Honeybee population in free fall; Pennsylvania among worst hit in nation

[whereisjustice]

46. Nonsense. You asserted CCD has nothing to do with Monsanto, I gave you a recent journal article

with real scientists and real field research that showed, unequivocally, that a Monsanto product, Roundup, harms bees. As such, Monsanto's products are as likely as any other contributor.

Why are the bees leaving? Scientists studying the disorder believe a combination of factors could be making bees sick, including pesticide exposure, invasive parasitic mites, an inadequate food supply and a new virus that targets bees' immune systems. More research is essential to determine the exact cause of the bees' distress.
http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/animals/bees.asp

Why It's Happening
There have been many theories about the cause of CCD, but the researchers who are leading the effort to find out why are now focused on these factors:

Increased losses due to the invasive varroa mite (a pest of honey bees).
New or emerging diseases such as Israeli Acute Paralysis virus and the gut parasite Nosema.
Pesticide poisoning through exposure to pesticides applied to crops or for in-hive insect or mite control.
Stress bees experience due to management practices such as transportation to multiple locations across the country for providing pollination services.
Changes to the habitat where bees forage.
Inadequate forage/poor nutrition.
Potential immune-suppressing stress on bees caused by one or a combination of factors identified above.
http://www2.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/colony-collapse-disorder

What causes CCD?
The cause of CCD is under investigation. At this point, almost every conceivable and realistic cause remains a possibility. The leading candidates and a brief explanation of their potential role are listed below. This is not a comprehensive list and the candidates occur in no particular order. It is important to note that this list may change as new information on CCD becomes available. Such changes could result in the addition or exclusion of any of the following potential causes. The author makes no attempt to promote or undermine any one of the following theories.
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in720

As for neonics, they many very well be a significant contributor, but the science is hardly done on this issue:
For context on Lu's paper, I contacted Jeff Pettis, a USDA bee researcher who has participated in several papers on the recent decline of honeybee health—including a 2012 study showing that bees exposed to tiny levels of a neonic called imidacloprid were significantly more prone to succumb to the gut pathogen nosema than unexposed bees. Pettis told me that he thought Lu's study "adds to the list" of studies showing that pesticides pose a significant threat to honeybees. But he's not ready to declare a smoking gun—Lu's sample size, 12 treated hives and six controls, is too small, he says, to draw such a conclusion.
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/05/smoking-gun-bee-collapse


Many of the world's top scientists have challenged his research. Dennis vanEngelsdorp called Lu's first study "an embarrassment" while Scott Black, executive director of the bee-hugging Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, characterized it as fatally flawed, both in its design and conclusions.

University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum, who chaired the National Academy of Sciences 2007 National Research council study on the Status of Pollinators in North America called it "effectively worthless" to serious researchers. "The experimental design and statistical analysis are just not reliable," she said.

Beekeepers have been skeptical as well. Lu's findings contradicted what they witnessed in the fields. If neonics were a mystery killer, then not using them should translate into healthier bee stocks; but that's not what has happened.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-entine/post_8761_b_6323626.html

"In places where neonicotinoid pesticides have been banned, such as France and Italy, there's no evidence that honeybee populations have rebounded," noted Hannah Nordhaus, beekeeper and author of the bestseller The Beekeepers' Lament.
Dr. Dennis vanEngelsdorp—a University of Maryland entomologist who helps collect and publish the winter death data each spring—says there are three “primary drivers” of honeybee loss: The varroa mite, pesticides and poor nutrition. He doesn’t hesitate when asked to name the largest threat to bees: “I’d get rid of the varroa first.”
http://time.com/3821467/bees-honeybees-environment/

A survey of honey bee colonies revealed no consistent pattern in pesticide levels between healthy and CCD-affected colonies when pollen, bees, and beeswax were tested for the presence of 170 pesticides. The most commonly found pesticide in that study was coumaphos, which is used to treat honey bees for Varroa mites.

The pesticide class neonicotinoids (clothianidin, thiamethoxam, and imidacloprid) has been accused of being the cause of CCD. The neonicotinoids were developed in the mid-1990s in large part because they showed reduced toxicity to honey bees, compared with previously used organophosphate and carbamate insecticides.

In 2008, Germany revoked the registration of the neonicotinoid clothianidin for use on seed corn after an incident that resulted in the die-off of hundreds of nearby honey bees colonies. Investigation into the incident revealed that the die-off was caused by a combination of factors, including the failure to use a polymer seed coating known as a "sticker": weather conditions that resulted in late planting of corn while nearby canola crops were in bloom, attracting honey bees; use of a particular type of air-driven equipment used to sow the seeds, which blew clothianidin-laden dust off the seeds and into the air as the seeds were ejected from the machine into the ground; dry and windy conditions at the time of planting, which blew the dust into the nearby canola fields where honey bees were foraging; and a higher application rate than had been authorized was used to treat for a severe root worm infestation.
http://www.ars.usda.gov/News/docs.htm?docid=15572

And there is much more where this comes from.

You fail to acknowledge that there is no scientific consensus that Monsanto's products are not a contributor to CCD.