I have asked repeatedly here for a clarification of the Apiary Inspectors or America (AIA) statistics 
concerning losses on CCD. The news releases were always vauge and appeared to not 
differrentiate between winter losses and CCD. Many of my posts which were replies to "CCD 
experts" have been moderated. Sometimes I feel like I'm asking the question no one wants to hear 
the real answer to. 

By scrutinizing different quotes from around the country I suspected the losses were under 10% of 
the 2.4 million. Those quotes can be found in the archives. There has been an obvious mismatch 
in numbers if one took the often quoted 25% of nations hives lost to CCD at face value added a 
winter loss estimate and also assumed 1 million hives were alive in CA for almonds. There would 
have been no hives left in the USA alive short of what was in CA. 
 
Today I may have found the first news quote that substantiates my own estimate. 

http://www.jacksonholestartrib.com/articles/2007/06/17/news/business/
cda6f5ff50b8f123872572fc0021003c.txt

"A survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America estimates that between 651,000 and 875,000 of the 
nation's 2.4 million honeybee colonies were lost over last winter. While most losses were from 
known causes, over one fourth were attributed to CCD"

a simple estimate then using 763K lost colonies * 25% yeilds 190,000 coloines lost to CCD or 8% 
of the nations total. 

One would expect the margin of error to be quite high in this estimate since its all self reported. 

Going with this number we have 1 million hives in CA for almonds, upwards of 875K lost to winter 
and CCD and the remainder 525K colonies still alive and not in almonds. I find this to be a 
plausible estimate of the Great Bee Loss of 06/07. 

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