> Last I spoke to Randy, he was going to contact Tobias for clarification on this point [the effect of feeding sucrose]...Randy, did you find anything out? I sent him an email in December, but he never answered. I just resent it. Dean, what bothers me are your continued implications that we are causing these new plagues to be visited upon us because of something new that we are doing. Back in the day, most of the hobby beekeepers that I knew would have been considered "organic" beekeepers, yet their bees still came down with AFB at a higher rate than I see in my operation today. I ran my own operation for nearly 20 years without feeding sugar syrup or pollen supplement. In fact, prior to the arrival of varroa, my management would essentially have qualified as "organic" beekeeping--natural wax foundation, no miticides, virtually no pesticide exposure, no feeding, rare use of the single antibiotic OTC, bees kept on good nonagricultural pasture for 11 months of the year (almonds being the exception, but we didn't have any problems in almonds back then). However, AFB was a considerable problem back then. So much so that I selected for bees with hygienic behavior and sold them commercially in the early '80's, so that I didn't have to use any OTC. Randy Oliver *********************************************** 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 Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm