[smallnamespace]

I'm not an academic researcher so I don't have the raw data that you want, but I think it's worth not missing the forest for the trees.

Bee populations have been demonstrably stressed for a very long time, and CCD and other more recent developments are yet another sign.

The need for beekeepers to aggressively split hives is a sign that things are going very badly for them, even if we manage to raise the number of colonies in the short term.

Note that there are plenty of other parts of our ecosystem that show signs of severe stress as well (e.g. amphibians, coral reefs, etc.); we may very well reach a tipping point where large swaths of various food chains catastrophically collapse.

[tptacek]

I'm sorry, but respectfully, you've provided neither forest nor trees. I'm not an academic researcher either, but I feel as if I'm one of the few people on this thread that has heard of a varroa mite, or knows apis mellifera's actual role in the North American ecosystem. All I did was look stuff up. Can't everyone else do the same thing?

The 2006 date cited for CCD isn't the government acknowledging CCD. It's the first published reports of CCD in commercial colonies. It's not a giant conspiracy.

It's also worth knowing that overwintering losses stabilized after 2006, and commercial populations hit record numbers afterwards.

Clearly, there are bee stressors other than "colony collapse disorder". But beepocolypse advocates use the term "CCD" as a cudgel in any discussion about stressors or population losses. No, can't do that.

I don't need perfect data. Any data will do.

[jly]

I appreciate your enthusiasm for this topic, but, respectfully, you are not an expert either and you're spreading a lot of incorrect information. It's clear you have little understanding other than what you can quickly google. Yes, we know about varroa. Many of us are beekeepers and have seen this firsthand and are plugged into local communities where we share data on hive populations and research.

Honeybee populations have not stabilized, although it is true that wintering losses have stabilized a lot in the last several years. Summer losses have been horrible in a worrying way, and we just don't understand why - this was unheard of in decades past. CCD specifically has been observed less in recent years but overall annual losses are not stabilizing and are far higher than economically acceptable. My data is from the USDA.

The overall message is that something (not all varroa) is still changing things now, and we don't quite understand it yet. Yes, the introduction of neonics also corresponds heavily to the worst of the varroa period and that should be taken into account. It doesn't mean varroa explains away every other problem.

The linked BBC article is only about non-honeybee species.

[smallnamespace]

I'm not sure who your complaint is addressed to, honestly, and I don't see what you would prefer people be doing differently.

It seems like data collection in the US has always been at the colony count + mortality level, which has obvious limitations, such as not looking at the colony health. I'd presume that people are looking at getting better information, but rolling that out will take a lot of time.

OTOH, there are lots of other signs that bees, other pollinators, and many other parts of our ecosystem are under enormous stress. I think we should rightfully be alarmed, not because of the bee's direct effect on us, but because it is also a relatively well-measured bellwether for the status of other natural services that other species provide.

Are you saying we don't have enough data to warrant taking any action, or are you just unhappy at how this is being presented in the media? Note that action also includes finding more data.

[tptacek]

I am objecting to arguing about honeybee population with people who believe that there is a large-scale endangered native apis mellifera population in the US, but can't cite sources backing that (surprising) assertion up.

Any actual statistic I find, I'm sure someone can come up with a Calvinball objection to. I wouldn't mind if those objections came with their own data, but they tend to take the form of "no data is available to support this argument, ergo it should instead be supportable from first-principles reasoning". And then you find out 6 comments into the thread that the assumed first principles include things like "there are gazillions of wild honeybees in the US and they're all dying due to neonicotinoids".