> Just imagine the practical implications if such a powerfully > repellent chemical really existed (could be used in fruit > packing plants, candy factories, cinnamon roll bakeries, > around trash dumpsters and so forth). This specific aspect of CCD interests me, and I know a thing or two about "bee repellents". :) So, lets walk through this... 1) To "repel" bees from an entire hive (not just a super) you'd need one heck of a volatile compound of some sort. The "distance" at which this stuff seems to repel bees and pests is from a foot to several feet. I'm surprised that there is no human-detectable odor, as everything beekeepers have ever used to drive bees out of supers has been something that humans could also smell. 2) Something so volatile would oxidize/react very quickly, and "evaporate" in the process, which would mean that it would "wear off" quickly, and no longer be repellent. 3) But it does not seem to "wear off" quickly. This seems to contradicts the "highly volatile" quality, so the easy answer is that >>>something is making more of this compound continuously<<<. It can't be a mere chemical process, it has to be a byproduct of an ongoing biological process, one that lives on after the bees are gone from a CCD dead-out. One would think that such a thing would be easy to find. So far, no one has found any volatiles, or any biological process that might produce this "repellent effect". If we ever figure out what it is, the "good" side-effect of repelling bee pests will likely be overshadowed by the "bad" aspect of it being connected with CCD. From preliminary results, it appears that one can decontaminate combs from CCD dead-outs with either irradiation, or acetic acid, as mentioned in the "Catch The Buzz" e-mail newsletter from Bee Culture: http://home.ezezine.com/1636/1636-2007.04.26.08.42.archive.html So, the reasonable conclusion is that this is something that we can "kill", which implies that it is something that can live on comb, even dead-out or abandoned comb. But you'd think something like that would be fairly easy to find, yet it has not been found so far. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ******************************************************