Paul, its in specific areas where bees fail to thrive - NOT necessarily all intensive agriculture. In particular, the corn belt - where it is a corn desert. I spent some time there last summer, even the barns are falling in - its corn, corn, and more corn - with an occasional soybean field - did see one potato field. Since the farmers don't grow anything else, even most of the cattle and other animals are gone, hence the barns falling in, rotting away. So, I suspect that the big issue is that this is a huge monoculture. In IL, you can drive from east to west across much of the state and see nothing but corn. Didn't see many beehives, and I can imagine that there's not much for bee other than corn. They plant the corn almost up to the road, and the narrow green strip btw road and fields is often mowed or hit with herbicides. Corn pollen reportedly has a low (~15%) crude protein - its usually accepted that bees need 20% or better for a good diet. Its also deficient on at least one essential amino acid. So, bees don't have much to forage. I'm rather surprised that they can make it all in much of the areas that I saw last summer. Also, I said NOTHING about CCD. Failure to thrive, in my mind, means - colonies do poorly - not necessarily die. You added the CCD issue to this disccusion. Jerry *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm