Originally Posted by BillCosby

They have not been able to narrow it down to just one or two "diseases".........

Where are you @???

Originally Posted by PursuitOfHappinessParty

I've been reading and blogging about this for over a year now.

Colony Collapse Disorder. It's important to realize this also just happens naturally, so some of the ' and here ' inidividual cases are probably naturally occuring. The vast majority of CCD cases are commercial pollinators. These colonies are transported to areas that need bees to polinate, but don't have enough local natural bees.

This tends to make me believe that it's pesticide driven. Fruit and nut tree industries heavily use pesticides. Another hint that it's a pesticide and not parasitic/disease is that those insects that normally move into abandoned hives do not move into CCD hives until a very long time, if at all.

I watched a show on TV about an area in China that has lost all it's bees to pesticides. They HAND POLINATE now. This is NOT AN OPTION for the U.S., as it's slow, unreliable, and massively hard work.

Originally Posted by W.M.DEEEZ

I know mites are one big problem, but this large scale dieoff seems to be from something else...

I'm in NY, and know of a beekeeper that isn't having any problems, but knows of them.


We had a 5 ft long beehive inside an old maple tree, that we didn't know was there until the neighbor had it taken down. This thing was loaded with honey, and thousands of bees. I contacted the beekeeper to see if he wanted it, but he declined.

He said it sounded like a very healthy hive, but was concerned about the possibility of introducing something to his bees.