I said:

>> If you look at the list above, you'll note that the only "new" item
>> is the Nosema ceranae. 

Chris asked:

> How do you know it's really new?  Have older samples of Nosema/ dead  
> bees been examined?  There is an unproven suspicion here in the UK  
> that it may have been here, unnoticed, for some time but nobody 
> thought to check. 
 
I put the word "new" in quotes for a reason.

Yes, it isn't really new at all. The big factor was that the Nosema apis

was exclusively a "springtime issue", and for those of us who bothered 
to monitor and treat, and more to the point, test AFTER treating to
verify
treatment efficacy, there were no summer or fall "Nosema problems".  

Recently, that changed.  

Is it possible that very few beekeepers looked for Nosema after
treating, due 
to the "known efficacy" of the treatment?  Sure, but at least some would
not 
make that sort of rookie error. The USDA labs doing their usual
testing/screening 
of bee samples certainly would not.  No way your DEFRA would miss it,
either.

A "Nosema problem" in mid summer or fall would have raised eyebrows 
everywhere, so even a single detection would have been worthy of note.
Both the USA version of Nosema ceranae and the European version of
Nosema ceranae can crop up in summer or fall, While Nosema apis would
not.

So, even if everyone "had" Nosema ceranae for years prior to the
discovery 
that what we were looking at was often not Nosema apis, is was not
detected,
Nor was it killing colonies like the much more scary European Nosema
ceranae.  
The Nosema ceranae we see here in the USA is not the rapid and brutal
killer 
of colonies that Europe saw it to be.  Is it a different strain?  Dunno,
but 
that's been the best guess.  No one has verified it, despite all the 
geneticists stumbling around the "CCD" issue.

So, magazine article titles to the contrary, there are no "Nosema
Twins".
There are at least 3 very different Nosema versions/strains.  Maybe
more.

No, beekeepers can't tell the difference, but we can't tell one virus
from another either.  We have to classify things based upon symptoms,
and lucky for us, the symptoms are significantly different.

I should also point out that there appears to be a subtle problem in the

methods used to differ between the two types of Nosema, as some labs
have
been finding an overwhelming majority of Nosema ceranae for a while now
with almost no Nosema apis, while others have been finding more Nosema
apis.  
Jerry B. has also mentioned this in passing more than once.  I have no
idea what the problem is here.  It could be that there are regional 
differences in the mix of types of Nosema within the USA.

It is frustrating. 20 years of varroa, and despite all the funding and
time,
there is no commercial-grade solution to the issue.  Nothing even close.
The research community has failed miserably in this area.

Now this.  Here we are in our 2nd season of knowing that CCD cases are
out there, but there STILL simply is no funding for CCD work.  

To add insult to poverty, it is taking months for USDA to "evaluate" 
three 18-page proposals so that they can award the $4 million they 
scraped up from other accounts.  The delay is completely inexcusable.
The proposals were submitted back in February.  It is now April.

What happened to the CCD funding?  The House bill languishes 
in committee, exactly where it was over a year ago:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-1709

Why no action?  Because our so-called "friends" who like
native pollinators confused the issue by introducing 
"alternative pollination protection" into a straightforward 
agriculture/apiculture issue, resulting in a Senate bill 
with a widely expanded scope from that of the House bill:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110-1694

So the attempt of the native pollinator camp to double-dip
federal funding from both environmental and agriculture sources 
has done exactly what I said it would do a year ago.  Their
"Pollinator Protection Racket" has hurt beekeepers and growers
badly, and no one has any funding.

http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0706d&L=bee-l&T=0&I=-3&
P=2876

http://listserv.albany.edu:8080/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0706E&L=BEE-L&P=R2&D=0&
I=-3&T=0

(Watch that line-wrap on those URLs)

The House and Senate aren't stupid, so the bills sit without any 
action on either.  The Farm Bill looks like our only credible 
source of funding, and that money will be years in coming.

How many of these exotic invasive pathogens, pests, and diseases 
of bees have to arrive on our shores from far-off places before we all
admit 
that "world trade" only makes money at the expense of our ecosystem and 
bio-security, and if bio-security was adequate, it would be much less 
profitable to import so much?

And who was dumber - are consumers to blame for taking equity out of
their
homes to buy flat-screen TVs and personal watercraft when they had lost
their decent jobs to outsourcing and were suddenly earning much less?  
Or was it Asia, for basing their entire economy on selling things to
people 
who no longer had incomes sufficient to afford imported high-end
consumer 
goods, due to the very outsourcing that caused the Asian economy to
expand 
so rapidly?

It looks to me like the "World Trade" problem may fix itself before we 
find out how to effectively manage varroa and CCD.

****************************************************
* General Information About BEE-L is available at: *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/default.htm   *
****************************************************