[onedoug]

Potentially serious. Since aerial Malathion spraying over LA about 20 some years ago, we stopped seeing butterflies and honeybees for about 10-15 years, and ever now sightings are relatively rare. I suspect and fear big trouble for plant pollination unless their numbers rebound.

[fwdude]

Not to mention the wholesale napalming of entire cities for mosquitoes when West Nile Virus scares crop up. I have never seen such knee jerking in all my life. And I chalk it up to the suffocating culture of political correctness.

[sickoflibs]

When my tree blooms in Spring the bees go nuts over it, but they are wild bees ..

Wasps too.

[null and void]

Great. I was just about to buy some PRS-100 which is mostly N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone.

[Vigilanteman]

We didn't have this problem with DDT. My father both kept bees and sprayed DDT liberally.

No, the DDT wasn't sprayed on the hives. But it was sprayed on the cows when they came into the barn for milking or eating. It was part of the routine to stand by door, open it just far enough for the cows to file in single file, aim and spray it at their backside as they passed.

Our hives were no more than 100 yards from the barn on the other side of the cow pasture Our barn cats lived fat healthy lives on rodents which attempted to get at our grain supply and milk that we boys "accidentally" squirted at them while we were milking.

We also had barn swallows in each end of the barn every year. They produced healthy babies every year despite the concentration of DDT which must have been in that barn.

[Faith65]

20-25 years ago I would come home from work in the summer and see my butterfly garden full of butterflies- maybe 25- 30 of them. They would be on the butterfly bush or on the cone flowers, etc. Nowadays, I feel lucky to see 1 a week, maybe a dozen in total during the summer. And bees, lots of bees around our house....but they are nasty yellow jackets. I rarely see lightening bugs anymore either. As a kid, I remember seeing hundreds every night during the summer. Not anymore.....at least not in my area.

[DJ MacWoW]

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[Mase]

Whenever mass die offs are experienced (whether it's in plants, animals, or bees as in this case) the culprit will normally be a virus of some sort. In the case of bee colony collapse, it is mostly likely being caused by the tobacco ringspot virus or TRSV. They have found this virus present throughout the tissues of infected bees. This virus is probably being spread by mites. Making matter worse, the virus is a host shifting virus that can replicate itself in the body of the bee and then move from one species to another. I believe that host shifting is where most new infectious diseases come from.

Anyway, the pesticide theory of bee colony collapse may provide an easier explanation, but I don't think it will be determined as the cause once that determination is made. That fact will deeply sadden the anti-GMO Luddites.

[Rebelbase]

I camped a few days this past summer in a remote national forest far from any agricultural areas and the honey bees were thick as flies.

[Wuli]

dozens of farm crops are dependent on bees; bees do more for American agriculture than simply provide honey