Dying Bees in the US

[American Patriot]

Yep.

Lemme see. Gas is 3 bucks a gallon here as of today.

Fruits and vegetables that are pollinated by bees will be fwe and far between, and expensive.

Economy is gonna tank in a year or so if this keeps up.

Chinese wll attack us.

Al Qaeda will nuke us.

We're gonna have to fend off a Mexican/South/Central American invasion.... simply because they will all come here.

The shit might hit the fan in a different way than I expected

[American Patriot]

Virus May Be Cause of US Honeybee Deaths
Associated Press ^ | September 06, 2007 | ANDREW BRIDGES

WASHINGTON - Scientific sleuths have a new suspect for what's been killing billions of honeybees: a virus previously unknown in the United States.

The scientists report using a novel genetic technique and old-fashioned statistics to identify Israeli acute paralysis virus as the latest potential culprit in the widespread deaths of worker bees, a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder.

Next up are attempts to infect honeybees with the newfound virus to see if it's indeed a killer.

"At least we have a lead now we can begin to follow. We can use it as a marker and we can use it to investigate whether it does in fact cause disease," said Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, a Columbia University epidemiologist and co-author of the study. Details appear this week in Science Express, the online edition of the journal Science.

Experts stressed that parasitic mites, pesticides and poor nutrition all remain in the lineup of suspects, as does the stress of travel. Beekeepers shuffle bees around the nation throughout the year so they can pollinate crops as they come into bloom. The newfound virus may prove to have added nothing more than insult to the injuries bees already suffer, said several experts unconnected to the study.

"This may be a piece or a couple of pieces of the puzzle, but I certainly don't think it is the whole thing," said Jerry Hayes, chief of the apiary section of the Florida department of agriculture.

Still, surveys of honey bees from decimated colonies turned up traces of the virus nearly every time; bees untouched by the phenomenon were virtually free of it. That means finding the virus should be a red flag that a hive is at risk and merits being quarantined, scientists said.

"The authors themselves recognize it's not a slam dunk, it's correlative. But it's certainly more than a smoking gun - more like a smoking arsenal. It's very compelling," said May Berenbaum, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign entomologist.

The mysterious deaths have struck between 50 percent and 90 percent of commercial honeybee hives in the United States, sowing fears about the effects on the more than 90 crops that rely on bees to pollinate them.

Scientists previously have found blasting emptied hives with radiation apparently kills whatever infectious agent that causes the disorder. That has focused their attention on viruses, bacteria and the like, to the exclusion of other noninfectious phenomena, like cell phone interference, also proposed as culprits.

The earliest reports of colony collapse disorder date to 2004, the same year the virus was first described by Israeli virologist Ilan Sela. That also was the year U.S. beekeepers began importing bees from Australia - a practice that had been banned by the Honeybee Act of 1922.

Now, Australia is being eyed as a potential source of the virus. That could turn out to be an ironic twist, since the Australian imports were meant to bolster, not further damage, U.S. bee populations devastated by another scourge, the varroa mite. Meanwhile, officials are discussing reinstating the ban, said the Agriculture Department's top bee scientist, Jeff Pettis.

In the new study, a team of nearly two dozen scientists used the genetic sequencing equivalent of a dragnet to round up suspects. The technique, called pyrosequencing, generates a list of the full repertoire of genes in bees they examined from U.S. hives and directly imported from Australia.

By separating out the bee genes and then comparing the leftover genetic sequences to others detailed in public databases - a move akin to running a suspect's fingerprints - the scientists could pick out every fungus, bacterium, parasite and virus harbored by the bees.

They then looked for each pathogen in bees collected from normal hives and others affected by colony collapse disorder. That statistical comparison showed Israeli acute paralysis virus was strongly associated with the disorder.

The technique is a model for investigating outbreaks of infectious diseases in people too, since it can rapidly pinpoint likely causes, Lipkin said.

Sela, a Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor, said he will collaborate with U.S. scientists on studying how and why the bee virus may be fatal. Preliminary research shows some bees can integrate genetic information from the virus into their own genomes, apparently giving them resistance, Sela said in a telephone interview. Sela added that about 30 percent of the bees he's examined had done so.

Those naturally "transgenic" honeybees theoretically could be propagated to create stocks of virus-resistant insects, Lipkin said.

[samizdat]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100324/ap_on_sc/us_food_and_farm_disappearing_bees


Bees in more trouble than ever after bad winter

• Buzz up!527 votes
• Send
  
  • Email
  • IM
  
  
  
• Share
  
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • Fark
  • Newsvine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks
  
  
  
• Print

AP – In this photo taken Monday, March 22, 2010, Zac Browning, owner of Browning's Honey Co. Inc, shows a …



By GARANCE BURKE and SETH BORENSTEIN, Associated Press Writers Garance Burke And Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Writers – Wed Mar 24, 8:05 am ET
MERCED, Calif. – The mysterious 4-year-old crisis of disappearing honeybees is deepening. A quick federal survey indicates a heavy bee die-off this winter, while a new study shows honeybees' pollen and hives laden with pesticides.
Two federal agencies along with regulators in California and Canada are scrambling to figure out what is behind this relatively recent threat, ordering new research on pesticides used in fields and orchards. Federal courts are even weighing in this month, ruling that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency overlooked a requirement when allowing a pesticide on the market.
And on Thursday, chemists at a scientific conference in San Francisco will tackle the issue of chemicals and dwindling bees in response to the new study.
Scientists are concerned because of the vital role bees play in our food supply. About one-third of the human diet is from plants that require pollination from honeybees, which means everything from apples to zucchini.
Bees have been declining over decades from various causes. But in 2006 a new concern, "colony collapse disorder," was blamed for large, inexplicable die-offs. The disorder, which causes adult bees to abandon their hives and fly off to die, is likely a combination of many causes, including parasites, viruses, bacteria, poor nutrition and pesticides, experts say.
"It's just gotten so much worse in the past four years," said Jeff Pettis, research leader of the Department of Agriculture's Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Md. "We're just not keeping bees alive that long."
This year bees seem to be in bigger trouble than normal after a bad winter, according to an informal survey of commercial bee brokers cited in an internal USDA document. One-third of those surveyed had trouble finding enough hives to pollinate California's blossoming nut trees, which grow the bulk of the world's almonds. A more formal survey will be done in April.
"There were a lot of beekeepers scrambling to fill their orders and that implies that mortality was high," said Penn State University bee researcher Dennis vanEngelsdorp, who worked on the USDA snapshot survey.
Beekeeper Zac Browning shipped his hives from Idaho to California to pollinate the blossoming almond groves. He got a shock when he checked on them, finding hundreds of the hives empty, abandoned by the worker bees.
The losses were extreme, three times higher than the previous year.
"It wasn't one load or two loads, but every load we were pulling out that was dead. It got extremely depressing to see a third of my livestock gone," Browning said, standing next to stacks of dead bee colonies in a clearing near Merced, at the center of California's fertile San Joaquin Valley.
Among all the stresses to bee health, it's the pesticides that are attracting scrutiny now. A study published Friday in the scientific journal PLOS (Public Library of Science) One found about three out of five pollen and wax samples from 23 states had at least one systemic pesticide — a chemical designed to spread throughout all parts of a plant.
EPA officials said they are aware of problems involving pesticides and bees and the agency is "very seriously concerned."
The pesticides are not a risk to honey sold to consumers, federal officials say. And the pollen that people eat is probably safe because it is usually from remote areas where pesticides are not used, Pettis said. But the PLOS study found 121 different types of pesticides within 887 wax, pollen, bee and hive samples.
"The pollen is not in good shape," said Chris Mullin of Penn State University, lead author.
None of the chemicals themselves were at high enough levels to kill bees, he said, but it was the combination and variety of them that is worrisome.
University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum called the results "kind of alarming."

Despite EPA assurances, environmental groups don't think the EPA is doing enough on pesticides.
Bayer Crop Science started petitioning the agency to approve a new pesticide for sale in 2006. After reviewing the company's studies of its effects on bees, the EPA gave Bayer conditional approval to sell the product two years later, but said it had to carry a label warning that it was "potentially toxic to honey bee larvae through residues in pollen and nectar."
The Natural Resources Defense Council sued, saying the agency failed to give the public timely notice for the new pesticide application. In December, a federal judge in New York agreed, banning the pesticide's sale and earlier this month, two more judges upheld the ruling.
"This court decision is obviously very painful for us right now, and for growers who don't have access to that product," said Jack Boyne, an entomologist and spokesman for Bayer Crop Science. "This product quite frankly is not harmful to honeybees."
Boyne said the pesticide was sold for only about a year and most sales were in California, Arizona and Florida. The product is intended to disrupt the mating patterns of insects that threaten citrus, lettuce and grapes, he said.
Berenbaum's research shows pesticides are not the only problem. She said multiple viruses also are attacking the bees, making it tough to propose a single solution.
"Things are still heading downhill," she said.
For Browning, one of the country's largest commercial beekeepers, the latest woes have led to a $1 million loss this year.
"It's just hard to get past this," he said, watching as workers cleaned honey from empty wooden hives Monday. "I'm going to rebuild, but I have plenty of friends who aren't going to make it." ___

[American Patriot]

Bump to the top.

This problem has NOT gone away. Approximately 1/3rd of all the human food in the world requires cross pollination by bees. Bees have CONTINUED to die off for the last four years.

Bee colonies are becoming sparser as time goes on.

Scientists are stating that it has to do with a "spike" in pesticides and other chemicals (really? with all of them banned????)....

[MTStringer]

Not that I personally know shit about beekeeping, but I have been trying to keep up with this. I have friends and neighbors who keep bees here where we've been living since 1994. When we moved in we had to make sure the kids didn't go out barefooted, there were so many bees both tame and feral. Now I get excited whenever I see a single bee. We're 30 some odd miles west of Louisville in a rural setting, and frankly it's not just honeybees. Wasps are plentiful, as are orchard bees, but hardly any sweat bees anymore, either. My own observation. I believe cellular transmissions are scrambling the bees navigational abilities, like the sonar has affected sea life. We didn't notice much of a diminishment of bee populations here til a cell tower sprouted up about a mile away.

[American Patriot]

No cell phones are not the cause.

[MTStringer]

Rick, I'm not suggesting cell phones are the only cause, just that they represent a tipping point, after mites, disease,and especially new pesticides do their worst. My reasoning is local and personal. Within the past decade we've collected a few cell towers here in the boonies, and the rise of the towers seems to coincide with diminishing numbers of wild bees hereabouts. You seem to speak with conviction about this, I'd appreciate it if you would elaborate.

[American Patriot]

Rick, I'm not suggesting cell phones are the only cause, just that they represent a tipping point, after mites, disease,and especially new pesticides do their worst. My reasoning is local and personal. Within the past decade we've collected a few cell towers here in the boonies, and the rise of the towers seems to coincide with diminishing numbers of wild bees hereabouts. You seem to speak with conviction about this, I'd appreciate it if you would elaborate.

Cell phones are not the cause, nor are cellular phone towers. They are too far between and the radio signals are not dangerous to life.

If that were the case then bees would have started dying long before cellphones. The 800-900 mhz frequencies were used for other things before they were used for cell phones.

Every so often you will see some nonsense in the media about how "High Tension lines are causing cancer" or "High tension lines are causing mutated creatures" etc.

Basically this has been one of those urban legends that has grown from 60 cycle AC power to radio waves.

The fact is that NONE of the electromagnetic spectrum is ionizing radiation, and therefore does not cause tissue damage.

RF CAN cause HEATING damage (as in the microwave for example) and you don't want to be grabbing antennas and so forth.

I will admit we really don't know precisely how bees' navigational system works, but I have plenty of doubt that their systems are using internally generated radio frequencies as radar or communications systems (thus being interfered with via external RF radiation).

There's simply NO EVIDENCE that RF messes with migratory birds or other creatures, or bees.

Period.

[American Patriot]

Decided to move this thread over to Science and Technology.

It's real, no longer an unconfirmed thing.

It's not terrorism, as far as I can determine.

It's on-going and related to something natural.

[vector7]

Hints of the Black Horse of Revelation


How short is time?

Rev6:5 And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. 6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.

He's riding our way, be watching...be ready

Ice cream crisis as bees buzz off

The collapse of US honeybee colonies this year is set to devastate America's multibillion dollar agriculture and food industries.

Last year about 750,000 of the 2.5m hives in the US were wiped out in mysterious circumstances, and already this year the American Beekeeping Federation says there is evidence from its members that losses will be even greater this year.

For the first time individual businesses have stepped forward to give money to try to speed up the process of finding out, first of all, what causes colony collapse disease (CCD) and then eradicating it.

Häagen-Dazs, the ice cream making subsidiary of General Mills, gave a total of $250,000 (£127,000) to two university research teams and Burt's Bees, the personal care products maker, made a undisclosed grant to create the Honeybee Health Improvement Project, a research task force.

Burt's Bees also launched a public service announcement to run in cinemas showing Bee Movie. In the announcement co-founder Burt Shavitz talked about the important role bees play in agriculture.

He then urged audiences to visit the company's website (www.burtsbees.com ) to sign up to receive a free packet of wildflower seeds to help create a bee-friendly environment.

Honeybees are said to be critical to the production of $15bn worth of crops in the US and Häagen-Dazs says around 25 of its 60 flavours depend on fruits and nuts pollinated by bees.

The ice cream maker is also aiming to raise consumer awareness about CCD by launching a new flavour this spring called Vanilla Honey Bee.

Flying off

Diana Cox-Foster, professor of entomology at Pennsylvania State University College of Agricultural Sciences, which received $150,000 from Häagen-Dazs, believes researchers have identified a major cause of CCD.

Her team has recently given the mite-transmitted Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) to healthy bee colonies and has seen rapid die-off??. As it is winter those tests took place in greenhouses so the researchers are waiting for the weather to improve to verify the results with bees in their normal environments.

The mysterious and unique aspect of CCD is that the bees are not being found dead near their colonies. They are flying off; just abandoning their life's work, leaving behind the queen and a few younger bees.

Professor Cox-Foster believes that there are other factors together with IAPV are the cause of CCD, such as other viruses, the use of chemicals near colonies and whether the bees are receiving enough nutrition.

To beekeepers pesticides are definitely part of the problem, says Troy Fore, executive director of the American Beekeeping Federation. "A lot of beekeepers blame neonicotinoid insecticides. These are safer for humans and other mammals but they affect the neurological systems of bees. They don't kill the bees outright but they cause to act in ways different to the norm."

The beekeepers believe these insecticides, which in fact have been partially banned in France, weaken the immune system of the bees thereby allowing viruses such as IAPV to strike.

Beekeepers that have their hives in the forest or grasslands and not near cultivated crops are doing well, so there is anecdotal evidence that the pesticides and insecticides are part of the problem, said Fore.

Australia on the attack

But not everyone agrees that IAPV is a cause of CCD. Australian government scientists miffed that the Penn State team suggested in a paper published in Science that IAPV arrived in the US in imports of live bees from Australia pointed out in a follow-up letter that there were several CCD colonies free of IAPV and the "shivering phenotype", and the death of bees close to the hive associated with IAPV in Israel.

The assertion that IAPV came from Australian bees was also refuted by the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, which said that IAPV was found in the country back in 2002, two years before the importation of Australian bees was instituted to replenish colonies.

The Australians, which see their $5m a year live bee exporting industry endangered by such allegations, have demanded that Penn State withdraw its conclusions. They also point out that neither CCD nor large-scale, unexplained mortality events have occurred in the Australian bee industry.

The first description of IAPV came from Israel in 2002 and since then there have been die-outs of bees across the globe, some definitely attributable to the virus.

British beekeepers too are worried that CCD may come to these shores and they have called on the government to back a five-year, £8m research programme designed to save the insect.

Back in America all eyes are nowadays on California's almond trees, which represent a $2.5bn industry. The pink and white blossoms have started to appear and the concern is whether there are the tens of thousands bees needed to pollinate the crop.

"The almonds are in bloom right now in California and we are hearing there are some significant die-offs. It's worrisome," said professor Cox-Foster.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...b/25/useconomy

Posted by Brother D at 7:35 AM

[MTStringer]

Whatever the source, it seems to have hit home here. This year has been, for most of our blooming plants, the heaviest bloomset since we moved here in '93. The locusts were so thick as to be sickening, I thought I was going to have to take 2 of our cats to the vet their allergy symptoms were so bad, and I've never noticed any such reaction before from any of them. The blackberry and honeysuckle are on now and extremely thick as well. Cherries, peaches, pears,mulberries, roses all heavy blooms this year. And yet, I have not seen a single honey bee this year. Kind of spooky, to tell the truth

[American Patriot]

Been seeing bees here.

But, the problem is, things this year not pollinated won't germinate for next year.

[Toad]

I've only seen hornets and bumble bees so far.

[American Patriot]

There was an accident on the freeway in some state I think yesterday, caused by a chain reaction event.

The truck that was at the center of attention held hundreds of bee hives.

What a mess it looked like on television.

[American Patriot]

Pesticides linked to honeybee decline

The first study conducted in a natural environment has shown that systemic pesticides damage bees' ability to navigate

• Damian Carrington
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 March 2012 14.00 EDT

A honeybee pollinates a flower in a citrus grove just coming into blossom. Photograph: David Silverman/Getty Images



Common crop pesticides have been shown for the first time to seriously harm bees by damaging their renowned ability to navigate home.


The new research strongly links the pesticides to the serious decline in honey bee numbers in the US and UK – a drop of around 50% in the last 25 years. The losses pose a threat to food supplies as bees pollinate a third of the food we eat such as tomatoes, beans, apples and strawberries.


Scientists found that bees consuming one pesticide suffered an 85% loss in the number of queens their nests produced, while another study showed a doubling in "disappeared" bees – those that failed to return from food foraging trips. The significance of the new work, published Science, is that it is the first carried out in realistic, open-air conditions.


"People had found pretty trivial effects in lab and greenhouse experiments, but we have shown they can translate into really big effects in the field. This has transformed our understanding," said Prof David Goulson, at the University of Stirling and leader of one of the research teams. "If it's only one metre from where they forage in a lab to their nest, even an unwell bee can manage that."


Prof Mickaël Henry, at INRA in Avignon, France, who led a separate research team, said: "Under the effects we saw from the pesticides, the population size would decline disastrously, and make them even more sensitive to parasites or a lack of food."


The reason for the huge decline in bee numbers has remained uncertain, but pesticides, the varroa mite and other parasites, and destruction of the flower-rich habitats in which bees feed are believed to be the key reasons. Pesticide manufacturers and the UK government deny a class of the chemicals called neonicotinoids cause significant problems for bees, but Germany, Italy and France have suspended key insecticides over such fears.


A spokesperson from Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the new research did not change the government's position.


"The UK has a robust system for assessing risks from pesticides and all the evidence shows neonicotinoids do not pose an unacceptable risk to honeybees when products are used correctly. However, we will not hesitate to act if presented with any new evidence." Henry said the new research showed current approval processes for the pesticides are inadequate: "We now have enough data to say authorisation processes must take into account not only the lethal effects, but also the effects of non-lethal doses."


The pesticides investigated in the new studies - insect neurotoxins called neonicotinoids - are applied to seeds and flow through the plants' whole system. The environmental advantage of this is it reduces pesticide spraying but chemicals end up in the nectar and pollen on which bees feed. Goulson's group studied an extremely widely used type called imidacloprid, primarily manufactured by Bayer CropScience, and registered for use on over 140 crops in 120 countries.


Bumblebees were fed the toxin at the same level found in treated rape plants and found that these colonies were about 10% smaller than those not exposed to the insecticide. Most strikingly, the exposed colonies lost almost all of their ability to produce queens, which are the only bee to survive the winter and establish new colonies. "There was a staggering magnitude of effect," said Goulson. "This is likely to have a substantial population-level impact."


The French team analysed the effect on honey bees of a new generation neonicotinoid, called thiamethoxam and manufactured by Syngenta. They fitted tiny electronic tags to over 650 bees and monitored their activity around the hive. Those exposed to "commonly encountered" levels of thiamethoxam suffered high mortality, with up to a third of the bees failing to return. "They disappeared in much higher numbers than expected," said Henry. Previous scientific work has shown insect neurotoxins may cause memory, learning, and navigation problems in bees.


A spokesman for Syngenta said: "Although we take good research very seriously, over the last four years, independent authorities in France have closely monitored the use of Cruiser – the product containing thiamethoxam – on more than 1.9m hectares. When properly used no cases of bee mortality have been recorded."


Julian Little, spokesman for Bayer Cropscience, criticised Goulson's study because the bees were exposed to imidacloprid in the labaratory, before being placed outside in a natural field environment to feed. "All studies looking at the interaction of bees and pesticides must be done in a full field situation," he said. "This study does not demonstrate that current agricultural practices damage bee colonies."


Goulson dismissed as "nonsense" Little's suggestion that the doses given to the bees were higher than in reality. Both Bayer and Defra suggested other field studies had shown no harmful effects to bees. Goulson said: "If they have done these studies, where are they? They are not in the public domain and therefore cannot be scrutinised. That raises the question of just how good they are."

[American Patriot]

The truth about pesticides and bees

• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 April 2012 16.00 EDT

It is always a dilemma for a newspaper to tell a complicated story such as that about bees and pesticides (The end of the beeline: how pesticides stop bees finding their way home, 30 March). As a beekeeper of 40 years and inventor of the Zest hive (designed to improve bee health), I feel entitled to join the debate.


The Defra spokesperson's elucidation of its position of pompous, supine neglect regarding chemicals such as neonicotinoids is revealing. It claims a robust system for assessment in this country. By implication Germany, France and Italy, which have banned neonicotinoids, are wrong. Do they have different evidence or a different interpretation of it?


The spokesperson says "neonicotinoids do not pose an unacceptable risk if they are used properly". Why should my bees' health be determined by some farm worker who does not or cannot read the label? What redress do I have when my bees are killed?


The British Beekeepers Association has again been asleep (or pretended to be) on the job, taking the Defra fence-sitting position regarding neonicotinoids.

Bill Summers

Sturminster Newton, Dorset


•  The kneejerk response of the pesticide industry and our subservient government to new research implicating pesticide use for killing bees is not surprising.
Pesticides usually work by disrupting the chemical metabolism of those animals (not just the "pests") that feed on the plants, including humans.


Research into pesticide impact on the environment is not only extremely difficult, involving monitoring over long periods and meticulous testing; it is also viciously opposed by the pesticide industry. Scientists know that all pesticides have a deleterious effect on the environment and circumstantial evidence also implicates them in the development of human cancers, allergies and other illnesses.


But industrial agriculture has become so reliant on large-scale pesticide use, and the corporations selling the stuff have a vested interest in suppressing any research that shows they are essentially poisonous for all living organisms. The use of synthesised pesticides should be phased out as a matter of urgency for the long-term survival of our world.
John Green
Ealing, Middlesex


•  The debate over bee deaths and declines is an old story by now, but British experts have long chosen to ignore what competent continentals have discovered. Beekeepers' cumulative experience and observations are treated in this country as of no scientific merit. So it is for many widely held views that powerful lobbies prefer to disregard.


The worry is that the same chemicals are commonplace on garden centre shelves and widely used in composts for pot plants to combat vine weevil, and therefore may be in the pollen and nectar of even city bees.
Colin Leakey
Lincoln


•  I welcome the latest study by the team at Stirling, which will hopefully shake Defra out of its slumber on the matter of pollinator decline due to pesticides. The British Beekeepers Association had taken thousands of pounds from Bayer until a membership revolt last year stopped the practice.


Sadly, the BBKA has allowed the spray liaison scheme, whereby farmers inform local beekeepers of planned spraying, to disintegrate. Now beekeepers have no warnings, and farmers are in breach of pesticide usage regulations.


The normal response of government scientists to claims that neonicotinoids are harmful to bees is to deny that there is any irrefutable evidence of a direct link. This attitude is primarily based upon a misunderstanding of the complex way neonicotinoids affect pollinators. Fortunately, the European Food Safety Agency is tightening up pesticide safety regulations as a response to the different modus operandi of these chemicals and this may lead to a more sophisticated interpretation of safety test data in future.


There is a real lack of independent in-depth research into the effect of neonicotinoids, and so I am grateful to Prof Goulson and his team. But more research, independent of Bayer and the agrochemical industry, is urgently required.
Dr Bernie Doeser
Director, Small Blue Marble

[American Patriot]

The truth about pesticides and bees

• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 April 2012 16.00 EDT

It is always a dilemma for a newspaper to tell a complicated story such as that about bees and pesticides (The end of the beeline: how pesticides stop bees finding their way home, 30 March). As a beekeeper of 40 years and inventor of the Zest hive (designed to improve bee health), I feel entitled to join the debate.


The Defra spokesperson's elucidation of its position of pompous, supine neglect regarding chemicals such as neonicotinoids is revealing. It claims a robust system for assessment in this country. By implication Germany, France and Italy, which have banned neonicotinoids, are wrong. Do they have different evidence or a different interpretation of it?


The spokesperson says "neonicotinoids do not pose an unacceptable risk if they are used properly". Why should my bees' health be determined by some farm worker who does not or cannot read the label? What redress do I have when my bees are killed?


The British Beekeepers Association has again been asleep (or pretended to be) on the job, taking the Defra fence-sitting position regarding neonicotinoids.

Bill Summers

Sturminster Newton, Dorset


•  The kneejerk response of the pesticide industry and our subservient government to new research implicating pesticide use for killing bees is not surprising.
Pesticides usually work by disrupting the chemical metabolism of those animals (not just the "pests") that feed on the plants, including humans.


Research into pesticide impact on the environment is not only extremely difficult, involving monitoring over long periods and meticulous testing; it is also viciously opposed by the pesticide industry. Scientists know that all pesticides have a deleterious effect on the environment and circumstantial evidence also implicates them in the development of human cancers, allergies and other illnesses.


But industrial agriculture has become so reliant on large-scale pesticide use, and the corporations selling the stuff have a vested interest in suppressing any research that shows they are essentially poisonous for all living organisms. The use of synthesised pesticides should be phased out as a matter of urgency for the long-term survival of our world.
John Green
Ealing, Middlesex


•  The debate over bee deaths and declines is an old story by now, but British experts have long chosen to ignore what competent continentals have discovered. Beekeepers' cumulative experience and observations are treated in this country as of no scientific merit. So it is for many widely held views that powerful lobbies prefer to disregard.


The worry is that the same chemicals are commonplace on garden centre shelves and widely used in composts for pot plants to combat vine weevil, and therefore may be in the pollen and nectar of even city bees.
Colin Leakey
Lincoln


•  I welcome the latest study by the team at Stirling, which will hopefully shake Defra out of its slumber on the matter of pollinator decline due to pesticides. The British Beekeepers Association had taken thousands of pounds from Bayer until a membership revolt last year stopped the practice.


Sadly, the BBKA has allowed the spray liaison scheme, whereby farmers inform local beekeepers of planned spraying, to disintegrate. Now beekeepers have no warnings, and farmers are in breach of pesticide usage regulations.


The normal response of government scientists to claims that neonicotinoids are harmful to bees is to deny that there is any irrefutable evidence of a direct link. This attitude is primarily based upon a misunderstanding of the complex way neonicotinoids affect pollinators. Fortunately, the European Food Safety Agency is tightening up pesticide safety regulations as a response to the different modus operandi of these chemicals and this may lead to a more sophisticated interpretation of safety test data in future.


There is a real lack of independent in-depth research into the effect of neonicotinoids, and so I am grateful to Prof Goulson and his team. But more research, independent of Bayer and the agrochemical industry, is urgently required.
Dr Bernie Doeser
Director, Small Blue Marble

[American Patriot]

Bees are dying world wide, not just in the US.

Now, I am not sure about the so called connection to insecticides, but I can certainly believe they kill bees and other critters.

[American Patriot]

• April 6, 2012

More proof pesticide causes bee Colony Collapse Disorder


Paul Hamaker
Paeleontology Examiner


A new study from Harvard School of Public Health links the commonly used neonicotinoid insecticide imidacloprid directly with bee (honey bee) Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). The research will be published in the June issue of the Bulletin of Insectology and was reviewed at the Eureka Alert web site on April 5, 2012.

The researchers examined bees in four different enclosed bee yards for 23 weeks. The hives in each yard were treated with varying amounts of imidacloprid. The bees in all hives remained alive for the first twelve weeks of the experiment regardless of the level of imidacloprid the bees were exposed to.
Advertisement

Ninety-four percent of the imidacloprid exposed hives had died at 23 weeks, The hives that died first were exposed to higher concentrations of imidacloprid. The dead hives had few if any dead bees around them - a condition that is typical of CCD. This fact eliminates any other causes for the hive collapse in the experiment.

Lower levels of imidacloprid than are ordinarily used in the treatment of crops produced CCD. The three to six month time frame for bee death and CCD indicates exposure over time to imidacloprid could be a key factor in CCD.

The researchers conclude that even low levels of imidacloprid contracted from nectar from plants or from high-fructose corn syrup beekeepers use to feed their bees can cause CCD. One source of imidacloprid in high-fructose corn syrup is the treatment of some corn crops with imidacloprid.

Bees are financially and environmentally important to everyone. Imagine a world with no flowers, no vegetables, no nuts, and no fruit because there are no bees to pollinate the plants and trees.

Researchers and bee keepers have reported the loss of 30% and 90% of honeybee colonies since 2006 depending on the area of the United States







pesticide-causes-bee-colony-collapse-disorder#ixzz1rGpy3AQ8

[American Patriot]

Yet another study links insecticide to bee losses
Findings point to treated corn seed — and corn syrup — as possible links to a pandemic afflicting North American pollinators.


By Janet Raloff


Web edition : Thursday, April 5th, 2012
Text Size

Enlarge
Threats at homeHives should offer bees security. But they could prove a threat if the sugary nectar brought home is tainted.© Marek Walica



A pair of recent papers indicted neonicotinoids, a widely used class of insecticides, for contributing to the catastrophic loss of honeybees since 2006. Hives across North America have been hammered by this so-called colony collapse disorder, or CCD. Now an additional field trial strengthens even more the case arguing that these pollinators have been poisoned by these chemicals.

This latest research also points to a potentially novel source of the chemicals: corn syrup.


CCD tends to occur in winter or early spring, often when bees begin their first foraging trips of the year. In affected colonies, bees leave but fail to come home, despite their hives having adequate food. One suspicion, which is supported by studies released March 29, is that pesticides or some other poison might impair a forager's memory or behavior.


But Chensheng Lu, an environmental scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, was puzzled as to when and where the critical exposures occured. After all, affected bees were disappearing after months without exposure to toxic agents outside the hive. Lu now argues that bees can undergo a chronic poisoning if their hives' honey was tainted by insecticides that the pollinators encountered months earlier.



During winter, he charges, what looks just like colony collapse disorder largely emptied 15 of his team's 16 test hives in central Massachusetts. Each had been exposed experimentally for 13 weeks during the summer to low doses of imidacloprid. Growers rely on this and related neonicotinoid insecticides to protect their crops.



How long a hive’s colony survived after treatment diminished with increasing exposure of its bees to the insecticide the previous summer, Lu and his colleagues reported online April 5 in the Bulletin of Insectology.


Among four untreated hives, three survived. The other perished, but from dysentery — an intestinal infection — not CCD.



Fast food for bees

For their experiments, Lu and his colleagues set out groups of five hives, each consisting of healthy commercially purchased honeybees. The experiments were carried out in quadruplicate, with each grouping of five hives sited at least 12 kilometers from another. Insects at each site could forage throughout the wilds.



The researchers also provided each hive with the equivalent of its own on-site fast-food restaurant: a plastic feeder containing high fructose corn syrup.


Bees apparently love the sugary drink. Indeed, Lu says, many apiarists regularly feed this inexpensive beverage to their colonies in late winter to compensate for any overharvesting of honey (wintertime grub for bees).


One hive at each test site got corn syrup free of imidacloprid. The rest each got access to syrup containing small additions of the pesticide. Depending on the hive, syrup concentrations of the chemical ranged from 20 to 400 parts per billion. These values were all below federal limits for the pesticide in corn, Lu explains.


Offering hives corn syrup allowed the scientists to precisely doctor each batch with known quantities of the test chemical. It also allowed Lu to explore a hypothesis: that bees might be seriously impacted if even small quantities of neonicotinoid chemicals find their way into corn syrup.



And they might, he argues. Commercial beekeepers have been disproportionately affected by hive losses. One of the few changes they’ve made to insect husbandry in recent years has been to supplement hives with corn syrup during winter months. Although that began prior to 2006, what did almost precisely coincide with the initial outbreaks of CCD was the emergence of widespread commercial treatment of corn seed with neonicotinoid insecticides.



Seed treatments questioned

In North America and parts of Europe, many seeds now are coated with neonicotinoid insecticides before planting. As seeds germinate, the chemical enters the plant and circulates throughout its tissues, protecting vulnerable roots.
This systemic circulation of the pesticide bolsters concern by Lu’s team that imidacloprid can move into corn kernels. If it does, then the chemical could end up tainting corn syrup.


Today, imidacloprid or one of its neonicotinoid cousins coats most conventional and virtually all genetically modified corn seed, notes Charles Benbrook, chief scientist at the Organic Center in Troy, Ore.


That’s troubling, he argues, because in terms of their impact on bees, neonicotinoids “are the most acutely toxic pesticides ever registered.” They are also moderately persistent in soil, he says. And in recent years, insecticide-based seed coatings have tended to use a controlled release formulation. This extends crop protection benefits, Benbrook says, “but it also extends the time during which residues from seed treatments are likely to persist in treated plants.”


Like Lu, he suspects these insecticides can get into corn kernels — and the corn syrup now frequently fed to bees (something Benbrook’s organization has attempted to assay, unsuccessfully). But there are plenty of other routes by which bees can become exposed to these chemicals, Benbrook notes.


He points to data showing that plants from treated seeds can “sweat out” minute quantities of the insecticide into morning dew, a beverage popular with bees. Detectable quantities of imidacloprid have also been measured in the pollen of corn and sunflower plants whose seeds had been treated with the chemical. And European researchers have documented some seed planting equipment that roughs up seeds, generating an airborne exhaust cloud containing insecticide-laced residues.


In light of such data, including Lu’s new paper, Benbrook concludes that “there’s strong evidence that [neonicotinoid] seed treatments are putting pollinators at risk around the world.”

But treated seed is hardly bees' only possible source of exposure to these chemicals. Even five to seven years ago, Benbrook points out, 70 percent of U.S. apples, 79 of pears and 40 to 50 percent of broccoli and cauliflower were treated with these insecticides.

Some doubts remain
Not everyone is convinced by the Massachusetts field trials. Louisa Hooven, a beekeeper and scientist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, says that based on the sketchy observations described in the new paper, she finds it hard to be sure that the authors have indeed replicated CCD. For instance, "the presence of dead bees in front of the hives [reported by Lu's team] does not resemble CCD," she says. "In CCD, no bees are found." And certain characteristic symptoms of the syndrome went unmentioned in Lu's report. She says this includes whether the queen and some of her attendants remained behind even after most adult bees had fled the hive, as often occurs with CCD. Or whether there were signs of sealed pollen, which has also been associated with a hive's collapse.

To indict imidacloprid, she'd also like to see the researchers get a solid gauge of how much of the insecticide the bees had actually carried into the hive and then consumed.

At the Society of Toxicology meeting in March, Hooven presented some of her own data from preliminary experiments in which she exposed bees to pesticides. She administered low-dose concentrations of three chemicals to clean hives. All three pesticides are among those that have been measured tainting North American honeybee hives. After a few weeks of living with the chemicals,Hoover saw no deaths But the queens' egglaying behavior was perturbed and the maturation of nurse bees exhibited a delay.

Such subtle but potentially important changes also highlight one problem facing any environmental scientist sleuthing the putative mechanisms for CCD: Most bees simply aren't exposed to just one toxic chemical. A 2010 study by scientists from around the United States quantified 121 different pesticides and their breakdown products that they had isolated from bees, pollen, wax and other hive materials. The average number of pesticides identified in wax: eight. Among 350 pollen samples retrieved from hives, each harbored an average of seven such chemicals — but at times up to 31 pesticides (or their breakdown products, some of which are more toxic to bees than the parent chemical).