Dennis van Engelsdorp is not connected with Penn State. His most recent affiliation is:

Assistant Research Scientist
Department of Entomology 
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-4454

He wrote last year:
> It is concluded that dietary neonicotinoids cannot be implicated in honey bee declines, but this position is provisional because important gaps remain in current knowledge.

And:
> The effect of using acaricides to control varroa mites has long been a concern to the beekeeping industry due to unintended negative impacts on honey bee health. The results indicate that thymol, coumaphos and formic acid are able to alter some metabolic responses. These could potentially interfere with the health of individual honey bees and entire colonies.

And:
> CCD is only one of many reasons over- wintering bee colonies are thought to die. According to vanEngelsdorp and co-workers (2011), CCD could account for about 4% of the losses in USA over the winter of 2009–2010. However, CCD attributable losses are especially worrisome because no single factor has been identified as the underlying cause 

             ***********************************************
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