“60 Minutes” has profiled the dying bees.  The phenomena, called Colony Collapse Disorder, is still a mystery.  Thousands of bees leave the hive never to return leaving behind a box full of honey.  No dead bees are ever found.

Much of the research has not materialized because of a lack of funding even though bees are vital for agriculture.  “If there ain’t no bees, there ain’t no food,” says Rep.  Alcee Hastings of Florida.

Crops depend on insects for agricultural pollination, adding more than $15 billion in value to about 130 crops, especially fruits, berries, nuts and vegetables, according to the USDA.

So two Floridians, Florida beekeeper Dave Hackenberg, of Dade City, FL and Lewisberg, PA, and Dave Mendes are on their way to Paris to speak before an international beekeeping conference on the syndrome.

Hackenberg first called the Florida Department of Agriculture two years ago after he noticed bees would leave the hive and never return.

Hackenberg told 60 Minutes in the January broadcast, “I mean, I literally got down and crawled around. I mean, seriously, I got down on my hands and knees and crawled around. And there’s no dead bees. There are no dead bees anywhere. I mean, you can’t find any bees. They flew off someplace,” he recalls.

It’s something he says he’d never seen before. Bees have a sophisticated navigation system using sun and landmarks to return them home, even when they travel up to two miles looking for food.

It may be they know more in France than we do in the U.S. There they have banned the use of a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids. France, Italy, Germany and Slovenia found that the nicotine-based substance impaired the bees’ navigational and foraging abilities.

Click to continue reading “Nicotine-Based Pesticide May Explain Bee Colony Collapse”