A well done piece on CCD talking about the multiple causes that may be responsible for it.
http://www.kpbs.org/audioclips/9754/
The original article is here.
"If they are treated with sub-lethal doses of pesticide, they actually will not come back to the nest, they may get lost. and one study suggests they actually will dance less," explained Nieh. "So their efficiency at recruiting other bees to that same food source is decreased and the colony is getting less food into it."
This is a troubling point. Being sub-lethal it is difficult to diagnose; hard to track down the source and just as difficult to be able to do something about it. The toughest part of solving this aspect of the problem is trying to get the pesticide or pesticides off the market. How do you prove a specific pesticide with a billion dollars in sales is doing this if you can hardly prove that it is lethal. Professional "scientists" on the corporate dole can easily find reasonable doubt on any specific pesticide and lay blame on another cause, this same strategy was effectively used by the tobacco industry for years.
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