?> I have seen far more dead bees on the ground in recent years.  I have 
checked time and again, and haven't found that nosema counts correlate, so 
think that it is something else.  I strongly suspect virus.

I agree, and I strongly suspect that the viruses were enabled by allowing 
varroa to get up above a threshold level at some time over the past season, 
even if the mite levels are currently found to be low.

It seems to me that like the after-effects of hives starving a bit at some 
point in preceding months, varroa predation comes back to bite later.

I still recall that DH was  sternly warned about his varroa levels months 
before his CCD crash.

In Alberta, simply maintaining a tight control on maximum varroa levels over 
a span of several years has driven losses back to the baseline while those 
who failed to do so find they are playing Russian Roulette.

There is no direct relationship between mite levels and certainty of 
collapse, but there seems to be a direct relationship, or possibly a log 
relationship, between peak mite levels during a season and probability of 
collapse in subsequent months. 

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