatch which would be extremely time consuming.

EFFECT OF FEEDS IN DEVELOPING THE HYPOPHARYNGEAL GLAND OF NOSEMA-FREE NURSE BEES FOR ESCORTING QUEEN HONEY BEES (Apis mellifera) DURING EXPORT
YAN PENG
BSc Murdoch University

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm