Just watched a documentary on the show "Nature" tonight that focused on CCD. According to the shows website:
"Discovering the IAPV was a lead but not the end of the story. We're looking at IAPV as a marker. It's there. It's present in colonies but viruses by themselves are not known to be that dangerous," says Pettis. Pettis and other scientists believe that CCD is not caused by one single factor, but by a whole host of forces including pesticides, parasites, poor nutrition, and stress. Any of these may leave bees vulnerable to infection and make IAPV lethal.
Great show. Anyway, the most interesting part of the program was a segment about an area in China where all of the bees had been wiped out by pesticide use so they now manually pollinate their pair trees one blossom at a time using a stick with chicken feathers attached to the end. Man, talk about a labor intensive.
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