"The winter of 2006/2007 witnessed large-scale losses of managed honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) colonies in the United States. Those losses continued into the winter of 2007/2008. In the U.S., a portion of the dead and dying colonies were characterized post hoc  by a common set of specific symptoms: (1) the rapid loss of adult worker bees from affected colonies as evidenced by weak or dead colonies with excess brood populations relative to adult bee populations; (2) a noticeable lack of dead worker bees both within and surrounding the affected hives; and (3) the delayed invasion of hive pests (e.g., small hive beetles and wax moths) and kleptoparasitism from neighboring honey bee colonies. Subsequently, this syndrome has been termed Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD."

—Dennis van Englesdorp et al., Colony Collapse Disorder: A Descriptive Study, PLoS ONE 4(8): e6481, 2009.

op. cit., p. 199