Sure is hard to argue your idea of weakening the honeybee. Today it is VERY hard to get antibiotics from doctors, it is usually easier to get pain-killers because of how antibiotics are weakening our resistance to nearly every virual attack known to exist. We literally destroy our defensive system to the point that even the strongest antibiotic is useless to many people.
I agree it is natural for superior colonies to survive threat without medication in order to continue to be a strong spieces on the planet. but I have one problem with the theory: not all beekeepers medicate, many have never nor would ever and yet they are suffering loss.
I can't imagine blaming everything on chemical treatments passed from bee to bee from casual pollination of plants or trees. I'm sure we are weakening our hives (as a general issue) if we expose them to chemicals unnaturally found in nature - and surely a saturation point can occur - we do live in a society where MORE is better and the idea of minimally medicating bees probably rarely happens.
I think there are lots of reasons, I often mention Cellphone and radio tower signals, but solar flairs also inturupt communications and we are in a massive cycle of Sol's eruptions, luckily the major ones have been while the sun was turning away from the Earth. One recording during January was nearly 140 times the average burst of radiation, it would have fried all high altitude communications (the stuff up around 26,000 miles like banking satellites.
The sun rotates fairly fast for a massive object - every 9 days. That was a 1 in 9 chance for a direct massive solar burst and a 1 in 6 chance of a major angular hit. The 11 year sunspot cycle effects all communications, some more notably than others but I have never heard of WHAT FREQUENCIES bees primative homing equipment works at. If I thought of their antenna length as a guide I'd assume seriously high microwave) in radio theory the higher the frequency the smaller the antenna - but of course bee antenna has litle to do with location homing - still, I doubt we know all the answers on their role in communicating.
Man has played God too many times and maybe THIS time (whether purposefully or not) they have played a role in the devastating losses we now see. But I'm sure many would argue that without MITE medication, honeybees would be in worse shape then they are now... I say, the reasons for CCD might be different, but the head-count and results would be very similar.
Welcome aboard the forum :)