Bees generally have Nosema spores present in the gut and a stressor makes it worse. It only becomes a problem when the spore count gets above a critical level.
Yucel defined a low level as 0.1- 5 million spores per bee, medium infestation, 5-10 million spores per bee, and high infestation more than 10.1 million spores per bee.
There is some good background reading in his 2005 paper.
Also a huge amount of info on nosema on scientific beekeeping.com.
Last edited by Jon; 28-09-2012 at 12:44 PM. Reason: typos
??What kind of bees are you guy's breeding up there in Scotland?Originally Posted by Stromnessbees
Munched up 25 bee abdomens with water as per a previous forum comment from jimbo, a small spot under a 400x microscope can't see any nosema. My first try at this. If I can't see any at 400x is this a reliable enough test?
I hope you didn't chew them!
I was told not to use the mortar and pestle and it was surprisingly difficult to find an efficient alternative, but no I didn't have to chew them
So what was the efficient alternative? I'm intrigued.
A dremel type grind stone in a plastic dish. Concerned about sterilising the stone after use I've binned it. I'll buy the proper tool for next time.
Just as an aside, I had noted last year that if the bees didn't take the thymol syrup within a few days due to cold weather,they wouldn't touch it later, but if I cleaned the feeders and restocked they would. It may be the lecithin in the mix going off when diluted in the thin syrup?
When I checked yesterday the bees had finally finished off the 2 litres
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