Robin Dartington said:

> according to Prof Mark Winston of Simon Fraser Univ
> It is the viruses vectored by varooa that kill.

Prof Winston's statement is now supported by some very
impressive lab and apiary work.  I saw very solid proof
on Saturday.

Mark Feldlaufer, of the USDA Beltsville Bee Lab reported to the
Maryland and Virginia beekeepers on the recent work done by his
lab at the VA/MD state meeting last weekend.

He showed some electrophoresis gels created by Judy Chen
in her work on molecular virus detection in varroa and bees.
He also showed some very specific results that clearly proved
what many had only speculated about.

Not only do mites transmit viruses to bees, but mites also
transmit viruses to other mites via bee larvae.

Mark talks fast, and only gave this subject a few minutes, so
I may have not caught all the nuances of either his presentation
or the work as a whole, but here's what my Palm Pilot says:

  Dr. Chen was able to analyze single mites and single larvae
  for multiple viruses, and also found that the BOTH the odds
  of any one mite carrying a virus and the odds of infecting a
  bee larvae with a virus are each roughly equal to a coin flip.
  So, given brood cells with one mite entering, versus those
  where 2, 3, or 4 entering the cell, the odds of the bee larvae
  (and the other mites in the same cell) being infected with any
  one virus approach 100% on this easy to recall schedule:

    1 Mite = 25% chance of bee larvae infection
    2 Mites = 50%
    3 Mites = 75%
    4 Mites = 100%

  Dr. Chang's work also appears to prove that colonies that have
  viruses are always colonies that have varroa.

The ability to reliably analyze individual mites and individual
larvae for multiple specific viruses using these molecular techniques
is very impressive.

I'd guess that it will be "the advance of the year", if not the
decade.  This is the "smoking gun".  I'm not at all easy to impress,
and I was blown away by what I saw.


                jim

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