>I mean no offense to Jerry B. but those promoting virus as behind  CCD and
> the bee kill have been for the most part dropped from funding  and as
posted
> some researchers are doing articles discounting the virus  hypothesis.

OK, I'm going to take offense, not because I care whether you believe  me o
r not, but because much of the recent bee loss was preventable.

My team was involved in two major workshops this year regarding  overall
repeated annual bee losses, not just CCD.  Varroa, Nosema, and  viruses were
front and center as contributors.  Ranked far above many other  factors.
Probably next most important was nutrition.

As per the implication that  viruses are not important, one of latest
papers shows the diversity of chronic virus issues in US bees (done the year
before the drought and crashes) - too bad it wasn't done this year.

Like with people, if you sample for flu in a year when its not a major
issue, you  won't see much.  However, if you were looking for H1N1  when it
hit, you'd have gotten a different result.  Too bad this study  wasn't done
last year.  Good work, just bad timing.

See:

Temporal Analysis of the Honey Bee Microbiome Reveals Four Novel  Viruses
and Seasonal Prevalence of Known Viruses, Nosema, and  Crithidia. 2013.

They found everything we did, plus four new viruses, just showing  how
little we know about viruses in US bees.  They didn't find IIV, but they've
not been able to since we were working with them via the Army.  That's  likely
to be a methodological issue.

My only complaint, Joe is still quoting us wrong - we did not say we found
IIV in 75% of Healthy colonies, we found IIV in 75% of the better (when
first  sampled) colonies in CCD yards - most of those 'better' colonies
eventually  crashed.  Our control colonies (non-CCD yards) had NO IIV.
Frustrating when people misquote and continue to misquote.  IIV is known  for covert
infections - very hard to detect when the virus is not  replicating.

Its like Nosema apis.  Most on this list know that before  N. ceranae,
there were areas of US that typically had N. apis,  usually in spring, in cool,
wet climates.  It would appear in its  usual  time and geographical areas,
and then disappear for rest of year -  sampling wouldn't find it.

As per 'dropped' from funding, that's a disingenuous claim.  Who's  been
dropped?  Obviously DeRise still doing virus work, Tarpy seems to be  the lead
for the current chunk of USDA money.  Evans still going.

If you are referring to me -say so.  We weren't funded by USDA in the
first place.  Army ECBC volunteered the proteomics analysis,  small amounts of
funding from other Army sources, Kim at Bee Culture,  PAm's, Honey Board,
Almond Board, and mainly beekeepers themselves covered  sampling and other work
were stitched together to get us out to look and  sample.  Project
completion is very different from 'being dropped'.

Keep in mind, this work  was a loss leader to us and Army - we spent  far
more than we took in.  This was always a 'service to the industry'  project.
We tried early on to get funding to set up  a team to  investigate crashes
- no go, the successful CAPS project was led by  Georgia.  USDA reviewers
said our team, which included DeRisi  (co-author of the above-cited paper)
lacked the expertise to provide any new  information).

If I depended on Cash Cow Disease to keep us going, I'd have checked out
years ago.  Our funding has and continues to be from development of  new
technologies and methods for military, biosecurity, agricultural monitoring,
contract GLP research.  LIDAR, acoustic scanning, automated bee  conditioning,
benchtop assay systems - these are the things we do well and that  pay the
bills.  Just back from great trip to NZ working on  collaborations regarding
biosecurity issues, among other things.

Jerry













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