> I am in no way saying that ceranae is the CAUSE of CCD, 
> but the etiology of many of the collapse that have been 
> documented, and the symptoms of N ceranae infection are 
> strikingly similar.

I went quite a bit further, months ago, which ended up 
being published in October's Bee Culture.  I explained
that, based upon published data about CCD, Nosema seems 
to be a very significant factor in CCD.  But not one kind 
or the other.  

Both.
At the same time.

If you look at the data provided in the paper on CCD 
published in "Science", and the data provided in the
supplementary materials (free review copies here):
http://bee-quick.com/reprints/dapaper.pdf
http://bee-quick.com/reprints/dedetails.pdf

You will see something interesting, perhaps just as
compelling as the "virus correlates to CCD" theory
advanced by the authors.

What you see is that colonies that had BOTH Apis
nosema AND Apis ceranae were doomed, while colonies
that only had one or the other tended to survive.

This is discussed in more detail in the October issue:
http://bee-quick.com/reprints/reads.pdf

I still do not have raw data or any sample metadata at 
all that might explain what was defined as a "CCD Colony" 
versus what was defined as a "Healthy Colony", so I
cannot further support or refute my alternative 
interpretation for the data published.

On the other hand, the silence has been deafening from the
research team, so I guess they don't have any rebuttal.

I was merely illustrating the flaccid nature of the claims
made in the "Science" paper based upon mere single element 
analysis, where only individual factors were compared with 
each other, and a (claimed) virus was deemed a "marker" for CCD.

Multivariate analysis would have taken, what?  A few extra
minutes, given that the dataset was already being run through 
the top-notch SAS Institute statistical software?  

But it seems clear that Nosema ceranae is somehow much
less virulent here in the USA than it seems to be in
Europe.  Dunno why.

Randy said:

> illustrate how a beekeeper can take spore counts himself, 
> and will compare various sampling methods, and their 
> advantages and shortcomings.  I've got loads of photos 
> to illustrate.

Oh wow, I want to be a fly on the wall when you try to 
get Eric Mussen to buy into your "calibration" approach,
given a random civilian-grade (or student-grade)
microscope with no hemacytometer!  (On second thought,
I will likely hear him from here if I just open a window.)

And you can't really write about Nosema without listening
with care to the guy who nearly created his own college
"major" in the subject area of Nosema, now can you?


But there's an easy analysis methodology for Nosema,
at least for this year in the USA:

1) Do you have bees?

2) If yes, you are almost certain to have Nosema of one
   sort or the other at "treatment-suggested levels".

3) Think I'm exaggerating?  Send some samples to
   USDA-Beltsville, and you will soon find out that 
   I am not exaggerating in the least.

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