Talk:Colony collapse disorder

Disputed cause of decline

I've pulled the following sentence from the second paragraph of the article because it gives the false impression that the entire decline from 1971 to the present has been a result of this mysterious CCD. That is plainly untrue. The vast majority of the decline happened for known reasons including the urbanization of former farmland, pesticide kills, aging out of the beekeepers and mostly the one-two punch of tracheal and varroa mites in the 80s and 90s.

The second part of the sentence asserts that the rate of attrition spiked up in 2006. And in fairness, the U Penn article does make that claim. However, that assertion has not yet been confirmed. Even on BEE-L (a moderated discussion of bee researchers), it is treated as anecdotal evidence only. A working group has been developed to attempt to confirm the claim but so far they are still sorting out the definition of a colony collapse. It is premature to present this in an encyclopedia article in a way that a reader would believe that it was confirmed fact. Rossami (talk) 02:13, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

From 1971 to 2006 approximately one half of the U.S. honey-bee colonies have vanished, but the rate of attrition reached new proportions in the year 2006, which were alarming to many farmers and honey-bee scientists.