Applying homotoxicology must be new to most of us, but interesting.  I
always feel the bee is more complex than our limited understanding of such a
different form of life allows us to recognise. But.......

The patient here is a colony showing symptoms usually ascribed to a virus,
but not much varooa.  Virus attacks have often been intensified by varooa -
the mites are quickly killed but the level of virus in the bee population
falls only slowly as the older bees die out. (So colonies treated too late
in fall often die in spring).   So this colony would normally be nursed with
feeds of honey - and addition of frames of sealed brood if the population
has dropped too low.   The older bees will have defective bodies due the
action of virus when they were larvae - can even homotoxicology rebuild an
adult bee? Do their bodies have powers of recuperation, even if given the
right stimulus?  (I have always believed, anecdotally, that bees cannot
repair damaged tissue - so they live until worn out, then die, in summer
after only say 3 weeks as  field bees).  Can any scientist reply?

The other questions on this colony relate to how it got sick in the first
place. Bee viruses are supposedly endemic - bees with effective immune
systems normally withstand them - unless the transfer mechanisms get a boost
from varooa. Has the colony been given sugar feeds which are apparently
common practice in USA?  If so, the larvae will have been fed a deficient
diet, as syrup has the same sugar content as nectar but includes none of the
vital traces of minerals, vitamins and medicinal substances possibly
expressed by plants in their nectar - 50% of modern drugs are extracted or
derived from plants. A deficient diet may have produced these sickly bees -
no point in curing them only to return them to the same unnatural systems of
management. Annual losses of bee colonies are apparently enormously high in
USA - the weather is often blamed but is the climate any less favourable
than in say eastern Europe of Russia?   To the onlooker, it is the culture
of bee management in the USA that is inherently unhealthy - and if there is
high colony mortality, no surprise.  If homotoxicology addresses the balance
between a living organism and its environment, can it help to detect and
point out where modern beekeeping practices put bees under unendurable
stress, so that instead of treating the sick we can strengthen the healthy ?

Robin Dartington

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
-- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/BEE-L for rules, FAQ and  other info ---
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::