[Loic]

You can download the study[0].

If you look at the model in equations (2), (3) and (4), you can see that they force fit the decrease in population of the bees on the neonicotinoid exposure. Because the decrease of the population in this model is only linked to pesticides, you need a very careful analysis of the confidence intervals and the quality of the fit or you can fall into the spurious correlation trap[1].

Also "The authors acknowledge that their study finds an association and doesn't prove a cause and effect link between the use of neonicotinoids and the decline of bee populations.". Which is good, it means they know the limits of this study.

The other case is that around 2005, we had a shift to produce more biofuels by doing more extensive single crop farming. This also had devastating effect on the biodiversity needed for the bees, insects and the birds.

The last point is, why bees are going very well in Australia even so Australia is the most extensive user of neonics?

The issues with bees is really a hard problem, most likely a combination of many factors, so I do not want people to jump on a single factor (the neonics) then claim victory and move to other things even so neonics are most likely not the main factor.

This year was bad for our bees, 8 hives, just 1kg honey per hive...

[0]: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160816/ncomms12459/pdf/nco... [1]: http://tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=1597

[madaxe_again]

A neighbour who used to keep hives here (France) until a few months ago has had them repeatedly wiped out by fungal infections, as the combination of hot and damp then suddenly cold then hot again isn't normal for this part of the world. They had four false springs here this year - crops suffered too, and foresters are having a heyday taking dead trees out of the forest.

Like you say, pesticide use alone is unlikely to be the issue - hell DDT and friends are far less friendly to insects, and we're used far longer - so it's likely a whole host of anthrogenic factors which are wiping out the bees, much like many other species.

We're pretty much the worst thing since the cambrian-ordovician extinction event for biodiversity.

[pvaldes]

Not to mention the expansion of the killer bee asiatic vesp in France.

[madaxe_again]

Yup - this sort of thing has happened before (parasites spreading outside of their natural range - i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylloxera), but as far as I'm aware this is the first time we've seen it happening due to climatic shifts, rather than direct human involvement (gee, let's import cane toads to get rid of those pesky beetles).

No amount of biosecurity can defeat threats that travel on the wind.

[pvaldes]

s/vesp/wasp/

[will_brown]

>The last point is, why bees are going very well in Australia even so Australia is the most extensive user of neonics?

Well we know since the introduction of Neonicotinoids in the US the honey bee colonies numbers are down from about 3.5M to just above 2.5M. I do believe the good news is that the largest drop was from 90-96 (3.5M to 2.5M) and then a steady decline until 2012 (~2.35M) and since then a steady uptick back to just above 2.5M.

My understanding is that CCD is not a disease at all, but more likely is a symptom, and that symptom is associated with neonicotinoids as concluded by this study and others before it.

I can't really speak to Australia, or other countries where the total numbers might be up since the introduction. However, lets acknowledge bees, especially wild bees, are difficult to inventory. Looking at the US data, we know managed colony decline started simultaneously with the introduction of Neonicotinoids and the largest decline was in the first 6 years followed by slow steady decline for 12 more years and then the more recent slow but steady increase since 2012.

Here in the US we have thousands of honey bee species, we really don't even bother identifying/naming them all, and there are about 5x the number of species globally. It really isn't far fetched to conclude certain species were susceptible to effects of Neonicotinoids and others are resistant, such is a story we see in nature regularly. Everyone's favorite example is the Panama Disease[1] that wiped out the dominate commercial banana on a global scale, leading to the resistant banana species we see in the store today, and now of course new strains of the Panama Disease are threatening the modern commercial bananas (which some experts guess will be extinct in 5 years).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease