Joe Waggle writes: “Once again, I believe we are seeing devastation from 
true CCD cases. I just do not believe that  'The number one symptom; 'bees 
gone' should be credited solely to CCD, as it seems to be the case 
nowadays.”

     That seems reasonable enough, Joe.  And I can also agree with you that 
some unknown percentage of reported cases of CCD is otherwise explainable.  
But my understanding is that Jerry Bromenshenk and others are operating 
under an agreed upon set of symptoms that have been enumerated on this list 
several times, and that they use these criteria in their surveys to filter 
out as many non conforming reports as possible. It’s not any one of these 
symptoms that evaluate to CCD, but more precisely the exact combination of 
them all.  Whether the information that comes to us on this list is coming  
from these sources is not always clear.   I wish it were. 

Steve Noble     

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