Hi Randy

With reference to your recent post: >However, your above statement implies 
that you are unaware that new
>parasites have arrived in the U.S. during the above approximate time
>period:  Nosema ceranae, Varroa Destructor Virus-1, perhaps IAPV, and who 
>knows what else.

------------------------------

I was maybe the only commercial beekeeper, attending the recent <Second 
Symposium on Diagnosis and Control of Bee Diseases> 
(http://www.oie-freiburg.de/) organized by the World Animal Health 
Organization in Freiburg (Germany) between August 26 and 28, 2008.

I was surrounded by scientists, researchers, government officers as Dr. 
Colin Stewart from APHIS and very  happy to interact with people like Drs. 
Jeff Pettis, Judy Chen, Ingemar Fries, Elke Genersch, Wolfgang Ritter, Denis 
Anderson, Michael Hornitzky and many other nice folks from all over the 
world.

I was also present at the National Beekeeping Conference held in Sacramento 
(California), earlier this year. I saw you from a distance, but you were 
very busy signing autographs so you could not shake my hand :-)

As you see, I am not only  aware  but also  very concerned about parasites, 
virus and diseases. I am also aware about some very serious issues, but I 
still do not dare to write about them. Maybe writing about them, would be 
very original for a nice bee journal article, but detrimental in the long 
term for the good image of beekeeping products eaten by consumers.

Regarding the supposedly «new» parasites and diseases of your list, I am 
afraid that they have been present in the US and in the whole American 
Continent, for a very long period of time. However, I feel like it is just 
now that laboratories have the right PCR techniques, the primers and the 
trained personnel to identify them so they seem to be new.

With a mistaken rationale, someone might also say that Varroa destructor is 
a new parasite recently introduced into the US. However, we all know that it 
was thanks to Dr. Denis Anderson that two different haplotypes of Varroa 
were identified in year 2000. Thanks to Denis, we also know that Varroa 
jacobsoni was a wrong denomination.

Something similar could be applied to Nosema ceranae, again thanks to Dr. 
Ingemar Fries we know that the spores of this Asian version have been 
present in Europe but erroneously regarded as a single Nosema strain.

What makes you think the «new» bugs of your list have just entered into the 
US? How can you prove they entered through recent imports, trade, smuggling 
or whatever? Maybe they have been present for decades.  Dr. Jay Evans put 
this clear when he showed that IAPV was present in the US at least since 
year 2002, prior to the first Australian imports of package bees in year 
2005.

How can you explain the presence of the Nosema ceranae in Australia? I think 
the last imports of US bees into Australia were in 1982, so maybe it was 
through US bees that they got it. I know this is pure speculation but I find 
hard to understand the presence of Nosema ceranae in Australia given its 
ideal quarantine situation.

I am afraid that unless, samples of frozen bees have been kept from long 
ago, we are very limited to determine the real time of introduction of 
seemingly «new» parasites, which may be really «old» in their introduction , 
but only recently identified as «new» thanks to modern lab techniques.

Hope you become my first American customer!

All the best,


Martin Braunstein
www.malkaqueens.com

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