>Recent report summarizes what is known about CCD, and what the overall
>impact has been ion US beekeeping:

Thanks to Peter for the posting.

I strongly disagree with most of their conclusions.

>Based on information provided in the media, attentive readers who have
>tracked the
annual reports since 2006 might infer that managed U.S. honey bee
populations are nearly gone.

I agree here as the media never seems to get it right but yearly losses
since 2006 have doubled or tripled in even some of the best outfits.

I do not know the answer but would be silly to not see what is happening.
My hive loss this fall is close to pre 2006 levels but not last year.

Many others are not seeing improvement.


>They might also believe that the collective is incurring billions of
>dollars in damages.

Again the above is correct mainly because of the wording *billions* instead
of the accurate millions.

>Our results suggest that there has been no
discernible impacts of CCD on either colony numbers or on the prices of
packaged bees and
queens.

Packages bees in the Midwest climbed from the $60's to the 90's over four
years since the die off. It has been almost impossible for Georgia to fill 
orders and
California postponed delivery for weeks.

The producers use the excuse weather but privately say the bees are not
acting as the bees did prior to 2006.

>. We estimate the
impacts on beekeeper costs to be modest, and possibly less than their
increased revenue due to
CCD-induced increases in pollination fees.

Pollination prices are based on supply and demand. CCD is only a word to
describe a set of symptoms. Today if a hive dies many say "CCD killed my
bees"

the problem started in 2006 (2004 in Florida) and has not gone away.  Every
commercial beekeeper I have spoken with believes the bees have not rebounded
to pre 2006 levels yet.

There are times in beekeeping history when bees were hit hard.

80's tracheal mites.

90's varroa mites

2006 bee die off.

The bees like we we ran in the 70's will never return *in my opinion*.

If you want to see what our bees looked like before the above visit
Australia. No mites, no chemicals and no CCD.

Quite a bit of CCD stats are based on a poorly done survey which beekeepers
jumped on because word was passed around that the government was going to
pass out "free money" to those which claimed losses. Very few of those hives
claimed CCD in the survey were ever verified if *possible* CCD. Certain
beekeepers thought they could pass stacks of dead boxes off for free money.
There were plenty of losses in 2006/2007 but were all the claimed CCD
actually what researchers call CCD? Every dead hive was claimed as CCD even
those I checked in some operations with bees dead with heads in cells
(starvation).

Hive loss research today needs to be divided into the four or five areas the
CCD working group said were possible causes of CCD. The word CCD casts an
umbrella over the issue preventing *in my opinion* the focus needed to work
on each problem.

The word CCD is similar to:

wax moths killed my bees.

small hive beetle killed my bees

cold weather killed my bees.

CCD killed all my hives.

bob

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm