This may sound like semantics, or being to picky, but the original 
field reports of CCD were pretty startling, and as such got defined in 
pretty precise terms: the four descriptors if you will.  Each one 
probably has been noted at some time or another in unusual 
circumstances, but all at the same time made it pretty remarkable.  The 
extremely rapid decline in worker population is not common if one is 
looking at colonies very frequently, except with insecticide damage.  
The pictures of CCD colonies with frames splayed out showing large 
patches of brood and small clusters of workers, unusual.  The reports 
of no robbing of deadouts, even in dearths, quite unusual.  The non 
invasion of deadouts by wax moth and small hive beetle, extremely 
unusual. 

Once forms and shades of the above morphed into being used as examples 
of CCD, with no clarity, then many started questioning and skepticism 
crept in.  Add the press, funders, grant seekers, subsidy peddlers and 
it got really messy. 



Cottonwood Creek Apiaries
P. O. Box 1032
Crestone, CO 81131
719 256 4010

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