I agree with both Peter and Randy.  Our own paper shows the  presence  of 
Nosema and a variety of viruses in the strongest  colonies in apiaries 
affected by CCD.  But, eventually, most of these  'strong' colonies also 
collapsed.  Our control bee operation in NW MT,  with NO history at all of CCD had no 
detectable Nosema, very little virus of any  kind.  We've been misquoted 
repeatedly about this.  We did not say  that healthy colonies had high titers 
of Nosema and virus, we said the strongest  colonies in CCD apiaries, as 
defined in our paper as the most populous  colonies had an assortment of 
pathogens.  Our true controls had no Nosema  and the only detected virus was low 
levels of sac brood.
 
We did find an interesting succession of virus/Nosema levels in  the time 
series sampling of a collapsing colony (samples taken over a period of  
weeks).
 
One of the problems reviewers had with our paper was that the Nosema virus  
levels in bees from the remnant bee populations of fully collapsed  
colonies more closely resembled those of the strongest colonies (not necessarily  
healthy colonies) in the same CCD affected apiaries, than the levels  in 
collapsing colonies, where Nosema and virus levels (and virus diversity)  were 
higher.  In other words, during the process of collapse was where the  
pathogens really came on strong.  The fact that the bees left in a hive  after a 
collapse looked more like the best looking (not necessarily healthy)  
colonies did not surprise us.  These bees were very young.  They could  have been 
resistant - reason they didn't leave, weren't dead; or just so young  that 
the pathogen loads hadn't had time to build up..
 
Bottom line, all of the relevant data was derived from colonies in the  
process of collapse.  And, it didn't surprise us  at all to see  pathogens in 
colonies that looked better - especially when many of these  eventually 
collapsed.  
 
And as Randy mentioned, we speculated that the really sick bees  weren't 
available for sampling - having flown off.
 
Jerry

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