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Date: | Sat, 5 Jul 2008 00:28:30 EDT |
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Peter and others
Our data from winter 2006-present show a very high incidence of Nosema
ceranae - its virtually in every operation that we've sampled that also reported
colony collapse. We did not find it in all colonies, even in CCD cases - but
we've recently changed our sampling protocol.
Originally, we took one sample of bees from a mix of bee ages. Now we take
one sample of very young bees, and one of the oldest bees. This makes a big
difference in detection - the Spanish observation that N. ceranae occurs in
bees of different ages, depending on the time of year and the stage of
infestation (initial, well established, etc.).
Lesson learned - if you see dead bees on the ground in front of the hive,
don't assume pesticide kill, or that it was some rare virus. We've found that
these bees may be loaded with N. ceranae.
We look at all samples for Nosema. We send samples to Robb Cramer in
Bozeman for PCR. Last summer, fall, winter, Robb did not find any N. apis. But
this spring, he found both N. apis and N. ceranae in some of the samples we
sent - so N. apis hasn't disappeared. As always, it tends to show up in the
spring.
We're currently tracking various treatments - will know by end of summer
what worked.
Jerry
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