> The sudden emergence of a pathogen infectious and deadly to members of
three orders of insects seems harder to believe in than an accidental
poisoning.

The lack of robbing was to me not unusual, as I often find deadouts not
being robbed (found one yesterday in a yard full of hives).  But those
apparent IIV=infected wax moth larvae leave me open to that possibility.

You had to be there in the middle of it--CCD wasn't from poisoning.  The
epidemic would slowly progress from one end of a holding yard to the other
(often after another beekeeper set sick colonies nearby).  The behavior of
the bees would change in advance.  I spoke to a number of beekeepers during
the epidemic, and watched it myself.

Then Dr. Eric Mussen and I witnessed all stages of progression of the
process in our test yard of 72 colonies, resulting in both forms of final
collapse--the queen and a handful of bees over a small patch of brood, or
sudden depopulation, leaving the brood behind.  There were no poisons
involved, and no robbing.  After discussing what we observed, I created the
model for the progression of CCD that I published in ABJ
http://scientificbeekeeping.com/sick-bees-part-2-a-model-of-colony-collapse/
That model was quickly adopted by other top-tier researchers working on
CCD, as it explained how the four positive feedback loops fed upon each
other.



--
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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