I listend to a piece on npr that was talking about something that killed off hives last year. I think it was primarily honey bees. These numbers from the article? " over 90% of feral (wild) bee population in the US has already died out, and up to 80% of domestic bees have died out too."
I dont think they have determined it was only insecticides causing the problems. Pretty good article about scientists trying to figure out whats happening by tracking bees with microchips.
http://www.scienceillustrated.com/nature/2011/08/endangered-bees-under-scrutiny
"Equipped with a new , groundbreaking tool, biologists are trying to determine what’s causing the mass death of bees all over the world. Microchips attached to the backs of French bees may enable scientists to monitor the lives of individual insects and discover what’s killing them."
Each bee is outfitted with a microchip and moved to customized beehives with scanners at the entrances, which register when the bees leave the hive, how long they’re gone and when they come back.
“It is a major breakthrough,” says Cdric Alaux of the Laboratoire Biologie et Protection de l’abeille. “For the moment, we are studying the interaction among different stress factors. But we cannot rule out that there is one single factor behind it all that influences the bees in a negative way.”
Pests and disease are among the obvious culprits, but there could also be more indefinable factors, such as electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones, which may interfere with the bees’ ability to navigate, or the steady reduction in plant diversity. Studies have indicated that bees that eat the nectar of many different kinds of plants have a more active immune system and tolerate stress better than bees that only eat nectar from a few plant species. In order to distinguish one factor from another and assess the effect of each, scientists needed to follow a large number of individuals"
This is one of the more disturbing paragraphs in that original article from topinfopost. "gender bending" herbicides in the water supply. wtf?
"Also to note about Syngenta, this report continues, is that in 2012 it was criminally charged in Germany for concealing the fact that its genetically modified corn killed cattle, and settled a class-action lawsuit in the US for $105 million after it was discovered they had contaminated the drinking supply of some 52 million Americans in more than 2,000 water districts with its “gender-bending” herbicide Atrazine."
