> Myself and all the beeks I advise have got the best bees in years.

Bob, I'm glad to hear that!

However, you leave out yet another way to deal with viruses, indeed,
the main way that bees have done so for millions of years--selection
for resistance.  Bees can do this by incorporating portions of viral
genes into their genome, and then use them to produce short
interfering RNA (I will cover in an upcoming article).  This is the
method that Beeologics has patented, also.

I can guarantee that none of your friends has bred, or bought queens
from, colonies that died of CCD.  This means by default that your
existing bees were bred from either (1) colonies that had been exposed
to CCD pathogens (or whatever you blame CCD on) and survived, or (2)
colonies that weren't exposed to CCD pathogens.

If the former, then CCD may go the way of previous "Disappearing
Diseases.)  If the latter, I guess we'll see...

Randy Oliver

****************************************************
* General Information About BEE-L is available at: *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/default.htm   *
****************************************************