The acronym CCD has been abused so badly, that perhaps it is time to
shelve it, or restrict it to describe very specific incidents that meet
all of the original definitions, or use it to describe the
"dwindling/disappearing disease" incident(s) ten years ago and only
those. It might be more useful to term each mortality incident by
geographic scope and dates, and have a description of the symptoms
observed, analyses conducted and presumed causes archived by somebody
somewhere: Cache River Valley- 19XX; Louisiana-1973-75; California
Central Valley-fall-winter-2006-2007; Upper New York
State-winter-2016-17.
The incident(s) of the fall and winter of 2006-2007 (and some say it
started in 2005-2006), as much as they appear to be caused by
transmission of a highly virulent pathogen or pathogen combo, could
also be caused by differing situations in different locales. The
appearance in sets of colonies from different origins brought together
and then collapsing, while not happening in other places, still can be
explained by other circumstances, including the poor dosing of an in
hive chemical. In some way the coming together of beekeepers and
colonies from different places could also promote the sharing of
recipes. Could certain active ingredients and dosages in hive cause
sick workers to fly out, abandoning brood and queen? We are left with
the mystery and murkiness of evidence.
Agree that some individuals jumped quickly on the problem, travelled,
collected, spent countless hours, money, energy on it and need to be
recognized for that. At the same time, many (a majority?) of
experienced beekeepers, bee inspectors, researchers looked and did not
see the same phenomena at the time. Perhaps that affords us the luxury
of a certain distance from the problem, a different perspective, and a
good dose of healthy skepticism?
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