>but there are more and more people who believe that pesticides are the root cause of CCD

My bees have ccd and I am 99.9% sure that ccd is caused by a virus
I wonder how many of these 'believers' have hands-on experience?

>and we should avoid 
treatments with chemicals, that kill beneficial bacteria

I tried this last spring,16 months ago
Oops,  AFB, entirely my fault
I should have known better than take advice from "flakes"
but at that point was felling a bit desperate

Since then (16m ago) have found that Vitamin C is an
(barely) adequate treatement
(Let me coin a TLA,  VC = Vitamin C)
This year have increased concentration of drench
to 10gm VC/l (from 6gm) Top bar drench

Was it cc millar that said "Let the bees tell you"?
They appear to prefer the VC fortified feed
Yellow jackets definatly greatly prefer VC (90%+)
(and I have seen a Yellow jacket doing ankle rub which I consider
definitive for ccd, not suprising since they have access to dead-out equipement)

In another stack of dead-out equipement were  3 black wasp nests
One did not get instantly ruined, so I was able to observe for a couple days
~20% showed STR with their really long legs
This is the 3rd species (besides bees) that I have seen with ccd
Where are the 'flakes' when you need them?

dave

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm