Sorry, JBG, it looked like an assumption to me.
Promiscuous sex and drug use does not cause AIDS, HIV virus does, which can also be transmitted through marital sex or blood transfusions. If a virus is "causing" CCD, mass populations in California may make transmission easier but it does not CAUSE the virus. A single beehive sitting in someone's backyard in Illinois could catch that virus too, whether or not it has clean comb. Comb contamination may have little or nothing to do with CCD.
Perhaps it is a fine line but I think it is an important distinction. If we all decided to suddenly replace all old comb and not use any sort of treatments at all, we would have much less money in the bank (or bigger loans), make the woodenware companies very happy, have a much larger mite problem (a more likely suspect in the losses IMO) and might
still be having losses. Jumping to convenient conclusions does no good and does harm while we put too much attention to a "gut" feeling.
A weakened immune system may well be what is making bees more susceptible to collapse but the question is what
causes the weakened immune system. Bud zeros in on contaminated comb, citing the beeks he knows that have enforcement actions against them. Maybe he's on to something. Maybe he's hanging around with a bad crew.
Just kidding, Bud! :lookout:
Kidding aside, contaminated comb has been looked at, both the beekeeper
and bee introduced contaminates, along with mono-crop-induced poor nutrition, poor mite control, and a veritable host of viruses. Unfortunately saying "XX" is the cause of all the problems doesn't make it so. If only it were that simple.
If CCD were caused by bad comb it would be replicable. Has that happened yet? I don't think so.
Sheri