I've been pretty busy lately and just catching up on some forum reading. There was a pretty interesting Webinar a couple months ago regarding new CCD research involving several universities. The Webinar was 30 min. long. The jist of it was: 1. There still isn't a consensus among on what is causing CCD. 2. Mostly it is thought to be a combination of factors with plain old Varroa mites being the main contributor. Cell phone signals are no longer thought to be of any significance regarding CCD. 3. The new research focused on Neonics. This idea is not new, as parts of Europe banned some seed treatments of neonics and did not see a subsequent reduction in CCD. CCD also occurs in areas where no row crops are grown within foraging distance of the bees. The part that is new is the study of the lethality index of some of the neonics used in seed treatments in conjunction with how the product is used and the lethal and sub-lethal effects on bees. Basically seed treatments are something fairly new. They been a boon to farmers as they've drastically reduced damage to crops from not only root feeding pests, but also pests that attack the above ground portion of the plants, thereby reducing the need for field sprayed pesticides. Two seed treatment compounds are basically used - clothianidin and thiamethoxam. Both have fairly long half-lives and are systemic products. Clothianidin is more lethal of the two, but clothianidin is one of the break-down components of thiamehtoxam. The problem is that because clothianidin does such a good job at protecting the plants, it's also around when the plant blooms. It's very very toxic to bees when they ingest the pollen. Another problem is the planters need to be cleaned of dust after use. Planters have built in blowers to accomplish this. Unfortunately with treated seed, the dust is mostly pesticide. It's a fairly concentrated mass that's blown out and can have high concentrations of the compound where it settles. Currently seed planter cleaning does not fall under EPA pesticide application guidelines. I look for this to change soon in the future. 4. The other part of the research focused on residential use of imidacloprid. Apparently this neonic is used heavily by homeowners and landscape professionals to protect ornamental shrubs and trees. It poses the same problem to bees as seed treatments. Blooming plants grown in ground treated with imidacloprid can (and probably will) have pollen toxic to bees. The issue is the sheer number of acres treated with these compounds. The land planted to seed treated row crops combined with the residential use of imidacloprid covers a sizable portion of bee habitat. Fruit growing (both hobby and professional) cover a much much smaller area and thereby have a much smaller potential impact. Clothianidin is approved for fruits and perhaps should be required to be re-registered to make sure it does not pose undue risk to bees when used on fruits. It is used after bloom. Because of this new research, I will probably never use Clutch (clothianidin) on my trees. Imidacloprid is approved for fruits but is ineffective against major tree fruit pests and is probably used very little except by homeowners. Thiamethoxam (Actara) is used for tree fruits and is very effective against plum curc and brown mamorated stink bug. It is used after bloom though, and limited to 2 applications per season. Not all neonics have the same effect on bees, but it's likely some people will lump them together. Other neonics used on fruit, acetamiprid (Assail) ect., have not been implicated. Acetamiprid is much less toxic to bees than clothianidin and is not used before bloom. Insecticides vary greatly on their insecticidal effect of, not only insect pests, but also non-target insects. There are broad spectrum insecticides like pyrethroids and organophosphates, but there are also more species specific insecticides like diamides that target lepidopterous moths. Intrepid (diacylhydrazine class) is so safe to honeybees, it is approved for use at bloom, yet is very lethal to lepidoptera. It appears that insecticides may play a role in CCD, but not all insecticides, and not even all neonicotinoids are at fault. Commercial beekeepers also use insecticides on their hives. Although I'm sure there are exceptions, most experienced beekeepers will tell you the days of keeping bees without treating the hives are over. Varroa mites have seen to that.

I was about to chlorinate my pool today when I saw a few bees taking water to spray on their hive nearby to cool it off. It was then I realized that chlorinated pools could be a possible cause of colony collapse disorder. I put the chlorine back in the storage room instead of pouring some into the pool, and decided that I'm only going to chlorinate my pool very lightly, and only at night so the chlorine has a lot of time to dissipate before it gets hot out and the bees show up to get water. A little chlorinated pool water might not do much harm to a hive, but if the bees repeatedly spray the hive with varying concentrations of chlorinated water, over time the hive will likely collapse and nobody would know what happened. Somebody ought to look into this - are hives collapsing in warmer zones faster than cooler zones? Perhaps the effects of chlorine happen gradually over time, and weaken the colonies a little bit more each generation as the effects of chlorine accumulate. Cooler zones would not provide immunity to CCD because of the migratory (swarming) behavior of bees. Eventually colonies in the cooler zones would collapse, but it would start several generations later than in the warmer zones. If chlorinated pool water is indeed the root cause of CCD, it would stand to reason that bees in the hottest parts of the country - where more people have pools - would be hit the hardest and fastest with CCD. My family had a few hundred hives in Chino Hills, CA while I was growing up, I was raised with bees, and I love them. I hope we can stop CCD in time. It sure would be nice if it was something as simple as pool chlorine.

I don't see how cellphones (harmful as they are) are killing bees because the insects are vanishing from huge areas of farmland that are to a large part uninhabited so not many people using them there! Chemtrails I believe are to blame because they block the full sunlight and bees need sun as a navigation tool and failing full sun they use uv rays, which are also being blocked by chemtrails! Chemtrails are being sprayed all over the countries where the bees are vanishing!

Way late in coming, but at least they acknowledge it and are finally taking action. The USDA was for too long under the thrall of Homeland Security, and their budget and focus was on trying to weasel the National Animal Identification System into all of our states (NAIS would require all owners of even just one pony, chicken, pig, llama, or other poultry/livestock to microchip and register their animals and their premises in a non-secure government database. This, so in the event of a disease outbreak, ostensibly started by terrorists, our animals could be rounded up and destroyed to stop the "epidemic"...). Honeybees, even though they are European themselves, have become so essential to pollination of agricultural crops such as fruit crops, that the collapse of the bulk of the colonies would cause a collapse in crop production. We can't afford to goof off here.