TWiV 104: The colony-collapse blues

October 24, 2010

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Alan Dove, and Rich Condit

The entire TWiV family reviews the latest ideas about colony collapse disorder of honeybees, and resurgence of monkeypox in Africa.

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Dickson – Four Fish by Paul Greenberg
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Rich – Encyclopedia of Life
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  • J.J. Bromenshenk

    Thank you for reviewing our paper in a well balanced and reasoned manner.

    A couple of minor clarifications. We did not find the Nosema/IIV pair in bees from Australia where there have not been any reports of CCD, nor in bees from a large, non-migratory operation in Montana – again one with no history of IIV.

    We have seen samples where Nosema was at very high levels, yet the bees looked good. These samples lacked the IIV – but we didn’t have enough samples to justify inclusion in the article.

    We are going to obtain bees from Spain, where investigators have associated Nosema with what they term CCD – but they’ve also seen an IIV – so all parties are interested in seeing whether bees in Spain have the IIV that we see in the USA.

    As per bees in the USA:

    Beekeepers stockpile bees for pollination, wintering in warm areas of the south and in California, not just Texas.

    Bees are used to pollinate citrus.

    Approximately 1.7 million colonies are needed for almonds in CA – that’s a lot of bee colonies being moved about.

    Again, thanks for the discussion and review. Its good for the public to understand the process of science – as you noted, one paper does not constitute proof AND we need to address the actual IIV that we have, satisfy Koch’s Postulates.

    J.J. Bromenshenk

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