The latest edition (Oct) of Beecraft features an article about research on the small hive beetle at the National Bee Unit.
It describes the measures that are supposed to prevent the organism from escaping from the lab, like frozen corridors (-15deg C), high security doors and sealed controlled environment rooms with negative air pressure, and an 'accounting' system for every beetle.
Whatever this research is going to be used for, I wonder if this is not research money ill-spent, given that the same research could be conducted in any institute in the USA without the high security element, as the beetles are already widespread there.
Just remember the Foot and Mouth outbreak of 2007 from the Pirbright lab http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Un...mouth_outbreak
- there is always a certain element of risk left, last not least human error.
The bees and the beekeepers would be the ones who would be the worst off, should anything go wrong, and compensation would be hard to get hold of, see Foot and Mouth.
Doris
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