Bee decline could be down to chemical cocktail interfering with brains

[IDemo]

A cocktail of chemicals from pesticides could be damaging the brains of British bees, according to scientists about to embark on a study into why the populations of the insects have dropped so rapidly in recent decades. By affecting the way bees' brains work, the pesticides might be affecting the ability of bees to find food or communicate with others in their colonies.

Neuroscientists at Dundee University, Royal Holloway and University College London will investigate the hypothesis as part of a £10m research programme launched today aimed at finding ways to stop the decline in the numbers of bees and other insect pollinators in the UK.

Insects such as bees, moths and hoverflies pollinate around a third of the agricultural crops grown around the world. If all of the UK's insect pollinators were wiped out, the drop in crop production would cost the UK economy up to £440m a year, equivalent to around 13% of the UK's income from farming.

Pollinators are also crucial for the quality of fruits and vegetables. Perfectly shaped strawberries, for example, are created only if every single ovary has been pollinated by an insect. And the number of seeds in a pumpkin depends on the number of species of insects that have pollinated the plants. "If you've got 10 pollinators, you'll get more seeds in the pumpkin than you would have got if you've just got one pollinator," said Giles Budge of the Food and Environment Research Agency. "It is important to have that diversity in a pollinating population."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/22/chemicals-bees-decline-major-study

[Taverner]

1. Wasn't it partially caused by HFCS?

Seriously - I read somewhere that it short circuits the bees

[mike_c]

2. no one knows whether there's even an "it" yet and this is HORRIBLE science journalism....

The headline suggests that a combination of environmental chemicals or pesticides is responsible for honeybee decline when in fact that possibility is as yet an untested hypothesis. It's like if I said "I'm going to do an experiment to test the hypothesis that monkeys fly out of my ass whenever I fall down" and some science "journalist" prints "Gravity might cause monkeys to fly out of your ass!"

First, the general phenomenon is dubious. Monkeys don't actually fly out of my butt, so the hypothesis is baseless from the beginning. Likewise, there is little consensus among entomologists that honeybee decline is a real phenomenon, or if it is, that it differs from other periodic declines-- and recoveries-- that we've seen for many years, things with names like colony wasting disease and dwindle disease.

Second, the mere fact that a hypothesis is being tested should NEVER be taken to mean anything other than that someone wants to test it. It should certainly NOT be considered evidence of likelihood. Its a test to determine likelihood-- if I have regular prostate antigen tests, that does not imply that I have prostate cancer. Likewise, testing for pesticide effects is no evidence that pesticide effects are likely-- only that someone is curious about it, is eliminating possible causes systematically, or that previous knowledge about the matter is ambiguous and not useful for drawing conclusions.