You're totally right. #5 isn't a precise enough statement. Thus the natural conclusion is that corn syrup across the board is simply prone to being a little bit

You're totally right. #5 isn't a precise enough statement. Thus the natural conclusion is that corn syrup across the board is simply prone to being a little bit dirty in general. Enough that the bees notice the poison which they are acutely affected by. What I'm driving at, is that the bee keepers are motivated to buy the cheapest corn syrup they can find. Cheaper might imply lower quality, expired, or whatever. The point is, the bee keepers probably aren't performing a taste test, and wouldn't notice the difference by eating it themselves anyway. Then it just comes down to which growers actually use these new pesticides on corn? And then which corn syrup companies source their corn from these farmers? Anyway, here's a research paper that purports some evidence: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/chensheng-lu/files/2012/10/in-situ-replication-of-honey-bee-colony-collapse-disorder.pdf http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/chensheng-lu/files/2012/10/in-si... Interestingly enough, it looks like I got my bee biology, and bee keeping practices completely wrong in #4. I completely misunderstood the whole honey production/cold winter/hive temperature principle, and the honey harvest/corn syrup substitution thing. It's outlined in the paper. The hive temperature thing plays a key role, in that the bees feed on the corn syrup while it's cold, during periods when they would normally feed on honey, and stay inside to keep the hive warm. The bees that are intoxicated abandon the hive, and fail to assist in providing the elevated temperature of the hive, leading to the hive's failure. There's probably more to it than that, but like I said, that's my amateur understanding. I am not a bee keeper.