But it is a start, in that it is the first work to characterize both the pollen foraging habits of the bees (which may prove to be the most interesting/useful piece of the paper, long-term) and the pesticide residues in the monocultures that typify much of the country

 
A little due diligence by the author in terms of reviewing the work of others would be nice.  Not only isn't this the first study of it's kind nor the first finding, it's more or less common knowledge amongst researchers, others, and almost any study of bee pollen foraging.  

In fact, Reed Johnson's latest paper follows extensive multi-year work he's done along the same lines as the Nature paper, but on a larger scale, and with the addition of 'effects' data.  

I also know that Reed's found microscopy to be a laborious way of doing the pollen diversity part of the studies, and his newest publication reflects his response to solving the methods problem.



Richardson RT, Lin C-H, Quijia JO, Riusech NS, Goodell K, Johnson RM. 2015. Rank-based characterization of pollen assemblages collected by honey bees using a multi-locus metabarcoding approach. Applications in Plant Sciences. 3 (3): 1500043.http://dx.doi.org/10.3732/apps.1500043


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