[tptacek]

The introduction of neonicotinoids corresponds with an increase in the number of active hives, to record numbers in some areas (like Canada).

The number of honeybee colonies in the US (where honeybees are livestock, not an indigenous species) is up since the announcement of CCD in 2006. Colonies are down since around 1990, when wild honeybees were wiped out by the varroa mite --- which mites remain the biggest stressor of honeybee colonies in the US.

[unclebucknasty]

Are you saying that neonicotinoids are causing an increase in active hive numbers?

I'm guessing that's not your assertion. But, of course, the argument you appear to be making is just as invalid.

[levbrie]

I believe the assertion is that in order to maintain the bee population at the level necessary to meet demands on agriculture given the extraordinary rise in the death rate of both individual bees and entire colonies, the beekeeping industry has had to import far more colonies per year.

[tptacek]

That doesn't make sense. Again: active colonies, not the number imported. Literally: there are more live bees in the US post-neonicotinoid.

[hristov]

If you have signed a pollination contract to provide 100 beehives for a commercial orchard and your colonies keep dying then in order to be sure you can perform your contract and not incur damages, you will make sure you have more than 100 beehives in order to allow for colony collapse.

Similarly if you are making honey. If you have the right to make honey over an area that will support 100 beehives but you know that 20 of them are going to die, ten you will put in 120 beehives.

Commercial beekeepers know how to create new colonies by artificially triggering the split/swarming process. Thus, the logical response of commercial beekeepers to the colony collapse disorder is to keep extra colonies around. It makes complete sense.

Unfortunately, I doubt a similar adaptation is happening in the wild. We are losing wild pollinators and that may have all kinds of negative effects on the ecosystem.

[tptacek]

Which wild pollinators are we losing?

[smallnamespace]

Wild bees, for one.

[jly]

I don't think you read the linked article. It deals with only wild bee species and their decline.

[cmrdporcupine]

Active colonies != total bee population. If the mortality rate is high, then you need more colonies with reproducing bees in them to maintain the population at a certain level.

[tptacek]

Can you please cite the source that shows total bee population declining as number of active colonies increases?

[smallnamespace]

https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43191.pdf

Page 10

“Long-term population trends for the honey bee, the most important managed pollinator, are demonstrably downward.”

[tptacek]

No, I'm suggesting there may be no causal link at all.

[unclebucknasty]

But your argument essentially posits that there is a link in the other direction.

That is, since bee populations are on the rise, neonics are not harmful to them.

You could just as easily draw the conclusion that neonics are helping bees.

Neither conclusion is valid.