>> Yang and Cox-Foster looked at how bee mites 
>> affect the bee immune system...

Steve said:

> Could be but couldn't it also be that viruses are not 
> being attacked as much in a compromised immune system 
> and therefore are able to reproduce more rapidly?

If this were the case, then the extra step of invoking
an immune response in the bees would have no value to 
the experiment.  One could simply sample, look at
virus levels, wait a bit, and look at virus levels again.

Perhaps the messing around with invoking an immune 
response was a useless extra step included merely in
an attempt to make their work look less like a mere 
repeat and confirmation of Judy Chen's work at 
Beltsville in the area of mites as vectors for the 
spread of viruses in bees.  Dunno.


But I did some searching, and realized that this is
not new work at all!  This was from 2005!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/05/050517110843.htm

"The Penn State researchers report their findings in today's 
(May 17, 2005) online version of the Proceedings of the 
National Academy of Science."

I'm surprised to learn that Diana Cox-Foster had done 
any work at all related to bees as early as 2005.

This work has clearly not since proven to be of value in
any of their subsequent work, and we need not furrow our 
brows to try to understand it.

With all the mite/virus work done since then in regard to
CCD, when even the Penn State team itself does not cite
their work, they are clearly hoping that everyone just
forgets this work.  

That's the cool thing about citation indexes.  The good
work rises quickly to the top, and the bad work quickly
disappears from view. 

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