Several people have suggested less scapegoating and more looking for answers. Keith Delaplane is on the front line of getting real solutions to real problems. He writes:

> I am heavily involved in one example of this new level of federal funding -- the Managed Pollinator Coordinated Agricultural Project (CAP). The CAP concept is an innovation of the USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) -- the branch of USDA responsible for competitive grants (not to be confused with the Agricultural Research Service that administers in‐house federal labs). 

> Our approach has been to assume that bee decline is a product of numerous interacting factors, synthetic and organic. Late research seems to bear this out. Colonies expressing a set of symptoms sometimes called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) -- rapid loss of adult bees and low ratios of adult bees to brood -- have also shown comparatively high rates of mixed infections, including viruses and Nosema species. 

> And lastly -- a word about expectations. $4.1 million sounds like a lot of money, and it is. But $4.1 million divided among 4 years and 18 institutions translates to rather modest sums for each participant. We are not promising to solve bee decline and return beekeeping to the golden days before Varroa, but we do expect to narrow and focus the list of candidate factors, interpreting and delivering to beekeepers to the extent possible the practical applications of our work, operating without redundancy and with a high level of group coordination, input, critique, and readjustment. 

SEE:
http://www.beeccdcap.uga.edu/documents/CAPArticle1.html

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