Kathie:

You answered your own question in your posting.  

Let’s start with what is obvious.  Think about for a minute.  You own, let’s assume, this hybrid seed company from which you have been forced to purchase seeds; if the growers can reseed this crop, you will not be able to make much profit.  However, if the seeds from this hybrid will not germinate the next year, due to its clever genetic somersault, the growers have no choice but to buy your seeds year after year, allowing you to enjoy the best healthcare money can buy.  Yup, you got the suckers in your pocket.  Such monopoly of course is based on corporate greed, which is the same thing as human greed, never ever on environmental concerns, a parasitism of exploitation, the worst kind one seldom finds in nature.

Since the polite crowd on Bee-L remains reticent, I will share my opinion on this.  Please remember opinons are not facts; facts, not the truth.  

Bees are dying due to stress, stress coming from 360 degrees: 1) stress caused by technological advancement, 2) stress caused by abrupt climatic changes and shifts, 3) stress caused by uninhabitable environment, 4) stress caused by large- and small-scale beekeepers, 5) stress caused by narrowing of bee genetics, and 6) stress caused by known and unknown pathogens—mostly resulting from the insatiable market demand and human greed.  Nobody will ever question the virtue and duty of having to feed the exploding global population at any cost, knowing well that in some years we get good crops while in others far below average.  The thinking is that the graph must move upward and forward all the time; we refuse to accept the chart fluctuating from year to year.  The enemy is indeed us.

Due to technological advancement, the world has become much smaller than it used to be; this situation allows us for more and faster global trafficking of bee pathogens than before: almost all the bee pathogens I know of have human origin, the most recent one being small hive beetles (from Africa), especially in the south, although the worst one could be varroa (from Asia).  

The stress from climactic shifts is difficult to measure for the moment due to too many variables in the global weather patterns although we have experienced springs arriving weeks ahead of its average schedule.  Then there are this thingies called pockets of micro-climate that seems to defy any systemic generalization.  Nevertheless, such shift will eventually impact on continental flora and fauna, which, in turn, will force the bees to re-align their survival tactics as the blooming dates will shift.  

We would all agree that due to human development and monocroping of “value-added crops,” idle lands have been disappearing and crop lands are dying, thus reducing bee-forage areas and bee nutrition, another major source of bee stress.  In the future, the beekeepers may have to seed forgeable crops for the bees to produce honey, as I am forced to do already.  Stress caused by uninhabitable environment must include pesticide use and genetically modified crops whose long term impact is still in debate, not only for their direct/indirect kills but also their nutritional depletion.  Frankly nobody knows the ultimate fate of these chemical compounds when they end up in the sea although the sea has shown acidic buildup, allowing some to thrive and others to starve.  

Stress caused by small-and large-scale beekeepers, especially by migratory beekeepers, have been well documented on Bee-L, particularly regarding use and abuse of chemicals to treat bee disease, and I prefer not to ruffle any new feathers here other than to say that I too shoulder the cross of burden although I have been chemical-free for a decade now.  Recently the Bee-L has been abuzz on selective breeding, bee genetics, and narrowing of the gene pool.  Unlike grains, we have not yet kept genes locked up frozen in the Aortic Circles although I wonder if we could save their DNA’s and RNA’s against future loss.  Assuming the gene pool has been reduced, through our vigorous selective breeding to benefit human needs, the stress caused by bee pathogens may well be *the* cause of bee die-offs since varroa, for instance, is a gateway varmint.

As you can see in my sweeping generalization, which does not even exhaust all the stress there is, the bees are surrounded and cornered; in fact, this is not the first time they are experiencing such stress overload.  Although we do not know the exact tipping point, their die-offs appear to be cyclical, and nowadays the frequency of this cycle seems to be more frequent than before due perhaps to our advancement in communication.

Given your broad question, I apologize for not being able to give you a simpler answer other than this opinion with lots of holes in it.

Yoon

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