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Re: bees with disease

At 08:38 PM 3/23/98 -0500, you wrote:
>-- [ From: nonayobusiness * EMC.Ver #2.3 ] --
>
>do you think that eventually the european bees will develop any resistance
>to the mites and the other thing that are afflicting them?  I remember
>taking a course in something (I THINK it was microbiology) a while ago
>where the professor said that eventually, AIDS would become  a sickness
>that probably would not result in swift death, but would just be a mere
>annoyance to most people. 

Well, I'm no expert, but I know it takes a REALLY long time for a
particular population of anything to develop a more-or-less peaceful
co-existence with a germ that is dangerous to it.  Scandinavians still have
a very bad time with staphylococcus infections; everybody has a bad time
with TB (if untreated - most of the strides that have been taken against
this germ,  which has been around probably longer than man, are in the
areas of hygiene and treatment, not in becoming accustomed to each other).
The trick is whether the bees will survive long enough for the germs, the
mites, and the bees to go through a natural selection process.  Bees that
can tolerate the stressors will, we can only hope, beget offspring that
also tolerate in a like manner.  But we can't count on it.  They may go the
way of the Mandan Amerinds, those blue-eyed 'Indians' thought to be
descendents of Vikings and their Amerind mates, who were wiped out by
smallpox.  



Sheila Smith
mikecook@pipeline.com
Z 5/6
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