Peter quoted:
> "The primary cause of the failure of colonies to build
> up in the apiaries from which the 1977 HRDD stock came
> seems to be disease... From our data we can offer no
> support for the genetic hypothesis of DD."
(From "Disappearing Disease: III. A comparison of seven
different stocks of the honey bee" by Kulincevic,
Rothenbuhler, and Rinderer, June 1984)
There have been multiple events that were given the
misleading and unhelpful label "Disappearing Disease"
or "Dwindling Disease", but I doubt that any two events
had the same exact cause. (The Penn State team put an
article in Bee Culture a while ago that asked the
question:
"Colony Collapse Disorder: Have We Seen This Before?"
http://tinyurl.com/6bwa3c
...but did not actually answer that question one way
or the other. At least they listed most of the prior
"events" that might have been confused with "CCD" by
the press.)
The quote from Rothenbuhler, et al was a good-faith
statement from men of good character, but the curious
wording was intended to say "no, not OUR fault THIS time".
The context for these strangely-worded statements and
surprisingly defensive assertions is a little-known
tale of beekeeping intrigue that can now be told, as
the villains of the tale can no longer extract revenge
from anyone.
Bill Wilson of the USDA tracked an earlier 1970s outbreak
of "disappearing disease" to the door of the USDA Baton
Rouge Bee Lab, where AHB genetics had been crossed with
the hybrids of the time. Prototype queens had been
distributed to operations all over, and Bill saw the
connection between the new queens and the problem.
The USDA was embarrassed by the exposure of their own
messing around with "killer bees", and rather than face
the music, they sidetracked him and his career in
retaliation for exposing the USDA as the source
of the genetic problem.
Bill was right, but without the resources of a cooperative
USDA, he had limited proof. The actual breeding work
involving AHB likely posed little or no risk of having the
same cataclysmic outcome as the work in South America that
resulted in the "release" of AHB, but the USDA did not want
the bad press inherent in any whisper that they were working
with any AHB genetics at all.
Beekeepers don't seem to realize that what appears to them
to be a game or a mere series of arguments is played for keeps.
Entire careers, Bill Wilson's included, have been sacrificed
in an effort to serve the interests of beekeepers. Science
is a full-body contact sport, and sometimes people cheat, draw
fouls, flopp like Bill Laimbeer of the Pistons, and slide into
3rd base with their cleats in the air.
In that specific case, the USDA itself treated one of its own
like an expendable pawn.
I offer a toast to Bill Wilson at every large beekeeper event,
and hope that others do the same.
We have to drink to Bill Wilson, as no one else is brave
enough to do so, and it is our obligation to grant immortality
to those who were brushed aside and swept under the rug along
with the truths they found.
The toast is simple - "Bill Wilson was RIGHT, and everyone
knew he was right!"
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