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From:
Adony Melathopoulos <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Discussion of Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 13 Mar 1996 19:14:18 -0800
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On Wed, 13 Mar 1996, David Eyre wrote:
 
> Hi Adony,
>              Some time ago I put a posting to the list about this with a
> request. We live in a back water, do not have access to a library, or past
> issues of ABJ. Would it not be nicer and more constuctive to spend a few
> moments to give us a precis of that article? Provided we ensure that the
> authors name is quoted, then I would consider it a service to the list.
>                                         Regards Dave.....
 
Sorry.  I have no problems spending a few moments describing this
work, but it is not my work, and I have to be cautious not to
misrepresent someone else.  I'd rather people read the articles
and make up there minds.  I will summarize what I know of this stuff,
but please, please, please, this is only my interpretation, and if you
really are interested obtain the quoted ABJ articles and get it first hand.
 
There are three real good papers, all of which have Dr. Nicholas
Calderone as the first author. One paper looked at the effects of
different essential oils on agar cultures of Bacillus larvae (AFB),
Ascophaera apis (Chalkbrood), and Bacillus alvei (a secondary bacterial
invader that is associated with EFB infections).  Cinnamon oil
consistantly inhibited the growth of these cultures or killed them (vegitative
stages) at lower concentraitions than any of the other compounds.  Thymol
looked pretty good against chalkbrood, and camphor and citronella against
AFB.  Now this may mean very little, because the toxicity of these
compounds to bees was not tested in this paper.  Although in the next two
papers bee mortality was looked at for a couple of compounds, as far as I
know, no one knows how toxic cinnamon oil is to bees.  It does look like
a promising candidit for both chalkbrood and AFB, but a lot more work
needs to be done (unless it has been done and I just haven't found it yet).
 
The next paper (ABJ September 1991) looked at different essential oils
and tracheal mites.  This work was done on caged honey bees, in order to
rapidly screen all the oils considered in the study. Clove and
citronella looked better than menthol at killing t. mites, but since
they were not directly compared, the authors cautioned that this
comparision may not be valid (although it might). There was some
mortality to bees treated with these oils, and it was statistically
more than bees treated with a placebo, but it didn't look like a big
difference.  Again, this study looked at caged bees, not full-sized
colonies, and bold conclusions about how these chemicals might fare in
colonies can't be made.
 
Finally, Dr. Calderone, and Marla Spivak, put a paper out this year
describing experiments that looked at a the ability of a thymol,
eucalyptus oil, menthol, and camphor blend to control Varroa (a very quick
summary of what they did is in an ABJ article from last August). The
blend led to 95% mortality of the Varroa (compared to only 4% in colonies
treated with a placebo).  Although they did not observe many dead bees in
the colonies treated with the blend, they did not actively measure bee
mortality.  As the authors point out in there discussion, thymol has been
shown to be toxic to bees in other studies.  I'm not sure how much more
of this work has been done, but it sure looks promising.
 
There has been some good European work, but I don't know it well enough
to write anything about it. It would be great if Dr. Calderone wrote a
review paper to bring all the essential oil research he and others did at the
USDA into one piece.  It would be interesting to get his slant on where all
this may be going next.
 
Again, sorry to be a nag, but be very careful if you attempt to use these
compounds in your colonies.  First they are not registered, so you may be
breaking the law by using them.  Second they may be toxic to the bees in your
colonies.  Finally, it may not work, and you may only find that out too
late to do anything about it.  It would be safer to use registered
products for the time being, and support the ongoing work being done at
places like the USDA labs.  From what I read, it looks like they got a
couple of real hot leads.
 
 
****************************************
*** Adony Melathopoulos ****************
***** Center for Pest Management *******
******** Simon Fraser University *******
*********** Burnaby, British Coumbia ***
************** CANADA ******************
****************************************
 
'All bees are looking for bargins in nature's supermarket'
- Bernd Heinrich
 
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tel : (604) 29 14 16 3

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