| >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 |