Hi Murray, Chris and All



> Maybe Gavin will feel less reticent ...

Little ol' me?!

Perhaps in another continent there would be litigation in the air, but as far as I know that isn't a route anyone here is taking.  *One* of the factors *delaying* the recognition of the disease was the failure of the printed instructions to convey the subtleties required to get the EFB test kit to work reliably.  Not that subtle really - the test does *not* work with the wrong kind of infected larva.  If you want it to work reliably you need to know what stage of larva to use, and as this was not mentioned in the instructions that come with it the test kit is worse than useless.  Worse in that it can give false reassurance that you do *not* have EFB.  I understand that the AFB variant is more reliable.

So the SBA advised its members *not* to use the kit, and instead if they have suspicions to contact a bee inspector who will have the right back-up (and, now, the right background knowledge should he or she decide to use a test kit themselves). 

Murray mentioned the sharp eyes of his Polish helper.  That's all you need, sharp eyes, education on what to look for, visits specifically to look for disease, and a willingness to shake bees off frames into the box to make viewing easier.  It is worth adding that if you need glasses to read a newspaper, you need them to look for foulbrood too.  I suspect that - in the hands of experienced inspectors - the use of a test kit is more to provide incontrovertible evidence of something they were already sure about, just to smooth the path to acceptance by the afflicted beekeeper. 

While I have your attention Murray ...

> I am quite sure the organisation is better off, and more stable,
> without any of the 'big dogs' to unbalance issues.

I doubt both of those.  Parts of the SBA have seemed quite unstable over the years!  But seriously, it aspires to be the national organisation for Scottish Beekeeping.  Yes, in numerical terms the membership is overwhelmingly at the hobby level, but many bee farmers are members too and some are quite active.  Historically, many of the more effective office bearers have been at that junction between small scale beekeeper and bee farmer.  It is currently a broad church on such issues as pesticides and GMs, and diversity for size of operation should be part of it too.  Of course there is a need for an organisation to represent the specific interests of the bee farmers, but it is good to have one broad organisation too.

all the best

Gavin


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