Certainly doesn't sound like ccd to me,
shows the importance of having some half decent flows
in the season.

>pressured by internet persons to blame ccd,
Did these people have bees?
Have they suffered loss?
Were they an acknowledged expert in a relevant field?
What is an opinion worth?

>No absconding occurred. 
Since an empty hive is the #1 symptom,
(and usually several hives are empty)
then I don't know why you gave ccd
more than a moments thought

If the frozen cluster was larger than a large grapefruit
then I would doubt ccd was the problem

>December starvation in mature colonies, with abundant stores remaining.
This was from a cold snap & no honey above?

Another ccd symptom is:  very few bees on baseboard, < 1 cup, typ .5 
(IMO)

Which means they fly out to die, no matter the weather
the cluster shrinks rapidly, and the next cold snap it is dead,
the size of a fist. 
Should have been bigger than that,
it was not a dink 2 months ago. 

>ccd could take on varying symptoms in different parts of the country.

Yes this is also variability, 
that they have not had a mass abscond but instead "trickled out"
at a fast rate.
But the common factor is that they chose to leave the hive to die,
rather than dieing in place and falling to the bottom of the hive
And this hive was sitting less than 10' from a hive that did abscond so.....

Maybe absconds can not happen when it is too cold?
Or perhaps the dead brood, could that be the trigger?
They don't seem to like removing these corpses

I think it is more season differences than regional, 
when does the ccd event happen? 
what was the state of the brood nest the month previous?
Since brood is variable though the seasons, then you might expect what is left
after a ccd event to be somewhat variable.

dave

 

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