The below Parliamentary question was asked by Simon Reevell on 2014-04-09.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate he has made of the geographical spread in the UK of the bacterium melissococcus plutonius.
Dan Rogerson
The bacterium is widespread across England and Wales. A recently completed two-year random survey of 4,600 apiaries estimated Melissococcus plutonius as being present in 1.6% in Year 1 (2009/10) and 1.3% in Year 2 (2010/11).
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Simon Reevell on 2014-05-07.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what evidence there is of contamination of the bacterial pathogen, Melissoccocus plutonius, from countries within the EU.
Dan Rogerson
Melissococcus plutonius is the causative agent of European foulbrood. In 2012 the Dutch reported the results of a survey that used sensitive detection methodologies to suggest a 35 percent apiary prevalence of Melissococcus plutonius across the Netherlands.
But a 2012-13 pan-European epidemiological study on honey bee colony losses found a low prevalence of European foulbrood across 15 Member States:
http://ec.europa.eu/food/animals/live_animals/bees/docs/bee-report_en.pdf.
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