Jim (who I do not believe is ever a 'tad confused') wrote:

" Did everyone dismiss the Vita test kit as "useless" based upon reports of
difficulty in a single day on a single hive?"

I did not. I merely commented that it had given two false negatives on
known infected material - so further work might be required.

"Isn't it semi-obvious that, even in a hive known to be AFB-infected, any
one specific small sample from the hive might not contain any trace of AFB
at all?"

Yes, but this was not a small sample from a hive.  It was dug out of several
cells in a heavily
infected comb - confirmed, although no-one would have needed it, by the NBU
laboratory.  The cells had all the classic symptoms - perforated cappings,
scale etc.

"Isn't the really neat point that the Vita kit appears to allow beekeepers
to transcend mere "visual observations", and stop "guessing", even if the
guesses are often highly-educated
and experienced guesses?"

If it worked first time every time, maybe, but I made the point that I felt
that positive diagnosis of AFB was possible in the field without the kit (or
guessing) and
that a kit for EFB might be more useful. Some have disagreed about the ease
of diagnosis (their absolute right to do so!), but established practice from
our NBU inspectors seems to agree with my view.

"The initial product offering is a kit said to cost 5 British pounds each,
which may sound too expensive, but when has the price of any mass-produced
item not gone down as sales volume went up?"

That assumes that there is a mass-market.

"Maybe the whole "test strip" approach is a less-than robust packaging
concept..."

It is not a test strip - more, so I am told, based on a pregnancy testing
kit.
Material is macerated in solution and a couple of drops of the liquid placed
in a small well on the kit.  It then travels along a channel giving either
one or two blue lines.  One line indicates test
correctly performed (they all gave this line) and the second indicates
positive for AFB.

"Vita, like any vendor of products, may need to go through a tweaking
process before their offering can hope to meet the needs of every beekeeper,
but let's not discourage Vita so early in the process!"

Agreed, but there is a great danger in putting the product on the market if
it does not work properly.  I would suggest that few people watching the
demonstration will be in a hurry to buy - and that is not good for Vita now
or in the future.

"Chemistry is repeatable".

Not in this case!

"The group can now resume its regularly-scheduled muttering over the omens,
portents, and signs of bee diseases, comparing techniques for reading
tea-leaves, discussing the merits of left-handed versus right-handed rune
tossing, whatever".

So kind, thank you sir.  I have no experience of rune tossing - which hand
would you advise?

"Some of us want less "art" and much more "science" in diagnosis".

So observation is no longer part of science?

"New technology applied to farming is never perfect out of the box..."

Isn't it the problem that nothing is perfect out of the box any longer?
There is, increasingly, the tendency to 'trial' rather than take the trouble
to get things right first time - governments being, of course, the worst
offenders.  If I hear the phrase, 'we will/must learn the lessons' just one
more
time...

Peter Edwards
[log in to unmask]
www.stratford-upon-avon.freeserve.co.uk/

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