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Is CCD still alive and well?

4K views 11 replies 5 participants last post by  Maplevalleykennel 
#1 ·
Hi, newbie here. Some of the most recent books I've found at the library on bees were published in 2011. In some posts I've read it seems CCD is gone or on the decline. What is the current state of CCD in the US? Particularly in Michigan.
 
#5 ·
Define CCD???????????
Not sure what all the extra question marks are for. When CCD was first named in 2006, they had a very specific set of symptoms in mind. The hives in question had lots of healthy looking brood, very few bees and the queen remained. The other bees did not seem to be inclined to rob, though this may have been due to the weakened state of all the hives.

In other words, it appeared that most of the bees had simply left -- or died -- leaving the queen and the hatching brood. No overt symptoms such as lots of mites, were apparent. As the years went by, this was seen less and less, and the cause was never identified. In fact, it was never clear if it was anything more than a freak occurrence which defied explanation.

Some pathogens seemed to correlate with CCD, but it was never established that these were causative. Probably they were opportunistic infections of hives with some other problem. The most likely candidate is a virus or a combination of viruses. Disappearing diseases of various sorts have been observed for more than a hundred years, far predating the age of pesticides.
 
#7 ·
Not all of the reported cases of "CCD" had "lots of healthy" patches of brood. In November- December of 05 I first encountered many hives with a queen and maybe 2 or 3 bees. The patches of brood were the size of a silver dollar. Not "large" in my book. We have had die offs but the chance of encountering 4-5 frames of capped brood in a DO is about 1 in 100.

Is CCD the symptom or the disease?

Still begs to answer the question as to the cause of all those "60%" losses in the Midwest this past winter! Was starvation the sole cause ?
 
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