# Is CCD going away?



## sqkcrk

Is it over? Is CCD going away? We don't hear about it much in the Media or even among beekeepers. I'm thinking it has run its course, maybe.


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## Dave Burrup

Another name for CCD is disappearing disease.


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## TRIMMAN

I lost two hives this year one day there the next gone


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## jim lyon

Because of persistent inaccurate media reports, the term CCD seems to have morphed into a catch all description of bee losses in general. I have never experienced CCD in our operation. I will take Jeff Pettis' at his word when he says he hasn't been able to document any true cases of CCD since (I think) 2007. This together with increased hive numbers the past 2 years would seem to paint a picture of a fairly stable national hive health picture albeit one in which beekeepers have made adjustments in their management to mitigate and account for year to year losses.


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## Michael Bush

>I lost two hives this year one day there the next gone

Absconded? Was the queen still there? Was there brood still there? Where there dead bees? Classic CCD is the bees are gone, no dead bees to speak of, but there is still a queen and a few bees and a lot of brood.

In other words they are gone, but not dead and not absconded. Is that the case with yours? If so, then I would say that fits the description.


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## FlowerPlanter

>Is CCD going away?

The USDA tracks CCD cases;
http://www.ars.usda.gov/News/docs.htm?docid=15572#history

Does not appear to be any new CCD cases in several years. 


>Another name for CCD is disappearing disease. 

USDA also states "While the descriptions sound similar to CCD, there is no way to know for sure if those problems were caused by the same agents as CCD."

So no, you cant say it's disappearing disease.


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## Michael Palmer

CCD has gone away. PPB has not.


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## jwcarlson

Michael Palmer said:


> CCD has gone away. PPB has not.


Have been a PPB practitioner more often than I care to admit these first two years. With the help of your videos on YouTube and the braintrust here in Beesource (gotta know who's stuff to believe)... I'm trying to pull out of that dungeon before winter #2.


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## sqkcrk

In that case, jw, you haven't been keeping bees long enough to keep them poorly.


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## sqkcrk

Michael Palmer said:


> CCD has gone away. PPB has not.


Michael, do you think that PPB comes from trying to run more hives than one can properly attend to? And that were it not for the ELAP Program, if that isn't redundant, some operations would be out of business.


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## Michael Palmer

Perhaps


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## beeware10

the ones that don't treat or are heavy into the elap program seem to have the biggest ccd problems for some reason.lol


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## jwcarlson

sqkcrk said:


> In that case, jw, you haven't been keeping bees long enough to keep them poorly.


Maybe. If you watched me in action you may think differently. 

Did let the mite get ahead of me this summer and getting treatment sorted out late. But hoping soon enough to have them set for winter. Will know more Saturday!


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## Gazelle

What is PPB?


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## crofter

Gazelle said:


> What is PPB?


Pith Poor Beekeeping!


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## sqkcrk

This coulkd be of interest to those who still have an open mind as to whether CCD is all about neonics or not.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/etc.2527/epdf


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## Fristm

sqkcrk said:


> This coulkd be of interest to those who still have an open mind as to whether CCD is all about neonics or not.
> 
> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/etc.2527/epdf


Thank you for this article. After 7 years as a bee keeper (just ten hives), I have seen the effects to my bees when the farmer sprays his crops/my land in the spring and I had a large die off. The bees struggled to regain strength and it happened during honey flow! I finally woke up and asked him to cut back/not spray before and during nectar flow and now my hives are that much more productive/healthy. An ounce of prevention/cooperation goes a long way. None of the hives absconded. 

Some of my hives did die. 

But the hard truth - after a few years of bee keeping - none of the CCD/pesticide/Mite issues are what killed what hives I lost. I'm the one that was responsible for the loss of my hives by neglect/poor management. I finally have realized that bee keepers are the number one killer of bee hives. 

Tom


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## aunt betty

I had one hive abscond. It was a combination of me trying to make a cell builder at just the exact right moment to allow SHB to gain a foot hold. Blame it on me, blame it on the SHB...one of the two or both. I think SHB is a factor that many people overlook. They make "bee repellant" and ruin the combs. (I have been told)


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## Bdfarmer555

My corn and soybean seed still come with gaucho and poncho. but just for kicks, I watched "the vanishing of the bees" again today. Maybe enough people "cared" enough for ccd to disappear?


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## D Coates

Bdfarmer555 said:


> Maybe enough people "cared" enough for ccd to disappear?


It's amazing but some look at it that way. I get asked about CCD regularly when anyone finds out I keep bees. It's my belief CCD was never a disease but symptoms of multiple things rolled into one convenient easy to swallow media narrative. Europe swallowed this narative so hard they banned products. Europe "cared" CCD away... Fortunately enough people were using their brain here to avoid Europes foibles and "CCD" took care of itself. Heck, we even had someone here claim "The very fact that CCD has not been seen in several year shows that is exists." My head just hurts trying to understand that logic.


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## Thomassen

I don't think we can say CCD has "gone away" when annual hive losses are still greater than 40%.
https://beeinformed.org/results/colony-loss-2014-2015-preliminary-results/


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## Dave Burrup

They are not dead from CCD. They are dead from failure to control mites. Of all of the threads, and conversations I have had in the past couple of years none have described the symptoms of CCD. Most of them are classic Parasitic Mite Syndrome.


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## DirtyLittleSecret

Seems a lot of people consider any malady to their bees as CCD without any/little knowledge (except what they see in the "shopping isle news"). Was asked just last week whether I had any hives die of CCD over the winter.


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## BadBeeKeeper

DirtyLittleSecret said:


> Seems a lot of people consider any malady to their bees as CCD without any/little knowledge (except what they see in the "shopping isle news"). Was asked just last week whether I had any hives die of CCD over the winter.


I get the same from time to time. I try to educate, one little mind at a time...


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## sqkcrk

"one little mind at a time..." That's going to go over well with your students.


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## BadBeeKeeper

I had a feeling that would draw a comment.


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## aunt betty

People ask me frequently about CCD and it's my signal to lecture them for an hour on honeybee maladies, the worst being Lazy Inexperienced Beekeeper Syndrome. (LIBS)


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## wildbranch2007

aunt betty said:


> the worst being Lazy Inexperienced Beekeeper Syndrome. (LIBS)


I like it:lpf:


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## mbevanz

Hearing loss numbers in the 10k+ range in Northern California this winter. Koehnan and Olivarez.


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## Nabber86

mbevanz said:


> Hearing loss numbers in the 10k+ range in Northern California this winter. Koehnan and Olivarez.


People should really start using ear protection if 10k people are suffering from hearing loss.


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## mbevanz

Not something to joke about.


Nabber86 said:


> People should really start using ear protection if 10k people are suffering from hearing loss.


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## D Coates

mbevanz said:


> Not something to joke about.


As Psyco said on Stripes, "Lighten up Francis." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OnpkDWbeJs This is beesource and folks are joking all the time and your post left it wide open. 

"Hearing" that hive loss numbers are in the 10k is useless to get worked up over. Wait until they're actually reported and claims are made of how they perished. Otherwise this is useless scuttlebutt.


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## Oldtimer

Just out of interest, we have been almost free of this in my country.

However we have at least 3 "dead spots", one I'm familiar with is an area on the Gisborne plains, that beekeepers used to winter their hives after bringing them down from the hills. But after some more recent years of big winter losses, several different beekeepers were having a chat and realised that their big losses only ever happened if the bees were in this particular vicinity, and at a particular time frame. They have since avoided that area at that time, end of problem.

The exact cause has never been identified but this area is flat and used for intensive horticulture.


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## DirtyLittleSecret

D Coates said:


> As Psyco said on Stripes, "Lighten up Francis." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OnpkDWbeJs This is beesource and folks are joking all the time and your post left it wide open.
> 
> "Hearing" that hive loss numbers are in the 10k is useless to get worked up over. Wait until they're actually reported and claims are made of how they perished. Otherwise this is useless scuttlebutt.


Muahahahaha. Love that movie. Pure classic. I too read it as there being hearing loss until I read it again.


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## Lburou

I'm a retired Audiologist....& read right into the hearing loss at 10k...but testing above 8k almost never happens...clinical audiometers stop at 8k Hz.


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## Oldtimer

Should've been a mathematician. You would have realised he meant 10,000 people.


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## sqkcrk

Lburou said:


> I'm a retired Audiologist....& read right into the hearing loss at 10k...but testing above 8k almost never happens...clinical audiometers stop at 8k Hz.


Hurts, doesn't it?

"...We don't see things as they are, we see things as WE are..." As an Audiologist, shouldn't that be "hear" instead of "see"? I guess it doesn't have the same ring to it.


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## Lburou

Mark, not only do I see through a glass dimly, I don't hear too well either!


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## sqkcrk

What !!??


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## Lburou

sqkcrk said:


> What !!??


Translation for Mark: Yes, it hurts!


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## sqkcrk

What as is speak up please. And hurts as in hertz.


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## Lburou

I'm laughing Mark, I want to stay on your good side. 

BTW, I've seen a couple failing hives with the queen and a few bees...Our Club purchased hives returning from almonds and were split, then sold to new beekeepers. We won't do that any more, because the bees in general were not long lived when in the hands of new beekeepers. CCD is still around.


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## D Coates

Lburou said:


> Our Club purchased hives returning from almonds and were split, then sold to new beekeepers. We won't do that any more, because the bees in general were not long lived when in the hands of new beekeepers. CCD is still around.


Uh, the hives just came back from working almonds, they were split and then sold to new beekeepers. Yet, the diagnosis is CCD? Any tests done for that diagnosis? That doesn't sound like CCD, it sounds like PPBK.


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## Vance G

Naw. More likely LIBS.


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## Lburou

D Coates said:


> Uh, the hives just came back from working almonds, they were split and then sold to new beekeepers. Yet, the diagnosis is CCD? Any tests done for that diagnosis? That doesn't sound like CCD, it sounds like PPBK.





dictionary.reference.com said:


> *colony collapse disorder*
> 
> noun1.a pathological condition affecting a large number of honeybee colonies, in which various stresses may lead to the abrupt disappearance of worker bees from the hive, leaving only the queen and newly hatched bees behind and thus causing the colony to stop functioning.
> 
> 
> 
> *Abbreviation: *CCD.


May be PPB, but what tests would you recommend? Vance, i take your point, and Dave Burrup's as well. I would ask you, where were the mites a hundred or two hundred years ago when die offs have occurred in the past?


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## D Coates

Lburou said:


> May be PPB, but what tests would you recommend?


 Send a few off to Beltsville to see what they find. No idea what they'll find but what can be ruled out can be equally important.



Lburou said:


> Vance, i take your point, and Dave Burrup's as well. I would ask you, where were the mites a hundred or two hundred years ago when die offs have occurred in the bast?


Nope, the mites showed up in the mid 80's. The large die offs that were written about that happened every decade or so was attributed to "Spring Dwindling disease." Now, what was that? No idea, it was never isolated. Was is what's now claimed as CCD? Don't know. Keep in mind CCD is only symptoms, no causal disease/pesticide was ever isolated or specified. Assuming CCD actually existed, it's not been seen in 5-6 years but unfortunately become the buzzword for the uniformed who link CCD with any hive deaths without obvious causes.


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## jim lyon

Simple math tells you that even in their natural state, die offs must have occurred. If every hive successfully threw one viable swarm each year the planet would be inundated with wild bees within a decade.


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## Nabber86

jim lyon said:


> Simple math tells you that even in their natural state, die offs must have occurred. If every hive successfully threw one viable swarm each year the planet would be inundated with wild bees within a decade.


Good point. We dont want bees to become an invasive species.


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## sqkcrk

We don't? Some would say that they were among the first invasive species on this Continent.


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## John58

We lost 3 hives strong hives this fall. Most of the bees just up and left between October and December. We've never had anything like this in 10 years. There were also many other reports of this same phenomenon around Eastern MA.


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## BadBeeKeeper

sqkcrk said:


> We don't? Some would say that they were among the *first invasive species on this Continent*.


And some would say that Man wins that prize.

On topic...



> Varroa destructor has spread from Asia across the entire world over the past 50 years. It arrived in the UK in 1990 and has been implicated in the halving of bee numbers since then...But the mite's arrival in Hawaii in 2007 gave scientists a unique opportunity to track its deadly spread. "We were able to watch the emergence of the disease for the first time ever," said Stephen Martin, at the University of Sheffield, who led the new research published in the journal Science. Within a year of varroa arrival, 274 of 419 colonies on Oahu island (65%) were wiped out, with the mites going on to wreak destruction across Big Island the following year.
> 
> A particular virus, called deformed wing virus (DWV), was present in low and apparently harmless levels in colonies before the mites arrived, the scientists found. Even when the mites first invaded hives, the virus levels remained low. "But the following year the virus levels had gone through the roof." said Martin. "It was a millionfold increase – it was staggering."
> 
> The other key finding was that one DWV strain had gone from making up 10% of the virus population to making up 100%. "The viral landscape had changed and to one that happened to be deadly to bees," Martin said, noting the DWV strain was the same one found around the world. "There is a very strong correlation between where you get this DWV strain and where you get huge amounts of colony losses. We are almost certain this study seals the link between the two."
> 
> Even if a colony is cleared of varroa mite infestation, the deadly DWV strain remains dominant. "That means the colonies will collapse very fast, so beekeepers must keep the varroa levels down: it's even more critical than we knew before," said Martin. Other research by members of the team, conducted in Devon, showed that even when the varroa mites are kept under control, the presence of the fatal DWV strain kills about 10% of colonies each year.


http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jun/07/honey-bees-virus-varrora-destructor-mites



> Abstract
> 
> Emerging diseases are among the greatest threats to honey bees. Unfortunately, where and when an emerging disease will appear are almost impossible to predict. The arrival of the parasitic Varroa mite into the Hawaiian honey bee population allowed us to investigate changes in the prevalence, load, and strain diversity of honey bee viruses. The mite increased the prevalence of a single viral species, deformed wing virus (DWV), from ~10 to 100% within honey bee populations, which was accompanied by a millionfold increase in viral titer and a massive reduction in DWV diversity, leading to the predominance of a single DWV strain. Therefore, the global spread of Varroa has selected DWV variants that have emerged to allow it to become one of the most widely distributed and contagious insect viruses on the planet.


http://science.sciencemag.org/content/336/6086/1304



> ABSTRACT
> 
> The worldwide decline in honeybee colonies during the past 50 years has often been linked to the spread of the parasitic mite Varroa destructor and its interaction with certain honeybee viruses. Recently in the United States, dramatic honeybee losses (colony collapse disorder) have been reported; however, there remains no clear explanation for these colony losses, with parasitic mites, viruses, bacteria, and fungal diseases all being proposed as possible candidates. Common characteristics that most failing colonies share is a lack of overt disease symptoms and the disappearance of workers from what appears to be normally functioning colonies. In this study, we used quantitative PCR to monitor the presence of three honeybee viruses, deformed wing virus (DWV), acute bee paralysis virus (ABPV), and black queen cell virus (BQCV), during a 1-year period in 15 asymptomatic, varroa mite-positive honeybee colonies in Southern England, and 3 asymptomatic colonies confirmed to be varroa mite free. All colonies with varroa mites underwent control treatments to ensure that mite populations remained low throughout the study. Despite this, multiple virus infections were detected, yet a significant correlation was observed only between DWV viral load and overwintering colony losses. The long-held view has been that DWV is relatively harmless to the overall health status of honeybee colonies unless it is in association with severe varroa mite infestations. Our findings suggest that DWV can potentially act independently of varroa mites to bring about colony losses. Therefore, DWV may be a major factor in overwintering colony losses.


http://aem.asm.org/content/75/22/7212.abstract

==========================================

These things say to me that "CCD" will remain for as long as there are people who refuse to recognize that keeping bees is not as simple as it may have been two hundred years ago, and fail to appropriately manage mite and disease levels.


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## sqkcrk

BadBeeKeeper said:


> And some would say that Man wins that prize.
> 
> ==========================================
> 
> These things say to me that "CCD" will remain for as long as there are people who refuse to recognize that keeping bees is not as simple as it may have been two hundred years ago, and fail to appropriately manage mite and disease levels.


I did write "among", didn't I?

Two hundred years ago? Try 31 years ago.


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## Nabber86

BadBeeKeeper said:


> And some would say that Man wins that prize.



Man arrived in North America about 15,000 years. I dont know if that qualifies as an invasive species.


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## BadBeeKeeper

Nabber86 said:


> Man arrived in North America about 15,000 years. I dont know if that qualifies as an invasive species.


Should I have specified 'White Man'?


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## sqkcrk

You could have said Europeans and Africans. But the 1620s was not the first example of invasiveness of humans. 15,000 years ago was. The Paleo invasion of the Americas changed the environment too.


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## Nabber86

BadBeeKeeper said:


> Should I have specified 'White Man'?


**** Sapien is **** Sapien. Race has nothing to do with it.


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