The way an old-timer described it to me was that CCD amounts to an increase in overwintering failures from around 10% for well-managed hives to around 25-50%.

The way an old-timer described it to me was that CCD amounts to an increase in overwintering failures from around 10% for well-managed hives to around 25-50%. This in turn means that you've got to do a lot more splits (where you create a new hive by splitting an old hive into two, and either inducing them to produce a queen or adding a carefully-bred queen yourself) or buying new packages of bees from someone who has already done this for you. A new hive usually needs a year to get up to full strength -- you can occasionally take a little bit off a new hive, but not much, and most beekeepers don't even risk it. As you say, 25-50% failure rates are expensive but currently within the range of what can be replaced; new packages of bees currently cost around $100-150 on the east coast, but aren't really hard to find. I'm somewhat curious how high of a failure rate can be sustained. It pretty much depends on how many splits you can generate a year starting from a single hive, which isn't a number I'm familiar with.