New Zealand Varroa Handbook

Helps maximise export opportunities for New Zealands primary industries, improve sector productivity, ensure the food New Zealand produces is safe, increases. Bromenshenk Scientific Beekeeping. First published in American Bee Journal December 2. TABLE OF CONTENTSThe Paper. What Do Bromenshenk and the Army Claim to Have Found The Team. The Tools. A Novel Approach. Y4A5864-768x934.jpg' alt='New Zealand Varroa Handbook Of Nature' title='New Zealand Varroa Handbook Of Nature' />New Zealand Varroa Handbook For MortalsBack to the Paper. Q AIridescent Virus. Practical Applications. Acknowledgements. New Zealand Varroa Handbook' title='New Zealand Varroa Handbook' />Issuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. Easily share your publications and get. Varroa destructor and Varroa jacobsoni are parasitic mites that feed on the bodily fluids of adult, pupal and larval bees. Varroa mites can be seen with the naked eye. The new Hopguard II strips hold much more active ingredient, and release it over a longer period of time. These are handy for nucs for which thymol and formic may be. References. A man walking along the street one night sees another searching for his lost keys under a street lamp and politely stops to help. After a long search, the passerby says, Are you sure this is where you lost the keys Oh no, answers the other, I dont know where I lost them. Then why are you looking only under the street lampBecause the lights better here. A recent paper, Iridovirus and Microsporidian Linked to Honey Bee Colony Decline, by Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk and a team of collaborators including the U. S. Armys Edgewood Chemical Biological Center made national news in early October. Has the Bromenshenk team finally found another clue to the mystery of CCD by looking somewhere that others previously hadnt  I will interrupt my Sick Bees series in order to discuss the implications of this paper. All Nokia Full Pm File Bb5 Service here. THE PAPERIm writing this article shortly after the release of the paper, and things are crazy  The New York Times ran the unfortunate, but attention grabbing headline Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery, which set off a flurry of excitement in a public worried about honey bees. There is gratuitous sniping from other researchers in the press, and Fortune magazine carried an inaccurate and libelous piece accusing Bromenshenk of being in Bayers pocket because he didnt blame CCD on the neonicotinoid pesticides as though the Army lab could care one whit about Bayer  Im incredulous that folk are getting so worked up  Science shouldnt be about personalities and politics it should be about assessing the data and conclusions on their merits. I want to make clear at this point that I have no dog is this fight, and am as curious as anyone to see if Bromenshenks results will be confirmed by other investigators. I know most of the CCD researchers, and find every one of them to be top notch scientists who really know their bees. So I am going to avoid any political commentary on the progression of CCD research. I do recommend, that in order to appreciate the scope of the scientific effort to address CCD, that you download the CCD Action Plan Hackett 2. I find to be thorough, meticulous, and impressive although surprisingly lacking in any suggestion to use the Army labs tools, despite its commander being on the Steering Committee. I can assure you that all researchers have diligently spent long hours doing the painstaking and tedious field and lab work necessary to figure out what is going on in the sick hives. It has been as frustrating to them as it has been to struggling beekeepers begging for answers. WHAT DO BROMENSHENK AND THE ARMY CLAIM TO HAVE FOUNDLets briefly go over the paper section by sectionI assume that youve downloaded your copy see References. The paper has its critics, a number of whom I have spoken with I will attempt to address their criticisms in my analysis. Lets start with the authors summary in the Abstract We used Mass spectrometry based proteomics MSP to identify and quantify thousands of proteins from healthy and collapsing bee colonies. MSP revealed two unreported RNA viruses in North American honey bees, Varroa destructor virus 1 and Kakugo virus, and identified an invertebrate iridescent virus IIV Iridoviridae associated with CCD colonies. Both VDV 1 and Kakugo virus are very closely related to Deformed Wing Virus DWV, which is ubiquitous in U. S. bees that are infested with varroa. Due to the close relationship to DWV, the identity of these two viruses will need to be confirmed by other methods. If indeed they are present, it will be a wakeup call as to just how porous our borders are to the influx of new bee pathogens The key and most surprising finding was that the team discovered the apparent widespread presence of a heretofore unreported iridescent virus in sick colonies. This finding has been strongly questioned by someI will review the evidence shortly. Bromenshenks next conclusion is much less controversial In addition, bees in failing colonies contained not only IIV, but also Nosema. We conclude that the IIVNosema association may be critical in honey bee mortality linked to CCD. The nosema has been subsequently identified as Nosema ceranae Bromenshenk, pers comm. This may be an aha finding, as bee health problems in a number of countries appear to have increased at about the same time as N. N. ceranae alone. THE TEAMBromenshenk teamed up with statistician Dr. Colin Henderson, and then enlisted the help of virologists and chemists at the Armys Edgewood lab this is the outfit whose job it is to identify the cause of any new diseases suffered by soldiers and more recently, civilians and agriculture as well. The Army team was headed by Dr. Evan Skowronski who, due to being on the CCD steering committee properly recused himself from the actual research. The sample analyses was headed by the Armys Dr. Charles Wick, who invented the IVDS machine his brother Dave offers IVDS sampling to beekeepers, who coordinated several additional software designers. When the team found N. IIV, they recruited fungal pathologist Dr. Robert Cramer, and iridovirus experts Dr. Shan Bilimoria who recently patented an IIV protein for use as an insecticide, and Dr. Trevor Williams who wrote the books on iridoviruses. THE TOOLSIn order to grasp the significance of the Bromenshenk paper, one must understand the various methods available for confirming the presence of a pathogen in, say, a bee Figure 1 Microscopy optical or electron with which you visually look for the actual organism, as when counting nosema spores. Integrated Virus Detection System IVDS this machine separates out viruses by particle size Dave Wick has recently matched several peaks to specific bee virusesImmunological in which you use an antibody designed to bind with a specific virus, bacterium, or protein ELISA or blot tests. Genomics in which you look for the genetic sequences of specific organisms using PCR amplification or by binding to a microarray. Proteomics in which you look for proteins specific to each pathogen. Figure 1. Different ways for identifying a virus. Please refer to my previous article about genetic transcription and translation. Each method has its advantages and disadvantagesprice often being a consideration. TEM and gel from Lapointe 2. IVDS from Dave Wick RT PCR from Chen 2. MSP from Charles Wick protein illustration from Wikipedia. Each of the above methods has its strong points and drawbacks when looking for known pathogens. But how about when you are trying to discover an unknown virus  It took twenty years to nail the HIV virus that causes AIDS and believe me, lots of researchers were looking for it  Luckily, some of the newer technologies have made great stridesin 2. Dr. Joe De. Risis Virochip identified the virus that was causing the SARS outbreak in less than 2. De. Risi, funded by Project Apis mellifera, is developing a microchip that should identify any bee pathogen in a sample.