Precisely. That only 5% of losses were attributed to CCD is actually quite shocking. It's human nature to want to blame something, ANYTHING else for what could have been your own failure. The fact that only 5% attributed losses to CCD tells me that the actual cases of CCD are probably even fewer than that. I would also be interested in seeing what the confounding variables in this study are.
There's a lot that can be assumed here. Typically, the bee keepers that are taking online surveys will often be the younger keepers. This tells me the survey could also have been taken with a much larger number of "hobby" bee keepers (nothing said about these being professional keepers) who may have lost their colonies due to mistakes made through the learning process. As a perfect example, a user of this forum mentioned that he'd kept a queen excluder on his hive over the winter, and returned to find his hive gone. He was asking questions in order to learn, but how easily would "nu-bees" be quick to fill out such a survey claiming they lost their hive to CCD?
The increased (which is a great thing!) interest in bee keeping over the past 15 years has also brought a lot of "nu-bees" onto the scene. Perhaps the CCD problems aren't as large as we may have perceived them to be? I do believe that our own attempts to modify the bees (specifically: treating them with pesticides - weakening the species while building up resistances in the pathogens-, reusing treated comb/wax, forcing them to grow larger than nature intended with large cell foundation, feeding them pollen cakes and sugar water after taking too much of their honey, shipping packages to different states instead of using the bees that are genetically climatized to that area, etc.) have certainly weakened the species as a whole, but they tend to be remarkably resilient little buggers.
Needless to say, I'm a rabid fan of Bush Farms, whom I only recently found online. :)
If we assume that CCD really is caused by these factors however, this poses a significant problem for the professional bee keeper. The entire process would have to change, and costs would soar on a business that (from my understanding) already struggles to turn a profit. Where the hobbiest would actually find these "natural" and "organic" methods easier, and more accessable, the professional keeper would struggle even more to make ends meet. If we assume that these factors are the cause, it would be not the hobbiest, but the professional keepers that would make the greatest impact with these changes. Unfortunately, they're also the ones with the most to lose if these factors AREN'T the cause. Suppose they make all of these major changes to the organic system only to find that despite the costs involved in the switch, it doesn't solve the CCD problem after all...