--- Chris Slade <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Could one of the factors be local overpopulation of
> colonies that is being
> corrected by nature?
I decided to think about this for a day, to mull it
over. For the record, again, all my reply is “IMO“,,,
Lets look at other overpopulation for a moment,
in the human arena. Overpopulation by itself is not
‘the’ problem in any part of the world today as far as
humans go, and never will be.
How can I make such a statement?
Because, where the problem lies, is in the competition
for available resources, and the transmitting of
disease. You can have a billion people stuffed into a
small country. As long as they have sufficient
resources, and low instance of disease, there will
perhaps be very few problems.
You can have hundreds of colonies stuffed into a small
area, as long as there are sufficient nutritional
resources, and a strong immune system, including
essential survival traits, there would perhaps be few
problems. But if these hundreds of
colonies are placed in an area lacking in nutritional
resources, then by this deficit, you create stress and
a weakened immune system, and an impossibility for the
population as a whole to sustain itself, and
correction needed. And in this case, overpopulation
would ‘appear’ to be the problem.
I have had many times, small isolated yards of 10
colonies collapse in an 'post feral die off
environment' with bee populations lower than they have
been in perhaps hundreds of years. This environment
should have been beneficial by eliminating
competition, but mass die offs still occurred,
suggesting something else at play. Perhaps, the
inability of the existing population to cope with the
environmental factors was the cause. Disease in 'such
populations' is allowed to reach harmful levels, that
also contaminate nearby resistant colonies at levels
higher than their resistant abilities are not adapted
to, causing them to collapse also. A friend from
Sweden, I believe calls it a ‘varroa bomb’ or ‘virus
bomb’. Had this resistant colony have been grouped
with other resistant colonies, then, perhaps the sub
population of bees in keeping disease levels lower,
drifting disease is withen coping abilities.
I had once thought that overpopulation of honeybees
concentrated in a small area would be a problem, but I
am recently swaying to the belief that migratory and
stationary commercial operations are not the cause of
any of our problems. If you wanted to stick a pinin
the problem it would be the apparent weakened immune
system of our honeybees, caused by the ‘environmental
factor’ , which can be any number
of accumulated stresses, which perhaps number in the
hundreds, with NO 2 instances of mass die offs having
the exact same set of stresses and order of severity
being the found to be the cause for the event.
This is why you will never pin CCD down to any single
cause or any set of causes, because of the many
variables that exist. CCD should perhaps be ‘renamed’
to reflect this fact, as the name now
implies a single disorder causing the event.
Best Wishes,
Joe Waggle
“Thou nimble yellow bee, that bring’st the softly
blooming spring, thee the love of primy flowers is
ever maddening.
Flutt’ring o’re sweetly breathing fields, increase
thy honied store, until the wax-compacted cell at
length can hold no more.” -Nicias
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/HistoricalHoneybeeArticles/
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