CCD: Colony Collapse Disorder and the Beekeeping: The Goose that Puts Golden Eggs
Pedro Pablo Rodriguez
Virginia - USA

Pedro Pablo Rodriguez (center) with a couple of Argentine friends in Rio Cuarto in 2001.

2007 started up with a new sign of alert coming from the American beekeepers. Without being able to identify the causes and under an imprecise description of symptoms they denominated the phenomenon like CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder).
The first one in being made echo of the news in Europe was the British network BBC Science that published, passed February 28, the interview that they carried out to us. Before the fact of a provoked beehives dispopulation of beehives seemingly for a multiplicity of factors, the interview was also diffused by different agencies, Telam of Argentina and the Granma of Cuba, who dedicated it a central page in its edition of March 5, among others.
Then other interesting phenomenon happened. Scientific of different parts of the world were able to differentiate the sequence of Nosema apis and Nosema ceranae DNA. With surprising velocity they attributed to this last one the privilege of being the efficient cause of the beehives dispopulation.
The beekeeper and Dr. Pedro Pablo Rodriguez that develops his activities in Virginia, USA and in proximities of Madrid in Spain gives us his point of view.
In one of the central paragraphs of his article, points out:
I have been a beekeeper during 70 years and veterinarian during 45, devote lover of the nature and believer in the Creation, factors that have contributed in my life, a cause, which I believe that it contributes to the well-being of the beekeeping. I will speak of some factors that affect to the beekeeping in general. In the beekeeping, we have the same illnesses and parasites that we had 20 years ago (bacterias, acari, protozoa, viruses, scarabs, bees of the End, mushrooms, a lot of stress, and definitively, transgenics seeds!).

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QUEEN BEES PRODUCTION IN MEXICO
Gilles Fert
Argagnon - France

Fecundation Apiary of "Apícola Elite" in Mexico. Picture Gilles Fert

Gilles Fert is a famous Queen Bees breeder in the Southwest of France, at the Pyrenees foot. He participates especially of Non Government Organisms that promote the development of more deferred countries, specially in Central America. Once or twice a year, not more, He leaves Argagnon to offer training courses or to participate of Symposia or Congresses like those of Apimondia. We met him when he visited the Macia Api-expo (Entre Rios - Argentina), several years ago. Then we had the opportunity to share different activities and he received us in his house in 2003. One of the promoters of the last symposium of Queenbees Breeders that was developed last year in Bulgaria and he is already working in function of the next symposium of Queenbees Breeders to be developed in Mexico next year.
In one of the paragraphs of his report points out:
KILLER BEES:
"It is considered that the introduction of the dark european bee (Apis mellifera mellifera), by Spaniards, it happened around 1760. It is in 1911 that the first Italian bees (Apis mellifera ligustica) were introduced. Then recently, the africanized bee come from Brazil appeared in 1986. This bee was an undesirable crossing of the dark bee (Apis mellifera mellifera) with the African bee (Apis mellifera scutelatta) that has altered the Beekeeping practice for its aggressiveness. The country lost half of its beehives in few years, before the beekeepers change their work methods and reconstructs an economy step by step around the beekeeping."

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