Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum

BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => COLONY COLLAPSE DISORDER - TALKS & REPORTS => Topic started by: amandrea on April 15, 2008, 11:07:14 pm

Title: CCD and me
Post by: amandrea on April 15, 2008, 11:07:14 pm
  Reading the literature on CCD is rather boaring, mostly because it is mostly too academic, that is, hard to follow and produces no results. Rather than try to figure it out I think it might be easier to ask some general layman questions for the same in return.
  The thing that catches my interests and doen't seem to be being properly addressed is how robbers will wait up to 3 days to enter a collaped hive. This certainly suggests the presence of a disipitating toxin but none seems to have ben found. It sems to me the robbers must know something we don't.
  My first question is, has anyone emclosed fresh bees or robbers into a just collapsed hive to see if anything happens?
  I recall reading that feral hives will abscomb from a cavity nest after just a couple of years occupancy and their is no real known reason why they would do this. Is there any information on how old the woodenware is in collapsed hives?
Title: Re: CCD and me
Post by: Michael Bush on April 16, 2008, 08:21:26 am
There are sporadic reports on all aspects and no clear cut information that I know of.  But one of the things being thrown around is that they don't want to rob the hives that have left and another is that sterilizing the boxes decreases the odds of more CCD.  I know of no study to prove either one of these, but they are general observations by the beekeepers who are reporting them to the researchers who are trying to figure out the causes.