Hey Bob,
 
I'll try to shed some more light.  Hack bees came to me for fall honey production, they were unloaded , spread out and already had empty's on them , so they were not checked for a few weeks. Normal when they are already been through, and had bees hanging out on arrival. I don't remember how long but several weeks later there were huge numbers of empty boxes, not weak , crawling around bees. 
Some single splits that were singles,  around 400 , were 75 percent dead, and had been queen right way before coming south.
 
Hack had not bought any bees from out of canada before that year either, he had no reason to buy then , we all made up numbers from within.
 
And no Jerry B. did not mention the Canada Connection , someone else dreamed that up evidently. Jerry's focus was getting data, and information.
 
As to my own operation, we had losses , about 45 days earlier started in mass, which was CCD, but at the time I thought we had done some PPB as you call it, (piss poor beekeeping ) for those that might not know what PPB is. 
But we had actually done some intense feeding that summer and care, so the loss did not make sense, until I got calls from Hack.
 
I know you still try to reason out CCD as a step missed by a ppb beekeeper but there's guys that have some of the top outfits in the nation having and had problems from it. You can say what you want but it's not just PPB.
I have no doubt mites are the biggest vector but there are all kinds of connections I think that we don't know yet or , tools to off set them.
 
I'm in a hurry so forgive me if this is not worded properly. 		 	   		  
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