Although I am a longtime hobby beekeeper who used to get 200-600 lbs of
honey per year, my  4 to 10 hives have not yielded honey for several years.
I
have had to feed them all copiously just to keep them alive.

Without actually looking at your hives and taking samples my comments are
only a guess but will give it a try and maybe figure your situation out. I
need quite a bit other information.

Obviously you have a problem Ernie.

In the old days all beekeepers blamed the weather or the queen producers.
Now CCD.

>There has been
very little incoming nectar.

I doubt your problem but hives dwindle when no nectar is available. Are
nectar sources available?

 an
overwintered weak hive that, however,  had at first been building up
STRONGLY  in the Spring.

Building strongly in hobby terms is a bit different than commercial terms
but was this hive building because you were feeding or from a flow?

>A powdered sugar dusting was used to evaluate
varroa mite levels.  Analysis of the powdered sugar coming down through a
screened bottom board showed only a few mites.

What time of year was this done. (last couple weeks?) If so and you could
only drop a few (3?) varroa I would question the results.


Have you been treating for varroa and if so what have you used over the last
18 months?

>I had been feeding the hive
fumadil and Honey-Bee-Healthy and there was no sign of loss of appetite.

Good sign.


>Then the hive abruptly collapsed and had few incoming foragers.

Typical of a pesticide kill. Two types of kills.
1. bees make it back to the hive and are found on the ground outside the
entrance.
2. bees are killed in the field. Lots of this since the Ariel crop dusting
of soybeans. Are you in an area of row crops?

>The final
remaining live bees in this hive were evaluated by Sue Chien
at "waggledancehoney.com" and found to be very low in both varroa and
tracheal mites and very low in nosema spores.

She did not give you the approx. number of tracheal mites she found in the
sample? varroa/ nosema spores?

It seems funny you could only find a few varroa with the total hive drop yet
she found varroa in the samples. How many sample bees did she look at?

> I know the queen was among
the 200-300 remaining bees,

Queens only lay enough eggs which the hive can take care of when a hive
dwindles the above is common. Not CCD *unless* many frames of brood and all
is left is the queen and 200-300 young bees.


>but they had all abandoned the comb that she
was laying eggs on, and were clustered up under the inner cover when I
sampled them.

Dying hives do strange things.

>Sue Chien found the queen was still fertile and I saw eggs on
the last comb that had been used, but there was no interest in this comb.

Was there a pollen & honey oval around the place you found the eggs?

>It seems that Parasitic Mite Syndrome can
be ruled out because of the low mite counts.

PMS is a broad term . In your case a virus still could be responsible but
most likely not the cause but only one factor. Did she she in abnormal bees
in the sample? Crawling bees inside or outside the hive? On the hive floor?

>  There is no interest in this hive
by robber bees so there seems to be some sort of odiferous residue that is
fending the robbers off. Very little honey and pollen is present.

Bees have always robbed at times and not robbed at others. The CCD team made
a big deal of the lack of robbing. I do not.

>So far the only
beekeeper that I know of who has overcome CCD is one who got rid of ALL his
old equipment and got all new packages and queens.

The above has been the quickest way to overcome CCD *but* not the only way.
Reusing equipment (comb) from documented CCD has taken awhile and several of
my friends have said in hindsight they wished they had simply trashed the
frames.

>If the problem is not
pesticides then this must be a very virulent contamination problem.

The problem with pesticide testing is the tester finds so many chemicals
they have not a clue if any or what combination caused the problem.

>How would you proceed at this point ?

Because you are hobby I would make the bee yard an experiment. I would leave
one hive alone as a control and do experiments with the others. One hive all
new equipment with a package.

one by the remaining  bees on new frames.

so on and so forth.

>Would you get a pesticide scan on the comb that was last used by the queen
>?

Your dollar. I would be interested in the findings.

>Would you get rid of the old equipment and start over?

Not the woodenware but for sure some frames if old. Maybe all if not going 
the experiment route.


>Would you try cleaning the old equipment with bleach and, if so, how?

I would spray a light solution of bleach water ( one tenth bleach) on the
deadouts frames you wish to reuse. Let sit for awhile before using again.
Scorch woodenware or at least mist with bleach water.

I am not always on line but if you answer the questions I asked i think
others on BEE-L are quite capable of providing help. I do not think your 
problem
is CCD.

bob

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