> Nosema infection can lead to poor colony growth and poor winter survivorship. Nevertheless, N. ceranae is widespread in both healthy and declining honey bee colonies and its overall contribution to honey bee losses is debatable. -- PLoS Pathogens | www.plospathogens.org 1 June 2009 | Volume 5 | Issue 6 * * * The addition of fumagillin as a preventative measure in hives where the asymptomatic presence of N. ceranae has been diagnosed, does not solve any problem, but merely increases costs, and risks unnecessarily contaminating hive products with this antibiotic or its subsequent metabolites. When there are no factors such as climate, inadequate nutrition, inadequate control of V. destructor or unsuitable management, causing immunosuppression in the bees, colonies do not collapse. There has been a high survival rate of hives in all of Spain during 2006 and 2007, which have been rainy years with normal climactic conditions and good flowering of plants. It is concluded that environmental and husbandry factors play an important role in colony collapse. Journal of Apicultural Research and Bee World 47(1): 84–86 (2008) © IBRA 2008 *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html