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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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From:
Peter L Borst <[log in to unmask]>
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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 3 Mar 2013 12:04:13 -0500
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While I admire Lynn Dicks efforts to focus the debate, there still remains the concern that pesticides are NOT the major factor in pollinator decline. And, if some sort of sweeping ban is implemented, people will have a tendency to think "there, we fixed that" while the key issues go unresolved. Work by Sheila Colla et al, presents a different conclusion:

> Although habitat loss and pesticides have well established negative effects on bumblebees, they are unlikely to be main drivers of recent North American declines. We did not find significant relationships between patterns of bumblebee losses and pesticide use, or the relationships were in the opposite direction than predicted. 

> Although pesticides have negative impacts on bumblebees at the individual or colony level, our results suggest that pesticides are not a main contributor to declines of these species when their entire ranges are considered. Our analysis also suggests that habitat loss is not a major driver of widespread declines. 

> Furthermore, the species we examined were recently common in both rural and urbanized regions and had therefore already persisted through extreme habitat loss. These observations suggest that habitat loss is not responsible for recent precipitous declines unless acting through threshold effects. 

> We consider it unlikely that such effects could have simultaneously triggered population declines among multiple species living in different areas, including areas that still retain extensive potential habitat. Therefore, there remains an urgent need to identify other causes of North American bumblebee declines. The role of diseases in declines deserves further study. 

> Developing strategies to effectively protect North American bumblebees will require further research. There is ample evidence of North American bumblebee declines, and some movement has been made toward protecting them. Until the causes of decline are better known, however, designing and implementing recovery strategies will be difficult. 

Szabo, N. D., Colla, S. R., Wagner, D. L., Gall, L. F., & Kerr, J. T. (2012). 
Do pathogen spillover, pesticide use, or habitat loss explain recent North American bumblebee declines?. 
Conservation Letters 5 (2012) 232–239 

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