Quite a few words Bob, but you named NO stains, and
you named NO media for culturing AFB.

You were 0 for 2. 

This evinces a distinct lack of the knowledge and experience 
that would be required to set up even a basic lab for bee 
disease diagnosis, let alone teach others.

> With the proposed bill of Hastings for 75 million then 
> even funding a few electron microscopes might be possible.

But what possible application would they have for bee disease
diagnosis?  I thought you mis-typed, but you appear to be 
serious about this.  I know of no possible use for such
expensive and complex beasties that would yield any advantage
in the case of bee diseases.

So please tell us why anyone would need such a costly device.

> I would put the AFB & EFB Diagnostic kits...

The question was about growth media, because such knowledge
would be basic to the skill set required to set up a lab.
The weaving and dodging won't do.  Test kits just don't 
screen like culturing does.  Too many false negatives.  
This is why the Bee Labs have yet to throw away their 
Petri dishes.

> I personally have never used a stain. 

Then question about stains was yet another question 
that would be "basic knowledge".  And yet again,
you tried to dodge and weave.  You may think you
don't "need" a stain, but when you are looking at 
large numbers of samples in a high-volume production 
environment, it can reduce the eyestrain.  It would
be a cheap and easy way to enhance detection when the
work was being done by a relative neophyte of the sort 
you say you want to train.

> Many amateurs do I have been told. 

You are the first that I've heard claim that the use of
stains was limited to "amateurs", I've considered it
a requirement if one wants to take decent photos, or
if one wants to decrease false negatives when one is
doing it all day long, as the little buggers are simply 
hard to see.

> I have seen nosema pictures in books with a light red 
> stain but not sure what they used as I am a beekeeper 
> and not a lab person.

Yes you are, and no you aren't.  :)

> I have never made a field diagnosis of nosema and not 
> had my hypothesis not confirmed with the microscope.

That's not surprising, but the take-home point about
nosema is that you can find it with a microscope in
cases where the colony itself does not show any symptoms
at all.  Many cases of nosema simply have no symptoms,
other than the weaker state of the colony.  The whole
"midgut test" has been debunked as too often missing the
low-intensity cases.  One needs to be sampling and testing
for nosema when one does NOT see the overt symptoms.

>> 1) You proposed tooling up with tools that may not be
>>   appropriate, as no one knows what tools are required
>>   at this point.

> The above is almost to dumb for me to answer!

No, it is not "too dumb".  It is a very basic point.

You can only screen for what you first identify, and
as I have often intoned, "You cannot control that which
you do not measure".  I find it foolish in the extreme
to make claims that one can equip beekeepers to detect
CCD before anyone has told us how it might be detected
prior to the onset of "collapse".

We also have the question of how one can "cure" the problem.
Detection is of no value unless detection can prompt action(s)
that result in a positive outcome.

> Everything we learned about the problems found in CCD hives 
> *so far* can be tested for but some tests the average beekeeper 
> needs equipment and training to do.

The wide range of known bee diseases have been found may or may
not be contributing factors in "CCD".  The problems with Bob's 
many assumptions are many:

1) We are finding things in the hives SURVIVING CCD long 
   enough to be the source of samples.  The empty boxes may
   have contained bees with much better clues.  

2) None of the diseases found have any symptoms that match
   the symptoms of CCD, which are very unique.

3) None of the diseases in combination are known to produce 
   the symptoms of CCD, either.  (Did I mention that the 
   overt symptoms of CCD are very unique?)

So if Bob were the Chief of Police in Miami, he would react to
an increase in the murder rate by taking funding away from the
skilled professionals of the "CSI Miami" team, and distribute
"test kits" to the general population (consisting of a pregnancy
test kit, an AIDS test kit, and perhaps a Herpes test kit), as
many of the murder victims had been found to be suffering from
AIDS or Herpes, and some were even pregnant!  

> The turn around time on simple problems is simply too long. 
> Beekeepers need to be able to diagnosis a problem fast so a 
> treatment can be decided on.

Yes, but first one needs to have something specific to diagnose,
and THEN one can look at issues like throughput, turn-around time,
and so on.

> Many believe that if they five labs looking so far have not found 
> the smoking gun then?????

To date, no one has been confident enough to make any public statements,
so I'm going to have to answer this one "yes".  If you are sitting on
knowledge of any "smoking gun", please feel free to enlighten the rest
of us.

> I am lucky I can dial a member of each bee lab from a cell phone 
> in the field...

Why don't you let them work rather than pestering them?

>> 3) What we clearly don't need is yet another layer of
>>   bureaucracy to hold its hand out for the few dollars
>>   that will be allocated to "CCD",

> My point exactly. Send the money needed for testing equipment 
> and training directly to the people needing the help.

Your posting itself was clear proof that such an approach would
dissipate the money on efforts that don't have any clear 
connection to CCD.  The trick here is to FOCUS the money, not
spread it out, and build a bureaucracy that would merely repeat
education already available from multiple sources (Cornell,
NC State Beekeepers Master Beekeeper courses, EAS, HAS, WAS,
multiple extension efforts, the list of places to get exactly
the training you propose to re-invent goes on and on and on).

> If the *groups* ( EAS, Has or Was) you speak of are willing to 
> take their show on the road and provide FREE training to beekeepers 

I was not aware that "free" was a requirement here.  Do you think
that cost is an issue?  Given that decent student-grade microscopes
can be had for $20, how cheap does something have to be before 
"cost is not the issue"?  I still submit that the big problem is 
motivation among beekeepers.

> The bulk of commercial beekeepers are busy when EAS and the other 
> two meet.

Well, you have the ABF and AHPA meetings in winter, and you have the
EAS/HAS/WAS meeting in late summer.  At some point, you have to stop
slinging boxes around, and take a "break", dontcha?  If you can't
leave the bees to trusted employees and associates for one lousy 
week a year, what kind of operation are you running?

> Researchers want ALL the money. The largest commercial beepers want 
> all the money but a token amount to research

So you want money too?  For an effort that is premature,
an effort that apparently needs to enroll you as the first student?

I think there are better ways to spend money, and as luck has it,
others agree, getting the money scraped up so far to existing 
qualified research folks.

There certainly is some basic lab work that any beekeeper CAN do, such
as culturing AFB, and looking for nosema in a repeatable and reliable
way, you don't seem to know much about either.  But none of the
existing stuff has been linked to CCD in any compelling way as yet,
so we simply don't know what sort of test(s) we might need.

******************************************************
* Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at:          *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm  *
******************************************************