On Wednesday, May 7, 2014 12:49:59 PM UTC-4, Robert Green wrote:
"Norminn" wrote in message



stuff snipped



Pesticides and herbicides could impact them in a few ways, either by

direct chemical effect or by changing their food sources. With people

so anxious to kill everything that crawls in their yard, I'd be hard to

convince that chemicals don't have an impact.



From the USDA's Ag. Research Service:



Not all pesticide impact is about directly killing honey bees, however.

Sublethal doses of the pesticide imidacloprid-one of the neonicotinoid group

of pesticides-were found to make honey bees more susceptible to the gut

parasite Nosema, according to a study by Pettis and University of Maryland

researchers Dennis vanEngelsdorp, Josephine Johnson, and Galen Dively.



The researchers fed three generations of honey bee colonies either 5 or 20

parts per billion (ppb) of imidacloprid, which is used to protect a wide

variety of crops and ornamentals from many different insects. The dosages

used in the study were intentionally well below the levels that have been

documented to kill honey bees after short-term exposure and reflected levels

that have been measured in the environment.





After the third generation, newly emerged adult bees from these colonies

were exposed to spores of N. apis and N. ceranae, gut parasites that have

been a growing problem for U.S. beekeepers since the 1990s.





There was up to a fourfold increase in the levels of Nosema in honey bees

from the imidacloprid-exposed colonies, regardless of whether 5 or 20 ppb

were fed.



http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archiv...colony0712.htm



While historical records seem to imply the CCD has occurred in the past,

there's no way to determine the actual similarity to today's CCD problems

because back then no one had ever even heard of DNA.



It reminds me a little of thalidomide, a drug whose ability to cause birth

defects was strongly denied by 1,000's of doctors who had successfully

prescribed it to pregnant women without incident. Eventually it turned out

that the US, which had not approved the drug, had very few cases but

countries that had approved had many.



That eventually led to the discovery that a certain dosage level taken at a

critical time (I think 60th day) led to the formation of flippers instead of

arms and legs. That's why I think the EU ban will either make or break the

connection to neonicotinoids. If they experience far fewer CCD incidents

after the ban, then we'll finally have a real smoking gun even if we still

don't understand the mechanism.



I was surprised to see a report that implied that CCD might be related to

cell and cordless phone use. The media came to that result based on a small

German study that implied close-by radio signals can disrupt bee's

direction-finding capabilities. Needless to say, it was quickly disproved

since CCD occurs in places with virtually no EMI.



Bobby G.


And I think you'll similarly find that CCD occurs in remote places
with virtually no pesticides and for sure no imidacloprid.