Studies Link Pesticides To Bee Colony Collapse Disorder

T Murphy writes "Neonicotinoid pesticides, designed to attack insects such as beetles and aphids, have been shown to harm bees' ability to navigate back to the hive. While initially assumed safe in low enough, non-fatal doses for bees, two papers have shown that may not be the case. Although the studies don't directly study the Colony Collapse Disorder, the scientists believe these pesticides are likely a contributing factor."

Comments

Re:It's Not as Simple as You Make It Out to Be

[Dasher42]

There's a troubling aspect of this thinking, and that's that people expect there to be a single smoking gun and either the pesticides are it, or there aren't.

Living beings don't fit neatly into that. They process a large variety of inputs and can adapt to a number of stressors and heal; in fact, in machine culture we seem to take it for granted that living systems are at 100% because we're used to machines that are either working or very conspicuously broken.

Bees have been shipped about fields, worked harder than even their natures. They're exposed to crops now genetically modified to include pesticides in their pollen. The sprays being used are increasingly pushed into use for profit without review. This leaves them in such a weakened state that if a mite finishes them off, you can't say it was just one factor.

If you want a resilient system, you've got to pay attention to all of these factors.