Jerry,

> First impressions -- affected colonies have NO old bees, nor are there any
> dead bees in the hive or in front of the hive --

Report from Calif.
Last year and the year before some of us experienced big die offs, but
thought it was from West Nile Virus spraying.  I've been working with
Mosquito Abatement, and I'm not so sure that pesticide is what caused it.
Perhaps a virus???  But I did see dead bees in front of the
colonies--otherwise symptoms similar.  I hadn't fed my bees anything at the
time. Honeyflows were poor.   This year I'm not seeing the problem, but
honeyflows were much better.

This year in Calif, some HFCS was overheated by the blenders and caused bee
mortality in northern Calif on a large scale--Eric Mussen will be reporting
on this.

Randy Oliver
Calif

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