Updated/Corrected below
The cause of the mysterious deaths of large numbers of honey bees across the United States that began in 2006 has apparently been discovered.
Scientists from the Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center and the University of California at San Francisco identified both a virus and a parasite that are associated with the massive decline in the honey bee population.
See “Scientists Identify Pathogens That May Be Causing Global Honey-Bee Deaths,” Science Daily, April 26 (thanks to CB).
Update: As a commenter noted, this is old news. The Science Daily story dates from April 2007!
Additional background on the issue is available in “Recent Honey Bee Colony Declines” (pdf), Congressional Research Service, updated August 14, 2007.
January saw us watching whether the government would fund science. February has been about how that funding will be distributed, regulated, and contested.
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Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
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