>The beekeepers who were doing a good job keeping mites under control
weren't experiencing the same problems.

I'm not sure that the above is true.  Many of us beekeepers and inspectors
were very familiar with the signs of colonies that had collapsed (or were
collapsing) due to varroa.  We were observing something else happening.
Unfortunately, "CCD" went from describing a disorder with specific signs,
to being a generic catch all for colonies dying for any reason (mainly from
inadequate varroa management).

One prominent commercial beekeeper even played the dangerous game of
claiming losses due to "CCD," and collecting hundreds of thousands of
dollars for ELAP taxpayer dollars for those losses, despite the law that
ELAP specifically excluded losses due to pesticides.  But then that same
beekeeper was all over the media saying that his losses were due to
pesticides.  I'm surprised that ELAP didn't take him to court.

As a biologist, I was not at all surprised that we observed disease signs
during the invasive wave of Nosema ceranae, which took place from around
2001-2008.  This is the same time frame in which we observed the signs of
"true" CCD, which actually started in 2003, and caused the severe shortage
of bees for almond pollination in the winter of 2004, leading to rental
rates tripling in one year.

I suspect that it was not coincidental that the specific signs of CCD are
exactly the same as those for collapse of colonies due to severe nosema
infection, especially with the increase in synergistic virus pressure due
to the failure of varroa control products at that time.  I'm not convinced
that lack of rob out was specific to CCD.

Beekeepers with large holding yards in California reported to me that
another beekeeper when another beekeeper dropped a load of hives collapsing
from CCD near his holding yard, he'd then watch as his own colonies then
collapsed in a slow wave radiating away from the other beekeeper's sick
hives.

I inspected hives in the process of collapse from CCD, and spoke to a
number of other knowledgeable beekeepers who also did so.  All of us
observed the same changes in behavior of the bees in the cluster.  We were
all quite familiar with the signs of varroa collapse, but we were seeing
something else taking place.  At the time, Nosema ceranae spore counts went
off the charts in our operations.  Those extreme counts started to
disappear around 2010, coincidentally with the disappearance of CCD.

Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
530 277 4450
ScientificBeekeeping.com


>

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