> Penn State has several "podcasts" on these topics
>
>   
The theme of all of them is "it might be" and there are a variety of 
things they say that might be the cause of CCD, but Imidacloprid is not 
the "chief suspect." It has to stand in line even at Penn State.

Maybe the CCD group is further along than it seems, but there seems to 
be as much guessing as to the cause within that disparate group as there 
is on this list.

I question why the investigation was not kept narrow and isolated to the 
first reports in the Mid-West. It now seems to have been diluted, 
especially since everyone who loses bees now thinks they have CCD and 
whatever group investigates only does so with those closest to them. So 
you have widely separated groups looking at what may be a problem which 
is local in nature and not universally applicable. It sounds like trying 
to define an elephant by confining each group to only one part and not 
the whole.

Add to that, I would not look at any operation which had verified high 
mite loads before reporting CCD and who was told they would lose their 
colonies that year- and did. But one part of the CCD group is doing just 
that. Anything that comes from that group is suspect.

CCD can only claim 5% of the total losses in the US, if you go by the 
most quoted and apparently most accurate, one-quarter of the 25% of 
losses this year. So we had 20% loss, mostly  because of mites, and a 
guess that the rest is CCD. Mites are, were, and will be the problem, 
not CCD.

CCD has happened before and will happen again, and we still will not 
know specifically why. I fear this will be true because of the dilution 
of the effort. Too many things will end up as suspect with no real 
defined cause. I hope I am wrong.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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