> I just was told there recently was an newspaper
> article in the last three days of a bee die off in Florida.
Using the google news search, and typing in "bee +florida",
I got this in several Cox newspapers:
=================================================================
Cox News Service - Thu, Oct. 25, 2007
WASHINGTON: Unexplained honeybee deaths have started showing up in
Florida, where the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder was first
discovered a year ago, the Agriculture Department's top bee
scientist said Thursday.
Jeffrey Pettis, research leader of the department's Bee Research
Laboratory in Beltsville, Md., said it is too early to say if
another round of bee die-offs has started.
The insect plague devastated thousands of commercial beehives in
several states last year, posing a threat to crops that depend
on bees for pollination.
When it occurs, worker bees fail to return to hives, leaving
juvenile bees and some adults to die.
Colony Collapse Disorder was first reported by a Florida beekeeper
in November of last year. It quickly started showing up in other states.
Pettis was a member of a team who last month reported that a recently
discovered bee virus had been linked to hives in which CCD had occurred.
=====================================================================
So, the report confirms nothing, and only adds more speculation.
But given the multiple reports Jerry B. confirms have been
arriving, I don't think that there is any basis for
ongoing denial phrased as rhetorical questions like:
> Where is the 'diagnosis' in the equation?
A number of these reports have come from people known to be
skilled enough to identify the basic symptoms. The actual
"diagnosis" will come when their samples are tested.
> So far, I have seen just about every succumbed colony in the USA
> being blamed on CCD. CCD has become the 'convenient diagnosis'
> for every colony death ranging from queenlessness to mismanagement
> to what ever.
Few beekeepers want to even ADMIT to having been hit by CCD
in public, so your contempt for the skills of your fellow
beekeepers seems to be at odds with the facts. Beekeepers
would rather their names are not used in connection with
CCD, so it is not as "convenient" an excuse for other
problems as you might think.
Randy Oliver said:
> "It should be noted that inspection based on sampling always
> involves a degree of error. The acceptance of some degree of
> risk that the pests are present is inherent in the use of
> sampling procedures for inspection."
Yes, but without any sort of inspections on either end,
our "degree of error" is 100%.
What approach other than sampling can one use with packages?
Sampling can be done at high levels, perhaps even
sampling a few bees from every package, if you want to
increase the screening level.
If you have any ideas that might increase confidence, let's
hear them!
Steve Noble asked:
> In the quest for freedom from risk, at what point does the
> level of certainty required become a de facto ban on imports?
The "question" is really an argument.
Right now, we have ZERO data and thereby, ZERO certainty.
Without sample data, the result was finger-pointing, angry
denials, and calls by US Senators to ban further bee imports,
WTO rules notwithstanding. Not good.
In the face of these accusations, veiled and not-so-veiled,
Australia's initial response was 100% data-free, and
thereby 100% fact free.
The US had only a few samples, not really even enough to
get published in a scientific journal, but somehow, they
got a paper published.
They are now scrambling to get some more data to support
the conclusions that they are claiming they never made
in the first place.
(The above may sound like a joke, but it is a honest and
accurate description of exactly what is happening.
That's why I love "bee science", sentences like the
above just write themselves!)
Wouldn't it have been nice if Australia had some samples
sitting in some liquid nitrogen from their mere dozen or
so shipments to the US over the past three years?
Imagine how quickly this issue would have been settled
if sampling had been done, and some bees from each sample
would have been "archived" on each end of the shipments.
So I think it is fair to say that we need at least SOME data,
as right now we have nothing. I think we'd have a long way
to go before there would be any danger of creating a
"defacto ban" on imports, or the dreaded "non-tariff
barrier to trade".
As I have consistently pointed to the UK/EU sampling
protocol as a model for the US, Australia really has no
right or reason to object to US implementation of the
same protocol. If they haven't complained about sampling,
testing, and record-keeping in the UK and Europe, they
certainly can't complain about it being done here.
If we were to go beyond the UK/EU long-standing protocol,
then (and only then) there might be basis for concern.
The characterization of the mere suggestion that someone,
somewhere in the process merely START sampling and
testing some bees as a "quest for freedom from risk"
seems disingenuous in the extreme. If this view is
representative of the exporters and the biosecurity
staff, then I am forced to admit that a ban is all that
will protect the US. It would not be so much a ban on
bees as a ban on the product of arrogance. :)
> If what Peter Detchon said about the rigor of inspections
> being done on the Aussie side is true,
What he said was not "true" at all. It may have sounded
nice, but the program as described sampled an insignificant
number of hives, a number so low, any conclusions drawn
from the testing would not even be publishable in any
refereed journal, due to glaring "statistical insignificance".
> and then on top of that you add very rigorous inspections on
> the American side would you not be well into the red as far
> as profitability goes for imported Australian bees?
As for the costs on the Australian end, without numbers,
we can't say.
But then you go on to assume that the cost of sampling, testing,
and record-keeping on the US end would somehow impact someone's
bottom line, either the buyer or seller of Aussie bees. Here
in the USA, "user fees" are not the norm for APHIS inspections
of imports, so I don't think there's any reason for concern in
this area unless/until we (1) Have a sampling protocol and
(2) hear that there will be a user fee for the "service".
But how do these sorts of costs affect the profitability
of bees exported to the UK and EU countries? Australia
has not complained, so I can only conclude that they don't
have a problem with the UK/EU port-of-entry inspection
protocol for 100% of imported queens. (They don't
allow Aussie packages at all.)
But your most basic assumption is that shipping live
bees from the other side of the planet should somehow
be "profitable". Says who?
I guess it is, given the skimping that has been done on the
minor detail of "biosecurity", but the basic concept of
air-freighting live animals is a highly speculative venture
well past "visionary" and into "surreal" territory.
Most non-beekeepers who hear about bees from Australia and
New Zealand are amazed that anyone would attempt it.
The effort might have made a profit from the initial captive
customer base of Canadians, forced to either pay the prices
asked, or risk fines and prison time for getting their bees
from where they wanted to get them, where they had always
gotten them before, but even that opportunity only lasted
for so long.
> who has more at stake in making sure no bad stuff gets through,
> the people whose livelihood depends on selling bees to U.S.
> beekeepers or overworked and under funded U.S. federal inspectors
Neither group is doing ANYTHING of tangible value yet, so
I'm going to pressure both sides, as two sets of tests
allows each to keep their own data, and be held responsible
for the process, and liable for the results.
> like the ones who were watching toys from China?
The actual problem was that no one was watching the toys
from China at all. Anyway, far more toys were recalled
for design defects in 2007 than for lead paint, so the toy
problem is not a good model for "import screening", as no
level of screening would have detected design defects.
> Let's assume that the mother of all pathogens threatening
> bee kind is not more likely to come from without the U.S.
> than from within.
You'll have to find someone who would do more than laugh
at that assumption. It is generally known where the
nasty beasties are, and there are books, papers in
journals, and news articles about the slow spread of
these exotic invasive from their native ranges to
nearby places. Two recent examples for beekeeping have
been the Small Hive Beetle and the Apis cerana invasions
of Australia. The only "good news" is that the ships
most likely to have carried these problems to Australia's
shores were not shipshape enough to make a trans-Pacific
or trans-Atlantic crossing to the US!
> It's clear to me from this discussion that no one knows
> what the risk is, or how to assess it.
Actually, back in 2002 the US did "risk assessments", so
the WTO thinks that they know exactly how to assess risk.
We now find that the WTO's approach to "risk" is exactly
as I described it in 2001/2002 - one that admits that
the spread of invasive exotic diseases and pests is an
inevitable result of World Trade under the WTO rules,
and shrugs as if this was excused by the profits
made by those who export and import.
So, the US appears to be tip-toeing around the issue,
as this summer prompted a number of people to speak
out of turn and far above their pay grades, resulting
in the impression that the US was about to adopt the
EU's favorite tool "the precautionary principle".
> Australian package producers would just go out of business.
> I think.
Well, the Canadian closure of their border to US packages
and queens is what CREATED the Australian (and Kiwi) bee
export business, so maybe the business is simply no
longer viable now that the Canadians have choices about
where to get their bees.
Perhaps the bottom line on the whole trans-oceanic bee
export game is that the business model was only viable
if the customer base was truly "captive", forced to
buy imported bees by law, and also forced to ignore
any problems, as they had no other viable source of the
quantities of packages required.
If nothing else, the exercise forced the Alberta beekeepers
to learn how to overwinter their hives, which was likely
the best thing that ever happened to their profitability.
4th Game: Final Score, Red Sox 4, Rockies 3
Which means that the Red Sox have apparently won
the World Series AGAIN. I'll have to wait until
tomorrow morning to celebrate, because it is more
likely that this is all a dream than the Sox would
win the Series twice in three lifetimes.
...but if it is a dream, why am I typing?
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