Quote Originally Posted by ka4dpo View Post
I have noticed that last few years that there are no honey bees around anywhere. It's kind of spooky that they seem to be gone and we don't know why. There are lot's of theories, like pesticides but hell, we have been using pesticides since the 1930's and I know DDT and Diazanon were a lot worse than what is used today. The disappearance really started to become noticeable around 2003 when my wife and I both noticed the flowers in our deck planters that had always been covered with bees seemed to be almost deserted.
The problem has continued to grow and this year I have not seen one single bee. So unless commercial bee keepers can maintain healthy hives we will lose our food supply. This is really serious and no one seems to have an answer.

I found this article that sounds like a smoking gun but then goes on to point out a lot of maybe's, and ifs. Evidently feeding east coast bee pollen to west coast bees makes them sick. Whoop de doo. Like that's going to happen in nature. Then they go back to the pesticide issue. I'm the first one to say that I don't like pesticides but the truth is that farmers use less today than years ago and by law they are not as broad spectrum or as potent. So what is really killing the bees?
Many scientists, i.e.,entomologists feel that it is a combinations of parasitic infection, i.e. mites and perhaps a virus. A lot of radicals are claiming is glyphosate pesticides but scientific research doesn't bear that out.