John asked ...."Are the overwhelming majority of bee dieoffs occurring in migratory 
operations or along  migratory routes?

If the answer is definitely no, I think this would go a long way in clearing 
those who make their living from migratory beekeeping.Nobody should have to 
prove their innocence, I just think this would be a practical means of 
clearing up some misunderstanding-shedding light on this matter.."

Here in Australia, migratory beekeeping is alive and well....and so are the bees. We too force our bees to do "un-natural" things like
expand their brood nests at the "wrong" time in order to maximise their pollination of early crops like almonds, insist that they "tough it out" on crops like 
plums where they get little or no reward for their effort, load 'em up on trucks and trailers and shift them long distances on busy highways from one climatic environment to another, totally unlike the one they came from. And yes they are exposed to all the same chems that are a part of modern agriculture here, just as in the USA.
And they do just fine...with a little TLC from the beekeeper.
 CCD is not happening in Australia (and we are very grateful for that). So to blame Migratory Beekeeping as the cause of CCD seems to me, to be little more than a Luddite philosophy, and until there is some real evidence to support that view I'm afraid thats how its proponents will be viewed by me. John, I for one see no need for the modern migratory beekeeping community to "prove their innocence".

There is however one very big difference between the migratory beekeepers in Australia and USA...we in Oz don't have Varroa destructor to contend with, and boy, are we  grateful for that!

PeterD
(in South Western Australia, where we have just had a few autumnal days and nights, which was very pleasant indeed).



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