We're working up our observations of CCD over a full year.  The  symptoms may 
change somewhat with season.  For example, a CCD colony in the  fall or 
winter, when the queen has shut down or only producing a small amount of  brood 
looks very different from a CCD colony in mid-summer when the queen is  laying as 
fast as she can.  In the first case, you get depopulated  colonies; in the 
latter you get what appears to be slow growing colonies.
 
Excess of brood occurs during seasons when queen was laying right up  to the 
time of collapse.  This symptom is not necessarily true in an area  with 
limited forage and the queen more or less shut down for the season.   If the colony 
has throttled back on brood in anticipation of winter, and the  colony then 
collapses, you may not see an excess of brood.
 
The absence of dead/dying bees, the lack of robbing, the lack of invasion  by 
pests seem to be more consistent symptoms.  Again, we've seen some  variation 
-- CCD colonies in mid-summer will be robbed, but you've got to  trigger the 
robbing.
 
We've had some of our own colonies collapse with CCD, recover, then  collapse 
again during mid-summer, fall, and early winter.  Symptoms change  a bit with 
season relative to egg-laying/brood rearing status and time of  collapse.  In 
all cases, the collapse is a loss of older bees.
 
Finally, many of the most recent collapsed colonies from which we obtained  
samples had N. ceranae.  
 
Jerry



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