I thought I should close out 2009, my continuing trials with ccd This is for the bees that are actually suffering this Somewhere on USDA website sez .75-1.0 million lost to ccd (over 3y of course) Thats NA alone. Do the math, 10^10++ having fairly sub-optimal life Some of the responsability is OURS. gobal and crowding I know of no bk that has each hive 100yds apart No news is good news, but there are some incidents of note Plenty enough bk incompetencies too To recap here is 2009 in a line date, #hives, (why) fall08 22, mar09 13, apr 9 (ccd,Q started late,laid 1,died), may 6 (bear), 5 effectives But that can't be right, I must have had 2 more, maybe bear got ccd corpse & start Bear chewed ccd hives (equipement, empty) The bear went on >1month The numbers got a bit confused at that time Then fun with AFB, luck with the bad, kept the bear off (the smell)(that wonderful bk) With no imports 8 turned into 16 by aug09, not too shabby with sick bees 700# honey, lucky a very late year for necter I have had no absconds since end apr (til mid dec) I have fed ~195 gm vitamin C since may, thru oct Integrating hive #s thats 14 gm/ 18+weeks But I consider their health to be a bit fragile There is only 3/4 the population that there should be They give a "tired" impression A few are hyper, that may be just the genes The dink stayed a dink, still alive mid dec(2.5y old hive) Only dink, rest split evenly between F, G, GP, VG. no EX (fair, good, good plus, very good, excellent) Dink = cull, but an empty cage tells you little It's hard to judge a start. Most VG slipped to GP by years end ("run out of steam" impression) I think there will be a bit better than 50% winter survival at this point Because of burning AFB frames I started into the ccd deadout pile and the stunted nuc was the result. A bleach soak woud have avoided it all I already suspected that frames with ccd-dead brood are highly contaminated Obviously those frames should have been burned too Noteable the speed of effect.Young Q became non-layer in 5d or less. C did not prevent this After 60d(nonlaying) she laid ~100+ eggs in 2x3" patch, extended comb, beginning of rounded cap in 5.44 worker comb, 1d shy of sealing mid nov. Very uniform. Looked drone No other brood. Very odd. In that 2 months (sep-oct)no sign of eggs Almost certain to be a deadout soon If you think your bees have ccd watch the rear legs todo year 10 Stethoscope -- how quiet? soon revisit vinegar wing clipping videos of sufficient quality, video editing dave mid-ontario PS Jerry: You were going to say something about audio - the sound of the hive? There was some experiment underway? This some months ago probably a very complex problem to interpret data, requiring an expert system/AI *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Access BEE-L directly at: http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A0=BEE-L