We've been working to provide the information requested by the beekeeping
industry and congress. We have already supplied our preliminary findings to
the CCD Working Group, the AHPA, the ABF, and the NHB.
We are continuing the bee loss survey, having nearly doubled the number of
forms completed in the last two weeks. We hope to continue to sample and
monitor CCD and other trends in U.S. beekeeping throughout the coming year.
Preliminary results have been posted at _www.beealert.info_
(http://www.beealert.info) .
As of Monday, we had 411 surveys from beekeepers across the U.S. (with a few
from Canada). Of these beekeepers, 171 or 41.2% listed their bee losses as
severe. On the other hand, 46.6% of the beekeepers surveyed said that their
losses were low to average. Obviously, it is clear that about half the U.S.
beekeepers have not sustained damage or seen CCD. Those that have seen CCD
were often hit hard.
Of the beekeepers reporting severe bee losses, disappearing disease or CCD
was the most commonly described symptom. For those with low to average
losses, overwintering death was the most often cited cause.
66.3% of the respondents had 100 colonies or less. 12.7% had 100-1,000,
12.2% had more than 1,000, and 8.8% had more than 10,000.
Our findings must be considered preliminary, and we've yet to complete
multi-variate statistical analyis of the current data set. However, the Tables
and Figure are based on the full data set received to date.
We've also posted preliminary findings about virus in Florida CCD hives.
Bee Alert, with the assistance of David Westervelt from Florida, myself, and
Scott Debnam collected samples, while BVS, another small Montana business
provided the analytical results.
Again, we stress that these are very preliminary results - two viruses have
been observed in the samples, but they may turn out to be normal background
levels and types of virus. The advantage of this approach is that the method
used can detect unknown (un-named virus), quantify the concentration of the
virus, and shows that there are no other viruses in these samples.
We're currently awaiting identification of the viruses detected and analysis
of Australian bee samples, for comparison.
Overall, all of this is very preliminary, but at some point one has to start
releasing it, even though as scientists we want to dot every i, cross every
t.
Jerry
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