Folks,

My original thought in the thread was that by treating bees, for whatever
diseases they suffer from, we are doing, in a way, “a Selective Breeding”
of an isolated EHB species that cannot and will not survive on their own—
without human intervention.  Treating bees, I understand, is necessary for
those commercial beekeepers since they need a solution here and right
now.  This practice appears to be myopic, however.

By religiously treating bees with expensive chemicals that often lose its
efficacy incrementally, we are trying desperately to delay the eventuality
of the contact forever while weakening the bees even further.  What a
laudable effort and stupidity!  How can we stop the pathogens that are
here to stay?   This fight appears to be heroic, for “we are trying to
save our bees!” by doping them every year.  For a short-term, we may be
able to save the bees.  However, if we truly love the bees for a longer
term, we should stop treating them, thus quickening the eventuality so
that they will learn to survive without human intervention.  Many bee
experts and researchers in the past have pointed out to me that non-
treatment will make our bees go extinct.  Gone, just like that.  I beg to
*gently* differ.

Thanks to human intervention, our bees are already surrounded by the ocean
of pathogens, and thanks to our annual intervention, they are getting
weaker and weaker.  Too much hygienic environment is no good in real life
unless you want to live inside a bubble: if a pathogen breaks that
firewall, the battle is over.  Hence another outbreak from a foreign
source—-there will be more and other[s] than SHB, for we have been
successful in isolating our bees—-can easily run havoc with
this “genetically modified species” to use the term loosely.

I suggest we accelerate the eventuality by not treating them at all or
bringing in whichever bee species that had learned to live with such
pathogens—-a reason I had, in the first place, asked to hear from for
those who have not treated the bees for a while.  AHB seems promising,
especially since by the time they spread into most of the southern states,
their super-aggressiveness will have thinned out.  We have already
tinkered with SMR and Russian queens, to name just a few, to broaden the
gene pool.  Why not AHB from Brazil?

By stop treating them worldwide, do you think the bees will go extinct?

(One of my Rhode Island hens has been brooding since November and by the
time the eggs hatch, we will be in deep December.  Is she crazy or what?)


Humdinger