Talk:Colony collapse disorder

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 3 April 2019 and 7 June 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Itsphuong (article contribs). Peer reviewers: SnarkieGoblin. This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 August 2019 and 18 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Themarshallmills (article contribs).

Glyphosate

I posted a new section "Herbicide" under Possible Causes the other day. Here was my text:

As a herbicide glyphosate blocks a pathway used by plants and microbes, and doesn't target animals directly. However, animals also depend on symbiosis with certain beneficial bacteria. The Guardian [1] wrote that Roundup "damages the beneficial bacteria in the guts of honeybees and makes them more prone to deadly infections." They linked to the research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in October 2018, "Glyphosate perturbs the gut microbiota of honey bees": "The honey bee gut microbiota is dominated by eight bacterial species that promote weight gain and reduce pathogen susceptibility... We demonstrated that the ... microbiota species are decreased in bees exposed to glyphosate at concentrations documented in the environment. Glyphosate exposure of young workers increased mortality of bees subsequently exposed to the opportunistic pathogen Serratia marcescens."

This has now been deleted by Dyanega saying that the article from PNAS doesn't mention the words "Colony Collapse Disorder." But the article is about bees dying. Is there some other Wikipedia article about bees dying that you are suggesting this belongs at? Why would the article have to use specifically the CCD term? The article is very precise in stating its conclusions: that glyphosate increases the mortality of bees. It's not the job of these researchers necessarily to generalize that.

You say, "the authors do not link glyphosate exposure to CCD anywhere. There are other WP articles about honey bee health where the glyphosate data are pertinent."

I don't see a lot of articles about honey bee health. There is another discussion of CCD here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticide_toxicity_to_bees . "All substances listed are insecticides, except for 2,4-D, which is an herbicide" -

This seems like a suitable article. Can we post the glyphosate - bee death reference here? JPLeonard (talk) 05:10, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

References

Did you read the discussions on talk:glyphosate about this paper? If not then please do as it is equally applicable here. Pieces of primary research like this need to be treated carefully and there are very good reasons why we don't use news articles as secondary sources. We need to wait until other scientists have critically evaluated the research. SmartSE (talk) 09:48, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Yes I have been over there. They are posting research funded by Monsanto and forbidding any reference to the fact that it's funded by Monsanto.

So WP wants first a critical review by other scientists but they will decide which other scientists count. WP admins are the arbiters over science.

You don't think articles in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences are already peer reviewed?

You want to delete articles from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences because they are primary research or secondary research? Or maybe they are both primary and secondary according to some kind of amazing WP logic?

Primary evidence would be me posting that the bees have disappeared in our neighborhood after several neighbors sprayed weed killer, which is how I got onto this topic, with a post "Roundup Kills Bees, No Fruit on my Trees" on Nextdoor.com. Of course I didn't try to post that on WP since it's primary experience and not any controlled experiment. But that is my motivation for posting here. I'm not being paid by anybody.

WP have this lovely rule about assuming good faith, which of course is useful to maintain harmonious discussion. On the other hand it's not difficult to see how corruption could be a problem in some topics on WP. If you have an open source system where anybody can edit ANONYMOUSLY and at zero cost (with no expertise needed other than knowing how to apply WP policies), and the articles about multimillion dollar products have a very high value to producers -- is it not inevitable that there will be editorial damage control activities by corporate publicity budgets to protect their bottom line at very little expense? The return on investment is going to be enormous. Corporate public relations departments could be seen internally as remiss in their duties to shareholders if they did not attempt to influence their image on Wikipedia. One ought to expect it as rational profit-maximizing behavior.

WP has lots of rules and policies. What controls are in place to protect the objectivity of articles against corrupt practices? Can someone direct me to that discussion and that policy? -- JPLeonard (talk) 16:54, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Dyanega, you deleted my post by saying that the article from PNAS doesn't say anything about "Colony Collapse Disorder." Take another look. Under the section "Significance" in the PNAS article, the very first sentence says, "Increased mortality of honey bee colonies has been attributed to several factors." "Mortality of honey bee colonies" is essentially just another way of saying "Colony Collapse". CCD is being given as the significance and purpose of the research. So why would one shunt it over to some (non existent) generic article on bee health?-- JPLeonard (talk) 19:00, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

I would strongly suggest that you take a little time and read this article, especially - and most significantly - the section Colony_collapse_disorder#Signs_and_symptoms. CCD has an actual formal definition, including symptomology, and papers that talk about bee mortality IN GENERAL need to demonstrate explicit relevance to the article about CCD, such as the authors of a paper discussing how their data relate to CCD. Colony decline and CCD are not synonyms. What you are suggesting is what WP policy calls "original research", where you personally decided that honeybee death and CCD are synonyms, but WP policy prohibits editors from drawing their own conclusions and using that as a basis for edits. I don't think you would be surprised if you posted a paper discussing the causes of lung cancer in the WP article on ovarian cancer, and had the citation removed; this is no different. As for places that the glyphosate data might be relevant, try Bees and toxic chemicals. Dyanega (talk) 21:06, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Peer Reviews for Genetic and physio-pathological predictions

I thought this part was well written and had some interesting facts that contribute to the understanding of CCD. Maybe you could add more details about how they studied the poly(A)-RNA in the gut from the literature you cited. What are poly(A)-rRNA? Are they present in lower amounts in normal bees or not at all? I just think that the RNA part is interesting and I would like to learn more about their role in CCD. I would also define or explain what the "Malpighian tubule iridescence" is for a reader who is not familiar with the parts of the bee. SnarkieGoblin (talk) 21:17, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

I have added links to define a few jargons in this section including the Malpighian tubule iridescence, rRNA, and poly(A) tail which you suggested in your comment. Regarding how poly(A)-RNA was studied, protocol only listed dissection, RNA extraction, microarray analysis, qPCR, and statistical test. As suggested, I added qPCR and its link. For your suggestion about whether these transcripts are present in lower amounts in normal bees or not at all, the article states that due to bee samples being collected in different areas (West vs. East coasts), geography might introduce bias/ variation to the expression. However, they were able to conclude that the expressions of these 65 transcripts were either upregulated or downregulated depending on genes when comparing to the healthy bee's.Itsphuong (talk) 22:13, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Article too inclusive?

Colony Collapse Disorder refers exclusively to the majority of worker bees spontaneously disappearing. This article not only adequately covers this issue but also discusses most every issue and challenge that bees face. Should this article possibly be split into two separate ones? One exclusively on CCD, and the other on the overall "Major Threats to Bees"? These seem like two very important but not always overlapping issues(especially in 2019). Themarshallmills (talk • contribs) 19:52, 18 September 2019 (UTC) Themarshallmills (talk) 21:11, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

• That is not the definition of CCD. The original definition is extremely restrictive, and is discussed in the "Signs and Symptoms" section of the article. Virtually none of the literature after around 2009 or 2010 explicitly conforms to the original definition, and instead uses a much broader definition ("anything that causes a large sudden loss of workers"), and this has been a tremendous source of confusion and controversy. You can cause a colony to lose a major portion of its worker force by spraying areas with foragers with aerial pesticides at regular intervals, but that's not what the people who first named CCD had in mind. The problem is that there have been so many people using different and increasingly broader definitions of CCD that it has become impossible to tease apart which research is talking about which phenomena; the term is now a "catch-all" for multiple things with multiple causes, instead of a single thing. I don't see how anyone is going to be able to edit this article and avoid well-meaning editors adding back everything that gets removed. Dyanega (talk) 22:36, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

I've been meaning to give the article a good once over after solidifying the signs and symptoms because I did have at least some of the same concerns as Themarshallmills. We have articles on general bee health where some sources are more relevant that don't really apply here, but I don't know if I would say the literature is quite as jumbled as you portray on definition (and I say that knowing there are some heavily criticized articles on the CCD subject out there). I'd like to try to take a stab at combing through the article someday, but I might need to wait for a good blizzard or something to keep me inside to work on it. I've been slowly picking away at some draft text offline, so I'll just say someday. Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:52, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

fungicides section - idea to include

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8DjeaU8eMs Mushrooms, Mycology of Consciousness - Paul Stamets, EcoFarm Conference Keynote 2017

this guy seems to have some credentials as a scientist, so what he says might be of relevance. his point is basically that some fungi growing on decaying wood material contain stuff that is found in some studies to be beneficial for bees suffering from some bacterial and or viral conditions. which seems to ring the same bells as the idea of bees being indirectly harmed by the presence of fungicides (perhaps because the fungi are not found in their environment).

overall his speech covers much more and some of it may be ideological, but the part about bees seems to be worth consideration. i dont know if there are other sources for that though. 89.134.199.32 (talk) 11:31, 8 July 2020 (UTC).

Youtube isn't a WP:RS we can use, and Paul Stamets isn't really a credentialed expert in the subject (or an entomologist). He's more a marketer for mushroom products. If you find anything you want to include though, it really helps to have peer-reviewed scientific literature since this is a subject that often needs specialized sources that deal with identification, potential causes, and potential solutions. There's a lot of "silver bullet" claims out there in general media, so it can be a tough subject to wade through. Kingofaces43 (talk) 15:03, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Off-topic text at Pollinator decline

This text is very specifically about the subject of this article, not that one. This article is already too long, so I wouldn't add it, but here it is: Leo Breman (talk) 17:00, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Artificial water bodies, open urban areas, large industrial facilities including heavy industry, railways and associated installations, buildings and installations with a sociocultural purpose, camping, sports, playgrounds, golf courts, oilseed crops other than oilseed rape such as sunflower or linseed, some spring cereals and former forest clearcuts or windthrows were frequently associated with high honey bee colony losses.

idem, I'll get rid of the entire section over there, put up a 'see also' thing. If people want to read about CCD, they can do that here, not in an article about something else. Leo Breman (talk) 17:18, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Colony collapse disorder has in one theory been attributed to monoculture. The agricultural practice of monoculture may lead to malnourishment, because a single plant species may not meet the nutrient requirements.

Some studies have linked neonicotinoid pesticide exposure to bee health decline. Pesticides interfere with honey bee brains, affecting their ability to navigate. Pesticides prevent bumble bees from collecting enough food to produce new queens.

...And more: Leo Breman (talk) 17:21, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

SmartBees is a European research project of 16 entities (universities, research institutions and companies) funded by the EU, headquartered in Berlin. Its goal is to elicit causes of resistance to CCD, develop breeding to increase CCD resistance and to counteract the replacement of many native European bees with only two specific races.

CoLOSS (Prevention of honey bee COlony LOSSes) is an international, nonprofit association headquartered in Bern, Switzerland, to "improve the well-being of bees at a global level", composed of researchers, veterinarians, agriculture extension specialists, and students from 69 countries. Their three core projects are standardization of methods for studying the honey bee, colony loss monitoring, and bridging research and practice.