Interesting guesses going on here.

One of my hobbies is repairing things, from TVs to clothes washers. In 
most of these repairs, I have to start with the obvious first, otherwise 
I waste my time chasing the esoteric. Some of the things I look for are:

Has it happened before? I like to keep records of my repairs since often 
it is the same part that fails and I can see that the symptoms are the 
same. There are records of massive bee kills. Some culprits were 
Tracheal/Varroa mites, off spec HFCS, AFB, pesticides, and a slew of 
other bacterial and viral diseases.

What is common to the problem? So are the bees dying on the west coast 
or just the east? If so, what is common to them? Jerry noted that they 
have moved between Maine and Florida, so it would not be unusual to have 
the symptoms along the east coast. If they are dying all along the 
coast, you can eliminate the weather since it certainly is not common in 
every location. It is also obvious that beekeepers vary in their 
practices in keeping bees, so that can be eliminated.

What is common to what is still working? In my electronic repair do I 
still have sound, horizontal sync, color...? For the bees, what is 
common with the surviving colonies? Is a specific race not effected? Is 
a specific location (away from possible pesticides) free from the problem?

Then I start measuring voltages and continuity, so with bees it will be 
Beltsville or other labs to check on disease or pesticides.

When all else fails, I might easter egg the problem, which is to put a 
good part in place of the bad one and give it the smoke test, a very bad 
practice which I would have chewed out the sailors who worked for me if 
they did it. And they did. Just like I did. So move good colonies into 
the effected areas and see what happens.

I think the key in this problem is to stay away from agendas, which I 
see too much of on this list. We take a problem and assign our 
prejudices to the solution. This is really a detective story (which is 
how I look at my dead appliance) where the clues are sifted, evaluated 
and accepted or discarded. Just because we do not like one of the 
characters in our story, that does not mean they are guilty. For that we 
need proof.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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