French Beekeepers Worried - Winter Mortality Shoots Up To 60% After Reprieve - AFP

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The banning in 2005 of two potent pesticides used on sunflower and corn crops, suspected of killing off the bees, appeared to have stemmed the massive die offs and reversed nearly a decade of declining honey harvests.

But end-of-winter mortality rates have shot up once again, with up to 60 percent of some hives missing in action. "We don't know what is going on, and we are calling everything into question," said beekeeper and honey producer Franck Aletru, whose 2200 hives are in the Vendee region in western France.

Worries have extended across Europe, where 30 percent of bee species are threatened by an as yet poorly understood combination of factors, said Bernard Vaissiere of France's national agricultural research institute.

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The most recent threat to bees is the Asian hornet, Vespa velutina, which probably arrived in southern France in a shipment of pottery sometime in 2004. The hornet, which preys on honey bees, has already spread through much of southwestern France, and could eventually colonise much of the Mediterranean coastal area, experts say.

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http://www.terradaily.com/reports/French_beekeepers_abuzz_with_worry_over_dying_bees_999.html

haven't heard much about the bees lately. Did you see the Nature special back in the fall, Silence of the Bees? I still have it on my TiVO. It made me really sad. German is all in a tizzy over it too. As they should be. (no pun intended)