Many Factors Behind Colony Collapse Disorder

“What Makes Honeybee Colonies Collapse?” by Joe Ballenger.
Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder has always interested me, because I’m interested in insect pathology – and this is probably the most important insect-pathology related event we’ll see in our lifetimes.
I’ve written about CCD here at Biofortified, first in my post Colony Collapse Disorder: an Introduction. I followed this up with Are Neonicotinoids the Cause of Colony Collapse Disorder, where I talked about why the pesticide topic was a lot more complicated than neonicotinoid topic alone. I’ve not been happy with media narratives which focus exclusively on neonicotinoids, because I think the picture is a lot more complicated than one group of pesticides. There are a lot of things which make bees sick, and a lot of these things change the social structure of bees in ways which are negative for the health of the colony. Honeybees also have problems finding food in many areas, which makes these problems worse. So, to restate something I’ve said in previous posts – I don’t think pesticides are entirely blameless, but I think many popular science articles on the topic lay too much blame on pesticides. CCD is multifactorial, with a lot of factors which interact to cause problems. Read more.