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From:
allen dick <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 7 Jul 2004 20:01:51 -0400
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> Like many, I have heard Dr. Shiminuki, for some 40 years 'THE' USDA expert
on AFB, speculate on the over-use of patties as being the primary (not only)
factor in bringing us OTC resistant AFB.

To me that is a very sad thing to see at the end of a distinguished career.
So much good work, then an incautious statement.  I'd be curious to hear
what Bill Wilson, the equally distinguished inventor of the opatty has to
say.  I know what Mann Lake, the firm that obtained approval, had to say
when I last asked them.

> 1.  For about 50 years of using dust there were no reported cases of
resistance.

During that time, smart beekeepers (including moi) were using sulfa.  Few
thought that OTC was very effective and OTC was a secondary treatment, so
OTC was not really under pressure to perform.  Sulfa was so potent that it
would clean up really nasty infections, like Tylosin is reported to do.  OTC
was _always_ a weak sister.

> 2.  Two-three years after the introduction of patties, resistance started
showing up in several geographic areas.

That was about the time that beekeepers had stopped using sulfa long enough
to discover that OTC was not nearly the drug that sulfa was, and to start to
have big problems.  Big problems call for novel solutions.

> ...the logic is compelling

To many 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' is compelling logic, and sufficient
grounds for reaching conclusions, but I don't find it compelling at all.
The rest of the argument is merely attractive conjecture without a scrap of
science to back it up.  Should someone try to prove it, and publish on the
topic, I would be more inclined to give it some credence, but no one --
AFAIK -- has.   Wonder why?

Personally, I cannot imagine how the use of extender patties by beekeepers
could have had anything whatsoever to do with the large increase in
antibiotic resistant bacteria _of all types_ that were being discovered in
many diverse places at about that same time as resistant AFB turned up, and
while the mutant AFB was being spread widely and indiscrimately by the
international trade in honey.

As I have said before, we find firemen at the site of many fires, but that
does not mean that firemen caused those fires.  Patties are associated with
some stubborn cases of AFB precisely because they are effective at fighting
outbreaks and were tried after other methods were found ineffective.

> THERE IS NO PROOF OF THIS.

Exactly.

I used OTC patties for at least three years and AFAIK there was _no_ change
in the susceptibility of the spores found in my samples, and there were zero
outbreaks in my 3,000 or so hives.  The spores (there were some) in our
honey samples were examined annually by Beaverlodge technicians.

Sorry to be so disagreeable, but science demands proof.

Patties worked for me.  That's my proof.  Where's theirs?

YMMV.

allen
A Beekeeper's Diary: http://www.honeybeeworld.com/diary/
On a long break from blogging.

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