>Lloyd asks: Is there a set of symptoms that everyone agrees on that means 'CCD'? Yes, these symptoms were identified, agreed upon by the CCD Working Group, and have been listed on all of the CCD Working Group sites, including our own bee loss survey site - collapse of colony, absence of older bees, presence of queen, young bees, often an excess of brood, absence of dead bees in box, in front of hive, often noticeable absence of robbing, pests such as wax moths, etc. If you answer disappearing bees in our survey and also answer dead bees in box, we don't count it as CCD. Many of those questions had some intentional overlap so we can sort out what we call CCD from other losses. >There is no question... set of symptoms mostly called CCD is a serious threat, use (and overuse) of organophosphates is a serious threat, *Many* beekeepers are reporting CCD ... died through no fault of their own. I mostly agree, except that pesticide losses are NOT limited to OPs - we still see losses from a wide array of pesticides-, and most beekeepers responding to our survey spent a lot of time trying to apportion losses to various causes, they weren't just checking CCD. The ratios of possible causes of loss checked by beekeepers has not changed much since the beginning of all this, regardless of the press. We also have found beekeepers who are very reluctant to admit to any bee losses, because other beekeepers will think that they are poor bee managers. > I think this is primarily a factor among hobbyists, yet the methods of counting treat them the same .... we don't treat them the same --we separate out the responses by size of beekeeper. We don't lump them as all the same, and we pay particular attention to larger, long term (years) beekeepers - who should know the basics, or else they wouldn't have been in business for very long, or reached sizes of 1,000s, to 10s of thousands of hive. >>beekeepers who want to get on the public teat We get about equal amounts of pressure from associations and individuals who want us to either list a state in case agricultural disaster relief funds are made available, and those who want us to delist a state so no one will shun their bees. We try or best to maintain a neutral ground; we list states as the data indicates. We admit that our volunteer survey may be biased by people wanting to report losses as CCD, but the data does not indicate that this is happening to any great degree, and most importantly, numbers reporting CCD have not changed substantially. In fact, the most obvious result is that overwinter loss is one of the most frequently cited cause of bee loss. Pesticides hold about constant at about 4%. Obviously, the most recent reports are the most likely to be biased, given all of the press. But, we've not seen an obvious change since we started all of this. We also intended to draw a line, wrap up the current survey, and reformat, given that we've now finished reports from overwintering and in a sense have begun a new bee year. We're looking at the old survey, working towards improving/replacing it with a better survey. Our bottom line, its the degree of overall loss frequency and distribution that is more worrisome than the 'attribution' to CCD in terms of the viability of this industry. Jerry ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ******************************************************