Adony Melathopoulos said:

> Should Varroa and honey bees, left to their own devices, evolve towards
> a less harmful relationship?  How about AFB and bees?
> During my holiday I read a great article by an American evolutionary
> biologist named Paul Ewald (Scientific American, May 2001, 284: 32-33)
> that may shed light on these questions.

Here is the full text of the article mentioned:

http://130.94.24.217/2001/0501issue/0501profile.html

Varroa and honey bees, left to their own devices, seem to do
nothing but die.  The lack of feral colonies seems proof enough.
Maybe this relationship might change, but no one wants to
suffer the losses in hopes of seeing a change emerge for the
benefit of future generations.

In contrast, AFB seems to be something that will force
>>beekeepers<< to evolve, at least in the view of a study
in New Zealand, mentioned in APIS (Feb 2000):

http://www.ifas.ufl.edu/~mts/apishtm/apis_2000/apfeb_2000.htm#6

Which says, in part:

  "Most AFB infections in beehives are due to beekeeping practices...
   Research has shown that materials most likely to carry infective levels
   of AFB spores are: 1) extracted honey supers, which are often taken
   from AFB hives and then put on clean hives, generally a year later; and
   2) frames of brood and honey, which are often moved unknowingly from
   hives with subclinical AFB (those not showing symptoms) to clean hives.
   The same studies revealed that feral colonies, drifting bees, and
   contaminated hive tools, smokers, gloves, foundation, queens and even
   the soil in front of hives are of little consequence in spreading the disease."

So, Mr. Ewald might correctly compare beekeepers and AFB to
mosquitoes that spread malaria.  Even the most careful beekeepers.
And he'd be right.

But how many of us are willing to change our practices as the NZ study
implies we should?  Are beekeepers willing to "evolve"?  Can we even
afford to?

I do not "dedicate" supers to the same hives every year.  To do so would
require a stock of drawn comb at least 15% larger than I currently keep,
and would imply that some years, some supers of drawn comb would
not be deployed, which seems wasteful.  Does anyone do this?

Given that AFB spores are "undetectable" until one sees symptoms, how
can one even do a split without possibly creating two AFB-infected hives
from what was only one hive with dormant spores?  But can anyone afford
to stop making splits and buy packages instead?

If the New Zealand study can be accepted as generally true, it follows
that state inspection programs faced an impossible AFB inspection and
control task from the start.  Without very extensive beekeeper records of
splits, frame moves, and super placements, the only sure option would be
to treat all hives in the same apiary as the foulbrood-infected hive.
(No wonder burning was considered the only sure cure.)

There has been some recent mention of state bee inspection programs
being lost due to lack of funding.  Is inspection as critical as education?
Was it ever?

It might be cheaper to take the money spent on AFB inspections, and use it
to pay the US Postal Service to run everyone's supers through their new
"anti-anthrax" irradiation equipment every winter.  This would at least assure
100% certainty that one's supers start each season AFB-free, which is
much more than any inspection strategy can assure.

Hive beetles also seem to defy all but draconian control measures.
I read of one queen breeder partly "shut down" over hive beetles last
year, but beekeepers who move their hives are harder to inspect than
breeders, and thereby may present a greater risk.

In a recent real-world example of "better inspection", California barred
entry by migratory beekeepers who simply had dirt from Texas on their
trucks or pallets, imposing requirements that put bees at risk, cost
beekeepers money, and even then could not be viewed as "effective" on
any but a public relations level.  Never mind that the spread of fire ants
within California itself was simply ignored, with millions of in-state vehicles
moving between known infested areas and non-infested areas every day.

Migratory beekeepers ("the few, the proud, the sleep-deprived") can't
be asked to stop at every state border for the delay of an inspection
that would attempt to detect every case of hive beetles, mites, or
even fire ants, but it is impossible to argue that they are not significant
vectors for the spread of pests.

But what makes sense?  If beekeepers themselves are a big part of
"the problem", should those of us in states that remain free of the hive
beetle insist that all truckloads of bees get state trooper escorts to
insure that they don't even stop for gas in our states?

What about the beekeepers closest to our own hives?  Should we demand
that everyone somehow prove that they are inspecting their hives?  Heck,
how many people reading this even own a cheap microscope, and know how
to do a post-mortem on bees to find tracheal mites?  I'd guess that about 1 in 10
beekeepers has even tried this. (I get depressed when I have to capture and
kill some bees, pull their little heads off, and put them one by one under the
scope.  It is no fun.  It is tedious.  Perhaps it is easier to just blindly toss
menthol bags on the top bars every fall.)

What about beekeepers who don't belong to any group?  Do we show up
in force, and inspect their hives against their will, or impose some form of
mandatory inspection standards upon them?  I know three local beekeepers
who don't belong to groups - two are too old for meetings at night, and one is
too busy working at his day job, raising a family, and going to night school.
Is mere lack of meeting attendance valid cause for concern about competency?

What about the retired guy with 50 hives, no helper, and a one-frame-at-a-time
harvesting technique?  Does anyone think he will inspect any hive more than
once a year, at most?  Does anyone have the heart to even bring up the issue
of regular hive inspections in his presence, given that he has been keeping bees
longer than any of us have been breathing?  Is mere age and experience valid
cause for confidence about competent follow-through?

What about guys like me, who can't even claim to have a sensible strategy for
diseases, due to the clear presence of mites, and pure undeserved, amazing,
good luck in avoiding disease outbreaks:

a)  I sugar dust all hives with mite falls that increase in June/July (smart)
b)  I treat 100% of hives with Apistain in fall, even if mite falls are minimal (stupid!)
c)  I treat 100% of hives with menthol in fall, even if no tracheal mites found (harmless)
d)  I treat 100% of hive with a plain sugar/Crisco patty (harmless)
e)  I treat no hives with TM without clear proof of need (stupid? smart? gamble?)

...the punch line being that mites can be found with relative ease by
unskilled labor like myself, while "proof" of a need for TM may be
impossible for anyone to find until it is "too late".

I guess I'd rather burn a few hives than contribute to creating
antibiotic-resistant foulbrood, but without coordinated action, hive beetles
will likely become as common as varroa, and all our attempts at "treatment"
of mites and diseases will fall short of eradication, only making all the surviving
"nasties" much more nasty, and worse yet, resistant to everything in our arsenal.

At the rate we are going, it appears to be only a matter of time until we all
become cast members in a remake of a very bad 1950s monster movie,
firing machine guns and shoulder-launched missiles at the giant mutant
varroa mites heading east towards Washington DC, after having destroyed
Cedar Rapids, Iowa.    ...which means that only the mountains protect me.
Varroa can't climb far.

But seriously, what happens after what comes next?

What's the NEXT voodo-magic talisman we wave at the mites after we see
them laughing at organophosphates?  What's left in our bag of tricks?
Nuclear warheads?  When do we get down to developing a consensus
on "current best practices", and then making commitments to implement those
practices on an organized basis, rather than continuing to thrash uncontrollably
with random, uncoordinated, and inconsistent actions reminiscent of a drunk in
the final stages of delirium tremors?

When do we start trying to simply equal what New Zealand quietly does now?

        jim