> Fair enough, but looking for the protozoa itself allows one to
> detect early cases, and "mild" cases.  Clearly one can find
> protozoa where one might not find spores.

Don't know about that.  Apparently, in any significant infection, spores are
present in quantity.  How long after the first bees gets infected they show
up in other bees, I do not know.   My understanding has been -- thus far --
that the amoebae develop in a bee after it ingests spores.  If it is a large
number, then we're in trouble.

Chicken, or egg?  I don't know.  Here is an opportunity for a novel
interpretation.

>> to get quantatative estimates, a haemocytometer is used by some of
>> us.
>
> Wow, beekeepers are trying to COUNT the darned things?
> I'm impressed.  I would have never thought to try.

It is standard bee lab stuff. See www.honeybeeworld.com/beescience/ for our
amateur efforts a few years back.

> Ontario may be far from Alberta, but it is certainly closer
> than New Zealand and Australia.  Is it a timing thing, or
> is it a Provincial thing?

Of course it is a timing, shipping, and volume thing.  Australians can get a
decent shipment of several thousand queens together early in the season, on
time, and on relatively short notice.  Ontario cannot meet any of these
criteria, and most of the queen producers are relatively small time (but
skilled).  Also, although ON is far south of most of Canada, they are still
a long ways north compared to US queen raising country.

Another factor is that most Western Canadian beekeepers do not like
Australian queens (I found them good, however), and, given a choice, prefer
Hawaiian or Californian stock.  Even if they did like and want them,
Australia cannot continue to provide queens after early April, in my
experience.  Not sure about NZ.

> No comment on the irony inherent in US beekeepers buying queens
> from some of the folks sure to be among the most vocal opposition
> to any attempt to get Canada to comply with existing international
> treaties in regard to trade in things like queens.

I knew you wouldn't mention it.  I won't either.

allen
http://www.honeybeeworld.com

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