> If I'm correct, than any fool with a scope can differentiate!

I, for one, am happy that both Bob and Randy can call themselves 
correct at the same time.

Yes, it is possible to see the difference between Nosema ceranae
and Nosema apis, and this has been known for a bit.  Problem is,
to tell one from the other, you need a lot of experience looking at
one or the other.

Eric Mussen was the first (to my knowledge) to state that he had seen
what, in the 20/20 vision of hindsight, should have prompted him to 
investigate further, but at the time, was cause for no more than a 
shoulder shrug about "strange looking" Nosema.  After all, Nosema 
ceranae had been positioned as something that killed colonies in 
days, and we certainly did not have anything like that happening 
in US/Canada.

It is going to take some training to get everyone doing their
gross morphology consistently for Nosema, but the situation is
nowhere near as embarrassing as it was with Varroa destructor 
versus Varroa jacobsoni, as the two kinds of Nosema do look
very very similar.  But on a practical level, the two 
problems are treated in the same way, so I am not sure what
value differentiating would add to the process.

> The trend appears to be that ceranae completely displaces apis

Isn't this more of a function of when one looks at a hive, with Nosema
apis "getting out of hand" in spring, while Nosema ceranae "gets out
of hand" in summer?  Has anyone seen any seasonal data to confirm
the statement/claim about "seasonality"?

> "the beekeeping grapevine is around three years ahead of published
data".

Like Nostradamus, the various beekeeping "grapevines" say so much that
it impossible for them to have not included comments that later might
seem to appear "insightful" in retrospect.  It even has a name -
"hindsight bias".  But there is this little thing I like to call "data" 
that turns out to be kinda important to making actual forward progress.

So, while the grapevine may seem 3 years ahead on selected things, it 
is also 25 years behind, in a apparel universe, and stuck in a black 
hole - all at the same time!

Add the internet to the equation, and we end up with a good reason to
invest in Reynolds Aluminum, maker of the closest readily-available
thing to tin foil that can be made into a hat.  The problem of 
favoring the fantastic over the plausible does not appear to be unique 
to beekeepers, it seems to be a general problem of the "marketplace of 
ideas" when the market has very few brokers of fact among all the 
completely bogus ideas floating around looking for completely open 
minds to wander into and take over.  Or maybe the problem here is
that the minds are "empty" rather than "open".  :)

When even the American Medical Association notices the problem, 
it seems clear that the problem is serious.
http://tinyurl.com/yrkolo

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