Aaron Morris wrote in October
> My interpretation is that James is saying that
>>IOW disease endemic in Britian in the 1920s may have been vectored by
>>acarine but now is believed to be the Slow
>>Paralysis Virus (SPV) which is being spread by varroa.  Actually, I'm not
>>sure what is being said.  Perhaps that SPV has always been around, acarine
>>vectored the outbreak in the '20s and that varroa is a more efficient vector
>>today?  James, if you will, please set me straight.
Norman Carreck just posted this to the Irish Bee List.

CPV doesn't seem to be very important in association with Varroa. It's
the
viruses that are transmissible by injection, like acute paralysis virus,
slow paralysis virus, deformed wing virus (and possibly Kashmir bee
virus)
which seem to be responsible for losses. Transmission of these viruses
by
the mite has actually been proved in the laboratory.

And also in another post

Although it is theoretically possible that A. woodi could vector
viruses,
there is no evidence that they do. However, confusingly, there are
viruses
ASSOCIATED with the mite, because conditions which favour the mite also
favour these viruses. Bailey is convinced that the "Isle of Wight
disease"
was actually chronic paralysis virus, but many affected colonies were
also
infested with the mite, so everybody assumed that the symptoms of
crawling
bees etc were caused by the mite, whilst the virus was at that time
unknown.

And

Bailey has produced several studies showing a very clear
association between colony density and the incidence of both CPV and A.
woodi. Although he retired in 1982 he is still very interested in the
subject, and is shortly to publish some new analyses of old data which
suggest that in the early years of the 20th century in Britain, when the
"Isle of Wight disease" killed vast numbers of colonies, there might
have
been a million colonies in Britain. The official figure is now 200,000,
although I suspect it is much lower.

BTW now Albert Knight *has* confirmed that genetic studies *have* been
done on colonies of dark bees in Tasmania in a fairly isolated region
and show they *are* Amm.

Regards
--
James Kilty