When the great detective retired, he took up beekeeping and wrote a book titled Practical Handbook Of Bee Culture with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen. I wonder whether even his deductive genius could solve the riddle of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)? 

This phenomenon, which struck US beekeepers in 2006-7, has remained a mystery in spite of an enormous amount of research and learned speculation on the subject. CCD seems now to have disappeared, as mysteriously as it appeared. I believe that there have been no credible recent reports of colony losses which match the description of CCD. This is exactly what makes the question of what could suddenly have caused such huge losses, mainly in the States but not exclusively there, so mysterious and so tempting to forensic curiosity. Sadly, I fear that Holmes would not have been able to solve it, as his author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, knew nothing about bees and had apparently never been near a beehive until he visited Australia in 1921 to lecture on spiritualism, where he was shown around an apiary in Queensland.

The description of CCD which is generally agreed by bee scholars, is as pro