I should let many posts go but really need to comment on this one.

> Bottom line of course is: should one feed toxic antibiotics (Fumagillin,
> etc) to bees for an infection they may not have and which seems to clear
> up spontaneously if they do?

I object to the use of the word "toxic"*as used* above.  Common with the "no
treatment" crowd but hard for me to see the word used to describe Fumagillin
. An expensive antibiotic which has been around for decades and approved to
control nosema.

Toxic:
1. poisonous
2.relating to or caused by poison

*Clear up spontaneously* is easily explained. I will try.

> In this study we examined the levels of infection in individual bees from
> five colonies over three seasons using both spore counting and
> quantitative real-time PCR.

Five colonies?

> Colonies generally had the highest percentage of infected bees in early
> summer (June) and the lowest levels in the fall (September).

Not rocket science. Untreated coming out of winter infection is highest. As
bees start dying at a high rate lowest in fall.

I know the above is taken out of context but there are reasons for the drop
*other* than the infection clears up on its own. Many yet unknown factors
can trigger nosema to increase so I take most researcher attempts to explain
*nosema issues* with a grain of salt. Also testing with 5 hives at a lab
hardly compares to what is seen in a large commercial migratory operation.

> Most infections were caused by N. ceranae with N. apis detected in only
> 2.3% of the samples, all of which were low-level co-infections with N.
> ceranae. Infection levels and the percentage of infected bees declined in
> all five colonies in the fall.

As the old forager bees died off.

> The high degree of variability between individual bee infections and the
> large number of low-level infections raises questions as to how such
> results should be applied to colony management decisions.

Knowing when to treat for today's bee problems is very hard. Harder for the
large beekeeper spending a huge amount of money on fumagillin or mite
treatments.

The beekeeping industry asked over and over for another antibiotic to use to
control nosema ceranae problems but never happened. The same varroa controls
as approved in Canada.

How is the 4 million dollar hive of robotic bees working out  at Harvard?

bob

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