Hi Gang, Carlo A. requested a link to the AAA Science article. There is a link to the table of contents for the current issue (May 18, 2007), but the particular essay (The Case of the Empty Hives by Erik Stokstad) is a subscription-only article. Older AAA Science material can be posted or accessed easily enough for educational lists like this one, but copyright law prevents posting of the full article at this time. LINK: Table of Contents, Science Magazine, May 18, 2007 (subscription needed). http://www.sciencemag.org/current.dtl However, Dr. Huang (at MSU) runs an excellent and professional Web site on honeybees. He provides updates on the colony collapse phenomenon. LINK: Cyberbee.net http://www.cyberbee.net/ Dr. Huang also provided a short update on the MSU IPM Web site. LINK: Honeybee CCD Update http://www.ipm.msu.edu/cat07fruit/f05-01-07.htm#6 Additionally, Science Daily carried a simlar story about a week ago. LINK: Bee Colony Collapse Disorder: Could It Be Parasites, Pathogens Or Pesticides? http://sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/… Dr. Huang reports: "The symptom seems to be for bees simply to disappear. That is why initially peopled called it disappearing disease (or fall dwindle disease). A colony with 30,000 bees checked one week ago - apparently healthy with lots of honey and pollen - suddenly has nothing, or a handful of bees with a queen left, but with lots of food and many frames of capped brood left. Very few dead bees are found inside the hive or near the entrance. Strangely, wax moths, small hive beetles, and robbing bees are slow in moving into such newly abandoned colonies - two to three weeks later - while normally they move into defenseless colonies right away. I just attended an emergency conference in Washington, DC a few days ago and we had a brainstorming session on possible causes of CCD, what we should research and where to obtain the funding. The short answer is that we still do not know what is the cause of CCD. A list of culprits include nosema ceranae (a protozoan parasite that infects adult bee mid-gut), viruses, varroa mites, or a new pathogen. Tracheal mites, pesticide use, various supplemental feeds are tentatively excluded. It is interesting that someone at the meeting reprinted an article published in 1897, complaining about the same symptoms seen in Colorado as what we are seeing today: most workers gone with a queen and some workers with lots of brood left in colonies. That was prior to both the varroa and tracheal mites, prior to the use of neonicotinoids (and organophosphates and pyrethroids). " Cordially, Joe Conroe TX Some rainlilies popping up here and there in the yard.