heres some math to ponder

if we go with the often used number of 2.5 million "mid-summer" hives in USA and subtract 20% 
for average winter losses, that  leaves aprox 2.0 million hives going into spring and almonds 
which needed aprox 1.1 million hives which we hear was met. 

that leaves 900,000 "unknown condition" hives in addition to the 1.1 million we have some reason 
to believe were alive enough to collect pollination fees in CA in March.  

now consider the piece of data that package and queens were not oversold early in spring and I'd 
say its hard to believe numbers beyond 250,000 hives potentially empty for CCD, unless you want 
to add the winter losses of 500,000 like they do in some media articles or for bee lab funding 
requests. 

If the 2.5 million and 1.1 million are good guesses then its hard to make a case that CCD losses 
have surpassed the total number of an average nationwide winter kill.

numbers like 700,000 gone now from CCD (plus factor in some winter kill) would mean that 
there's not much left except whats on the semi's moving east and north from CA. 

i think we'd know in a hurry if the numbers were that big...and no I don' t mean knowing from the 
media. the bee supply houses would be in trouble and there would have been massive shortages 
of spring queens and  packages. 

from my perspective we're still a ways away from the fall04/winter05 mite crash..at least for now

******************************************************
* Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at:          *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm  *
******************************************************