Hello John & All,
I do not want to get in between John & Jerry's discussion but I believe I 
can answer John's question to a degree.

> That's strange - the bees have to go somewhere -

The bees are found in the field.

Dead bees are found and most seem to have problems . Samples deteriate 
quickly so accurate information is hard to come by.

The problem starts with adult bees. The bees fly out to die from whatever is 
wrong with the bees . Fly out to do what bees do. One hypothesis is due to a 
midgut problem simply run out of fuel and can't make it back. Unknown is why 
the bees leave the hive to die. One hypothesis (which I do not agree with) 
is the bees leave at once. Most beeks believe the leaving of the hive 
happens over a short period (usually less than two weeks.)

 sounds like the
> symptoms we used to hear for sacbrood, Nosema, or some such.

Sacbrood you can rule out as fairly rare but easily detected. Nosema ceranae 
produces symptoms EXACTLY like the CCD  documents. I think its fair to say 
some documented CCD cases were caused by high levels of nosema ceranae. In 
fact some migratory beekeepers are telling their growers that last years bee 
problems were from nosema ceranae and the problem has been solved this year 
by the feeding of X amount of antibiotics. Which seems to be true in certain 
cases.

If a
> colony is losing bees, some percentage of those exiting bees have
> to have some anomaly

They do! Nosema ceranae and KBV to name the two main issues. The problem is 
in deciding which of the several problems found was the main  factor which 
killed the bees. Many problems were found in the CCD hives. The reason my 
advice has always been to eliminate (as beekeepers) each issue until you are 
left with simply one or two possibilities.

Control of varroa goes a long way towards control of virus as research in 
the U.K. by Norman Carrick and Brenda Ball has shown. Control of nosema is 
needed  with nosema ceranae ( personal experience and research done in 
Spain).
Clean comb from mitacide contamination and pesticide contamination will 
improve the beekeepers situation with contaminated comb.

STILL:
Most beekeepers running larger numbers of bees doing all of the above are 
seeing a higher number of bees crashing than what has always been considered 
as normal. Some hives completely empty of bees and in some cases brood with 
a small bunch of bees and a queen.

Nutrition has been a important issue with commercial beeks. Which has led to 
the large scale feeding of *supposedly* irradiated *correctly* bee feed 
pollen from China. 600 50 lb. boxes to a container and in many cases a 4-6 
week waiting period on delivery. Many beeks jumped on board.

So much the Weslaco Bee Lab looked into the nutricinal value of such pollen 
( ABJ spring 2007 article by Bob Harrison) and found the food value was very 
low. Also found that bees feed HFCS lived half as long as bees feed sucrose. 
( same ABJ article).

Aphis has indicated that the import of some virus issues could have came in 
with the Aphis unapproved China bee feed pollen and has forced a recall.

 To support their position the irradiated boxes of David hackenberg did 
better than those not irradiated but those bees in even the irradiated boxes 
had problems. reason unknown but the irradiated boxes did not all eliminate 
problems.
David Hackenberg when he approached me about getting some of my boxes 
irradiated ( AQBF convention Austin) was convinced the process would solve 
his CCD box problems. The only unknown area was would the method remove any 
pesticide problems in the boxes. Could the China bee feed pollen be 
contaminated with pesticides? Did anyone check?

Sincerely,
Bob Harrison 

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