Terramycin is included in the class of 7 antibiotics likely to be further regulated. I don't recall if Tylan is also in that group of 7. This bill has been on the backburner for months in Congress and looks like it will come up for a vote soon.  

I don't have time for an in-depth on this right now, but we have really discussed it thoroughly in the past, anyway. The key points I would make are:

I would be adamantly opposed, and would fight tooth and nail, any attempt to classify honeybees as livestock animals for the purposes of regulation. That would expose beekeeping to a whole slew of regulations that could hinder and cripple the industry.

The issue of prevention vs. treatment can be addressed thusly: if there is disease in the apiary, or the outfit, or the vicinity of the outfit, it is no longer prevention but treatment, and treatment of disease is allowed by the proposed regulations. This would include destruction of obvious cases and treating asympomatic hives. 

Finally, tylosin was chosen as a replacement for terramycin, in part because it is NOT used in human medicine, whereas oxytetracycline is. Even so, the detection of terramycin in honey is exceedingly rare, while tylosin tend to persist, making terramycin a better choice (where TM resistant AFB is not present).

Fumagillin is also persistent  and the long term use of it to control nosema apis may in fact have allowed nosema ceranae to replace it as the dominant type. The jury is out on its effectiveness on nosema C.


Peter Loring Borst
Ithaca  NY USA
42.347°N 76.503°W
peterloringborst.com

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