The Cellar - Colony Collapse Disorder

From the NY Times of 29 Mar 2012 entitled 2 Studies Point to Common Pesticide as a Culprit in Declining Bee Colonies

Quote:

The authors of both studies contend that their results raise serious questions about the use of the pesticides, known as neonicotinoids. ...

The insecticides, introduced in the early 1990s, have exploded in popularity; virtually all corn grown in the United States is treated with them. Neonicotinoids are taken up by plants and moved to all their tissues — including the nectar on which bees feed. The concentration of neonicotinoids in nectar is not lethal, but some scientists have wondered if it might still affect bees.

In the honeybee experiment, researchers at the National Institute for Agricultural Research in France fed the bees a dose of neonicotinoid-laced sugar water and then moved them more than half a mile from their hive. The bees carried miniature radio tags that allowed the scientists to keep track of how many returned to the hive.

In familiar territory, the scientists found, the bees exposed to the pesticide were 10 percent less likely than healthy bees to make it home. In unfamiliar places, that figure rose to 31 percent. ...

Jeffery Pettis, a bee expert at the United States Department of Agriculture, ... is also convinced that neonicotinoids in low doses make bees more vulnerable to disease. He and other researchers have recently published experiments showing that neonicotinoids make honeybees more vulnerable to infections from parasitic fungi.

"Three or four years ago, I was much more cautious about how much pesticides were contributing to the problem," Dr. Pettis said. "Now more and more evidence points to pesticides being a consistent part of the problem."

Some preliminary results also suggest that pesticide use on farms have resulted in an increase in autism. But give no indication of which ones.