The link provided by Stan in part says:


http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7422/full/nature11585.html

“…Furthermore, widespread agricultural intensification means that bees are exposed to numerous pesticides when foraging13, 14, 15, yet the possible combinatorial effects of pesticide exposure have rarely been investigated16, 17. Here we show that chronic exposure of bumblebees to two pesticides (neonicotinoid and pyrethroid) at concentrations that could approximate field-level exposure impairs natural foraging behaviour and increases worker mortality leading to significant reductions in brood development and colony success. We found that worker foraging performance, particularly pollen collecting efficiency, was significantly reduced with observed knock-on effects for forager recruitment, worker losses and overall worker productivity. Moreover, we provide evidence that combinatorial exposure to pesticides increases the propensity of colonies to fail.”

I also watched the BBC documentary Peter Detchon mentioned on 23, 02, 2013:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=bjef4QiKWfg&NR=1

35 minutes into the video they interview a commercial beekeeper named Mike Thurlow operating in the United Kingdom. He says:

“We had one load of bees that came back from pollination that had all been together from April going back to October. When they came back from pollination they were split three ways, one third went into a wood - 200 acres predominantly of lime trees, and no bees died there at all. And on the other two sites which are in intensive agricultural areas - that’s where the colonies collapsed. Something triggered the bees to collapse on those two sites. It must be connected with the agricultural crops and the sprays and the seed treatments. I mean there’s no other explanation.”

Mike’s use of language (“April going back to October”) reminds me of the urbanite who stops to ask a farmer for directions and the farmer says, “you can’t get there from here. You have to back to the church and head north. If you see the beehives you’ve gone too far, etc.” 

But leaving that aside and considering the experiment described in Nature along with the anecdotal evidence of Mike Thurlow  - it seems there may be some combination of chemicals used on agricultural crops that is killing honey bees. It would be helpful if the manufactures of pesticides designed experiments to try and find out what this problem combination is. Instead they design million dollar experiments that exonerate their particular product and spend more money telling everyone who will listen how much they looooooooooooove pollinators. This does nothing to identify the cause of bee losses experienced by beekeepers. Our only hope in solving this mystery appears to be publicly funded research.  

Ted

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