It’s as if someone has been telling a tale that there’s been some kind of 50-50 conflict over the past 80+ years…

I think there’s an element of media click bait and finger pointing to funding cuts to sell an otherwise mediocre story.

Something I picked up on at uni re commercial beeking practices is that the cell size is dictated by the farmer by providing a framework for the bees to build around and lay their eggs in (as well as store honey). This cell size is larger than the natural mean size. This results in larger adults that can then forage more and produce more honey. Great! Except that the bees spend longer as larvae and if there’s varroa mite present in the hive the adults come out weakened as the mites feed on the larvae for longer.

For me colony collapse disorder hinges around this, but I haven’t read about this subject in some years so don’t know if it has been discounted.

Very much so an economic problem, commercial honey production is a very intensive type of animal husbandry.

It should be noted that honey bees are not native to the US so are a wholly farmed animal.

The method of fully replacing colonies is one of the issues in commercial beekeeping as the genetic diversity is very poor because there aren’t enough different suppliers.

Edit - just seen someone else has said much the same

At least a decade. I did a small module at uni about a decade ago on colony collapse disorder and varroa mites were a prime culprit, alongside various viruses. Plenty of research already done then, but no concrete answer at that time.

This is hardly news per se, rather a typical attention grabbing media headline saying that they came to a conclusion what the cause was last year after 6 months, whilst blaming cutbacks.