It's not just the protein--increased CO2 also results in lower levels of
critical zinc, iron, and other nutrients, relative to carbs in plant matter.

Nurse bees and winter bees already eat all the pollen that they can consume
(check out their guts).  If that pollen contains less protein and trace
elements, the nutrition flow within the colony will change.  The
maintenance of the worker recruitment rate will need to come at the expense
of something else, such as Bill points out.  There will need to be more
nurses, more pollen foragers, more dangerous defecation flights by the
nurses, etc.

As Charlie says, the bees will adjust.  But that adjustment would be that
the colony would be less productive.

Charlie, you're also guilty of scattering a whole netful of red herrings.
Humanity's increasing of the CO2 level is causing profound changes on our
planet, and many of our current species are having trouble adapting, or
going extinct.  We will not be able to reverse our abuse of this planet
that we claim to be "ours" in the near future, but there is no
technological reason that we can't change the irresponsible path that we
are on.

--
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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