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This is a classic Obama Chicago politics. We are on the verge of the biggest agricultural meltdown since the dust bowl and he's been trying to blame this on mites to help out his donors at Brayer
http://www.vice.com/read/looks-like...ut-whats-killing-the-bees?utm_source=vicefbus
http://www.vice.com/read/looks-like...ut-whats-killing-the-bees?utm_source=vicefbus
Then on May 9, the results of a major experiment from Chengshen Lu of the Harvard School of Public Health followed up on previous studies into whether neonicotinoid pesticides are the culprit. His report showed that they probably are. And he means it this time.
Lu's previous study in 2012 had suggested that the bees were merely being injured by the pesticides during nice weather, and then dying only months later from the long term effects of their condition, perhaps exacerbated by those pesky varroa mites.
But the new findings suggest that the pesticides are flipping on some other biological mechanism that's killing them, seemingly without the help of mites. "We demonstrated again in this study that neonicotinoids are highly likely to be responsible for triggering CCD in honey bee hives that were healthy prior to the arrival of winter," the report said. It has an air of certainty, and maybe that's what's made it so sensational.
To its credit, the USDA website features a report acknowledging the possibility of blaming neonicotinoids, but the pesticides are mentioned only below the section on varroa mites. I called them to find out how they were responding to Lu's study, and they refused to comment on short notice. The person I spoke to hadn't read the report.