>
> >This was not "my case" but folks all over this region reported losing
> three fourths or more of their bees in fall 2016. The mite levels were not
> the problem, mites were under control.
>

I was looking for data, since I'm interested in perhaps figuring out what
the culprit was.  What actual hard data did you or others have on mite
levels, and at what time points?

>
> >the collapsed colonies had no signs of mite depredation.


Are you saying that you did not see fecal deposits in the cells at the
center of what had been the clusters?


> >Most had just vanished, with some dead in a heap in the bottom of the
> hive.
>

Did anyone check the frozen bees for prevalence of nosema.  Or for the
Serratia that Burritt reported?

>
> >The bees were disappearing and nobody ever figured out why.


In the CCD hives that I inspected, in Hackenberg's hives, and in the
controlled trial in California in which we monitored hives collapsing from
CCD, the causal pathogens were pretty clear.  Plus there was another
suspect virus with circumstantial evidence.  Colonies collapse for reasons,
but without close inspection and analysis, the cause of death will remain a
mystery subject to wild speculation.

I'm still waiting for the final analysis of DWV strains in the samples sent
to me from across the country.  In retrospect, I wish that we had asked the
submitters to track the survival of each sampled hive, but we did not
expect that regional collapse would happen.  I'm very curious to see
whether it correlates with recombination between DWV-A and the invading
DWV-B.  Collapse due to either of the above would have likely required some
degree of varroa involvement, hence my asking for data beyond "the mite
levels were not a problem."

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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