scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have identified a witch’s brew of pesticides and fungicides contaminating pollen that bees collect to feed their hives. When researchers collected pollen from hives on the east coast pollinating cranberry, watermelon and other crops and fed it to healthy bees, those bees showed a significant decline in their ability to resist infection by a parasite called Nosema ceranae. 

Most disturbing, bees that ate pollen contaminated with fungicides were three times as likely to be infected by the parasite. Widely used, fungicides had been thought to be harmless for bees as they’re designed to kill fungus, not insects, on crops like apples.

Time to invent robot bees?

whoa:"California supplies 80% of the world’s almonds, a market worth $4 billion."

Is the whoa the percent or the size of the market?

it's not clear both?  cuz both stats are whoa, no?  esp for California.  (I know we are a rich agricultural source, but still)

and i'm sure, nanobots would be great, in terms of functional pollenation/transfer, but there has to be something bio-chemically going on that is unique to the Bees... and until that is isolated and integrated, bots are just bots.