--- Chris Slade <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Could one of the factors be local overpopulation of > colonies that is being > corrected by nature? I decided to think about this for a day, to mull it over. For the record, again, all my reply is “IMO“,,, Lets look at other overpopulation for a moment, in the human arena. Overpopulation by itself is not ‘the’ problem in any part of the world today as far as humans go, and never will be. How can I make such a statement? Because, where the problem lies, is in the competition for available resources, and the transmitting of disease. You can have a billion people stuffed into a small country. As long as they have sufficient resources, and low instance of disease, there will perhaps be very few problems. You can have hundreds of colonies stuffed into a small area, as long as there are sufficient nutritional resources, and a strong immune system, including essential survival traits, there would perhaps be few problems. But if these hundreds of colonies are placed in an area lacking in nutritional resources, then by this deficit, you create stress and a weakened immune system, and an impossibility for the population as a whole to sustain itself, and correction needed. And in this case, overpopulation would ‘appear’ to be the problem. I have had many times, small isolated yards of 10 colonies collapse in an 'post feral die off environment' with bee populations lower than they have been in perhaps hundreds of years. This environment should have been beneficial by eliminating competition, but mass die offs still occurred, suggesting something else at play. Perhaps, the inability of the existing population to cope with the environmental factors was the cause. Disease in 'such populations' is allowed to reach harmful levels, that also contaminate nearby resistant colonies at levels higher than their resistant abilities are not adapted to, causing them to collapse also. A friend from Sweden, I believe calls it a ‘varroa bomb’ or ‘virus bomb’. Had this resistant colony have been grouped with other resistant colonies, then, perhaps the sub population of bees in keeping disease levels lower, drifting disease is withen coping abilities. I had once thought that overpopulation of honeybees concentrated in a small area would be a problem, but I am recently swaying to the belief that migratory and stationary commercial operations are not the cause of any of our problems. If you wanted to stick a pinin the problem it would be the apparent weakened immune system of our honeybees, caused by the ‘environmental factor’ , which can be any number of accumulated stresses, which perhaps number in the hundreds, with NO 2 instances of mass die offs having the exact same set of stresses and order of severity being the found to be the cause for the event. This is why you will never pin CCD down to any single cause or any set of causes, because of the many variables that exist. CCD should perhaps be ‘renamed’ to reflect this fact, as the name now implies a single disorder causing the event. Best Wishes, Joe Waggle “Thou nimble yellow bee, that bring’st the softly blooming spring, thee the love of primy flowers is ever maddening. Flutt’ring o’re sweetly breathing fields, increase thy honied store, until the wax-compacted cell at length can hold no more.” -Nicias http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/HistoricalHoneybeeArticles/ ____________________________________________________________________________________ You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost. http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text5.com **************************************************** * General Information About BEE-L is available at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/default.htm * ****************************************************