Just what we needed: "Scientists discover another cause of bee deaths..."

(I wasn't sure which was the most appropriate category to post this in, so Mods, please feel free to move this post to wherever you think is best.  I did a search and it didn't seem that anyone had linked to it before, even though it came out a few months ago.)

Anyway, I just read this article & thought I'd share.  

I have a few friends who are trying (unsuccessfully thus far) to keep bees up North here where I live.  It's hard enough to "get it right" with Mother Nature fighting them every step of the way, between too-rainy summers to cruelly cold winters without adding man-made problems.

OY.  

Interesting article.
Disclaimer:  I don't know anything special about bees.  Just Nat Geo and other wildlife programs.

In my subdivision, bees are rare.  More than that, their behavior seems to me to be disoriented.  Last summer, a bee landed on my arm and stung me.  Never happened before.  Just came at me, landed and stung.  No hives anywhere close.  And, we are 200 miles north of the northern limits for African Honey Bees so it wasn't one of them.

This year, they seem to have trouble getting inside the winter squash male flowers.  They buzz all around the outside, maybe look inside but don't go in.  I'm talking about males full of pollen, not ones I used up with a paint brush fertilizing the females.  They didn't even show interest in my summer garden flowers.

Yesterday I watched a bee off and on for 90 minutes trying to get through plastic.  All she had to do was fly 2 feet in any direction to get to the other side.  What was on the other side you ask?  Same as what was on her side - open air.

All I can think off is the use of insecticides, fungicides and herbicides in the area.  Everyone wants a good looking yard.  But, I think there may be a price.  Again, I'm no bee expert and I don't have any data to back up my feeling that something is wrong with the bees lately.

sanderson wrote:All I can think off is the use of insecticides, fungicides and herbicides in the area.  ...Again, I'm no bee expert and I don't have any data to back up my feeling that something is wrong with the bees lately.

This is something where gut feeling is as valid as whatever some "experts" may claim, anyway, you've engaged in your own research, i.e. personal observation.
Perhaps if some global fertilizer giants would do some of that, they might begin to see the error of their ways.
(Oh, dang! There I go with those silly rose-colored glasses again.  )