The most definitive study so far on Pesticides & Bees was made publicly available this year, for every one to read

Mullin CA, Frazier M, Frazier JL, Ashcraft S, Simonds R, et al. 2010 High Levels of Miticides and Agrochemicals in North American Apiaries: Implications for Honey Bee Health. PLoS ONE 5(3): e9754. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009754

Funding was received from the Florida State Beekeepers, National Honey Board, Penn State College of Agriculture Sciences, Project Apis mellifera (PAm), Tampa Bay Beekeepers, The Foundation for the Preservation of Honey Bees, and the United States Department of Agriculture Critical Issues program. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Excerpts:

The effects of chronic exposure to pyrethroids, organophosphates, neonicotinoids, fungicides and other pesticides can range from lethal and/or sub-lethal effects in brood and workers to reproductive effects on the queen. Bee nutrition and physiological changes across seasons (summer versus winter bees) can have marked impacts on their pesticide susceptibility. 

* Attempts to correlate global bee declines or CCD with increased pesticide exposures alone have not been successful to date. 

Two major complications with such attempts are that the time delay between collecting pollen contaminated with multiple pesticides, as we have shown here, and when it is actually consumed by bees or brood is not predictable in colonies, and the potential biotransformations of pesticides in beebread are completely undocumented. 

* Pesticide interactions among various mixures as well as with other stressors including Varroa and Nosema, IAPV, beneficial hive microbes, and impacts on bee immune systems all require further study. 

* It seems to us that it is far too early to attempt to link or to dismiss pesticide impacts with CCD.



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