Ames Farms asks: <I'm confused why we are not just calling CCD, Nosema Ceranae? Its found in all CCD samples and the symptoms of N. Ceranae appear to fit your descriptions.> I agree that N. Ceranae is a possible candidate for CCD, but we don't know whether its a cause or a consequence of CCD, or maybe it is just coincidental. No one has shown that N. ceranae causes CCD, that requires us to follow a procedure call Koch's Principles. In essence, we have to extract the pathogen, introduce it into healthy colonies, induce CCD, then recover N. ceranae. Our Bozeman partner lab just got the equipment and primers in place to positively identify ceranae versus apis and will be working on culturing the pathogen under a grant received last week from the CA beekeepers. Regardless of my personal opinions, we can't yet say that N. ceranae causes CCD. I can say, it certainly is associated with the syndrome in the colonies that we've sampled. FYI, in S. African, a combination of a specific virus and N. ceranae has been named 'suicide disease'. FYI, Randy Oliver has a good overview of N. ceranae in the Dec ABJ, and Dr. Robert Cramer at Bozeman is also looking at alternative fungicides - question is still open about the effectiveness of fumidil. We're all working together on this pathogen - regardless of the role it plays with respect to CCD, it in itself appears to be a problem - we tend to believe the Spanish investigators, especially in our drier, warmer, western states - where the climate is often similar to that of Spain. Jerry **************************************Check out AOL's list of 2007's hottest products. (http://money.aol.com/special/hot-products-2007?NCID=aoltop00030000000001) ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ******************************************************