Colony Collapse Disorder

[RainbowUnicorn]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder

In the six years leading up to 2013, more than 10 million beehives were lost, often to CCD,[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid#Bees

neonicotinoids were thought to have low toxicity to many insects, but recent research has suggested a potential toxicity to honey bees and other beneficial insects even with low levels of contact.

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This is me talking now.
I have been following this issue for a little over 15 years or more.
What my innitial expectation was based on chatting with people was that .... if it was a chemical cocktail then it would potentially show low yeild sign to all aspects of toxicity.
however once the collection of a certain mix of variants then it would suddenyl create a toxic level effect that would create a trigger point for th ebees to be killed or driven off.
they were effectively being driven off so the trigger point was abandonning the hives.

i am unsure why it has taken soo long to come to this conclusion.
i can only expect there has been a serious lack of funding and field research extremely hard to get approval to access.

though that said, now that the worlds honey bee population has been decimated there appears to be 2 consistant items now on the table

1 which has been rumoured but pushed into the conspiracy theory camp by god-only-knows-who.
Neonicotinoids

and a very recent finding of an anti fungal that is sprayed on fruit trees.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articl...lings.aspx

New Study: Fungicides May Be Killing Bees

Systemic neonicotinoid pesticides have been increasingly blamed for bee deaths (and were implicated in a recent mass bee die-off of 25,000 bumblebees along with millions of bee deaths in Canada), prompting the European Union (EU) to ban them for two years.

Now, it appears measures that target single classes of pesticides, though a move in the right direction, may be falling short. In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers analyzed pollen from bee hives in seven major crops and found 35 different pesticides along with high fungicide loads.2 Each sample contained, on average, nine different pesticides and fungicides, although one contained 21 different chemicals.

What makes the research particularly unique is the concerning data on fungicides, which has so far been assumed to be safe for bees. While farmers are advised to avoid spraying pesticides when bees are present, for instance, fungicides contain no such warnings.
The researchers explained:

“While fungicides are typically seen as fairly safe for honey bees, we found an increased probability of [i]Nosema infection in bees that consumed pollen with a higher fungicide load. Our results highlight a need for research on sub-lethal effects of fungicides and other chemicals that bees placed in an agricultural setting are exposed to.”[/i]

Also concerning, the researchers found that the bees in the study collected pollen almost exclusively from weeds and wildflowers, and this, too, was contaminated with pesticides even though they were not directly sprayed.

“It’s not clear whether the pesticides are drifting over to those plants but we need take a new look at agricultural spraying practices,” the study’s lead author told Quartz.3

soo ... it seems we may have some really positive clues.
only sticking point is that these chemicals are used extensively for a profit yield process to stave off crop loss which would no doubt hurt the profitability of various growers.

knowing the monopolisation of middle man companys which have driven dwn the farm gate price leveraging farmers profit margins while they now rely on various pesticides and chemicals to ensure their weakening position against inflation....

hopefully somthing can be done.

would be awefully inconvinient to loose 50% of the global crops. which is where things are heading if CCD continues.
new polination methods of using wind blowers and some other devices are being rushed into the market all very expensive i would imagine and with a much lower pollination rate.

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some farmers have already started hand pollinating. to compliment blowers and even changes of crops to only crops that can be wind pollinated with hand pollination being used after that to try and cover as much as possible.
the farmers are doing this themselves though and only really works on top priced products.
the cheaper yeild bulk crops like corn and wheat are a different issue.

[Syne]

“In the case of acute effects alone, some neonics are at least 5,000 to 10,000 times more toxic to bees than DDT,”
- http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/06/...r-wildlife

So not only has the long since proven bad science that banned DDT caused 50 million deaths to malaria, it now also seems to contribute to CCD.