neonicotinoids

Bee Crisis

In the past several weeks, a spate of studies have appeared in scientific journals suggesting the culprit behind mass deaths of honeybees is widely used pesticides called neonicotinoids. On June 23, President Obama signed a memorandum establishing the first-ever federal pollinator strategy and the Agriculture Department announced $8 million in incentives to farmers and ranchers in five states who establish new habitats for honeybees.

Italian honeybees hover around the suit of beekeeper Robert Harvey as he transfers bee colonies from a blueberry field near Columbia Falls, Maine. Last year, 23.2 percent of the country’s managed honeybee colonies died, which is higher than the “acceptable” rate of about 19 percent, according to a report from a group supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Bees pollinate plants that provide much of the food that we consume, including apples, watermelons and coffee beans. Adrees Latif/Reuters

The Plight Of The Honeybee

The Plight of the Honeybee

For The Bees!

Couple aims to grow 1 million wildflowers for bees...

Bee Deaths May Have Reached A Crisis Point For Crops

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Almost a third of the country's honeybee colonies did not make it through the winter. That's according to a new survey of America's beekeepers. In fact, that's been the case almost every year for the past six years. Beekeepers say unless someone can help more bees survive, there won't be enough to pollinate America's apples, blueberries and other treasured crops. NPR's Dan Charles reports.

DAN CHARLES, BYLINE: The U.S. Department of Agriculture began this annual nationwide survey six years ago, after beekeepers reported some new and frightening problems with their bees.

JEFFREY PETTIS: Well, we started out literally by phoning beekeepers.

CHARLES: That's Jeffrey Pettis, who's in charge of the USDA's Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland.

Over the past six years, on average, 30 percent of all the honey bee colonies in the U.S. died off over the winter. The worst year was five years ago. Last year was the best, just 22 percent of the colonies died.

PETTIS: The last year gave us some hope. The honey bees were doing better.

CHARLES: But this year, the death rate was up again, 31 percent.

When the survey started, beekeepers talked a lot about Colony Collapse Disorder; colonies that seemed pretty healthy but suddenly collapsed - the bees flew away and didn't come back. Beekeepers are not seeing that so much anymore, Pettis says. They're mostly seeing colonies that just dwindle. As the crowd of bees get smaller, it gets weaker.

PETTIS: They can't generate heat very well in the spring to rear brood. They can't also generate heat to fly.

CHARLES: Farmers, who grow crops like almonds and blueberries and apples rely on commercial beekeepers to make sure their crops get pollinated. This year, Pettis says, we came closer than ever before to a real crisis. The only thing that saved part of the almond crop in California was some lovely weather.

PETTIS: We got incredibly good flight weather, so the bees, even those small colonies that we talked about earlier - the small colonies that can't fly very well even in cool weather, they were able to fly because of good weather.

CHARLES: And the bees reached every tree.

Pettis says beekeepers can really only afford to lose about 15 percent of their colonies each year. More than that and they lose money. Some commercial beekeepers are still in business, he says, just because they love it.

PETTIS: I mean it's just something that gets in your blood, so you know what to give out. You know, OK, its 30 percent loss each year - I'll do better next year. We're very much optimists.

CHARLES: Beekeepers have a whole list of reasons why so many colonies are dying. There's a nasty parasite called the Varroa mite which they can't get rid of; also, bee killing pesticides. And they say there just fewer places in the country where a bee can find plenty of food, plenty of flowering plants that provide nectar and pollen. That was especially true this past year. The same drought that left Midwestern cornfields parched and wilting also dried up wildflowers and starved the bees. That was a natural disaster.

But May Barenboim, a professor of entomology at the University of Illinois, says most of the changes in the landscape are the result of people's decisions about what to do with their land.

MAY BARENBOIN: I just wish there were more incentives for more people, not just farmers, to plant a more diversified landscape that provides nutritional resources for all kinds of pollinators.

CHARLES: So, plant more flowers.

BARENBOIN: Plant more flowers and be a little more tolerant of the weeds in the garden.

CHARLES: What's more controversial is the role of pesticides. Some beekeepers and environmentalists are calling for tighter restrictions on the use of one particular class of pesticides, called neonicotinoids. Europe is about to ban some uses of these pesticides. But U.S. farmers and pesticide companies are opposed to any such move here and the Environmental Protection Agency says it's not yet convinced that this would help the bees very much.

Dan Charles, NPR News.

SIEGEL: It may mean little in the overall picture of bee health, but there are many backyards and rooftops around the U.S. with a hive or two, including here at NPR's new building in Washington, D.C.

(SOUNDBITE OF SWARM OF BEES)

SIEGEL: Our so-called green roof, covered with soil and plants, as of yesterday houses two small wooden hives with over two 20,000 bees. No honey yet, but the bees have inspired an unofficial Twitter feed, @nprbees.

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The Trouble with Beekeeping in the Anthropocene

The beepocalypse is on the cover of TIME, but it looks like managed honeybees will still pull through. Wild bees—and wild species in general—won't be so lucky in a human-dominated planet

By Bryan Walsh @bryanrwalsh

Read more: Wild bees are in even worse shape than honeybees | TIME.com http://science.time.com/2013/08/09/the-trouble-with-beekeeping-in-the-anthropocene/#ixzz2u9M69yJu

http://science.time.com/2013/08/09/the-trouble-with-beekeeping-in-the-anthropocene/

The Trouble with Beekeeping in the Anthropocene

The beepocalypse is on the cover of TIME, but it looks like managed honeybees will still pull through. Wild bees—and wild species in general—won't be so lucky in a human-dominated planet

By Bryan Walsh @bryanrwalshAug. 09, 2013140 Comments

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Allan Baxter via Getty Images

Besides being a handy symbol of environmental decline, the honeybee also does some pollination

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 Follow @TIME

I’ve written this week’s cover story for the magazine, on the growing threat to honeybees. You can read it (with a subscription) over here. The short version: beginning nearly a decade ago, honeybees started dying off at unusually and mysteriously high rates—this past winter, nearly one-third of U.S. honeybee colonies died or disappeared. At first this appeared due to something called colony collapse disorder (CCD); hives would be abandoned without warning, with bees seemingly leaving honey and intact wax behind. The apocalyptic nature of CCD—some people really thought the disappearance of the bees indicated that the Rapture was nigh—grabbed the public’s attention. More recently, beekeepers have been seeing fewer cases of CCD proper, but honeybees keep dying and bees keep collapsing. That’s bad for our food system—bees add at least $15 billion in crop value through pollination in the U.S. alone, and if colony losses keep up, those pollination demands may not be metand valuable crops like almonds could wither.

More than the bottom line for grocery stores, though, the honeybee’s plight alarms us because a species that we have tended and depended on for thousands of years is dying—and we don’t really know why. Tom Theobald, a beekeeper and blogger who has raised the alarm about CCD, put that fear this way: “The bees are just the beginning.”

(PHOTOS: The Bee, Magnified: Microscopic Photography by Rose-Lynn Fisher)

But while we don’t now we exactly what causes CCD or why honeybees are dying in larger numbers, we do know the suspects: pesticides, including the newer class of neonicotinoids that seem to affect bees even at very low levels; biological threats like the vampiric Varroa mite; and the lack of nutrition thanks to monocultures of commodity crops like wheat and corn, which offer honeybees little in the way of the pollen they need to survive. Most likely, bee deaths are due to a mix of all of those menaces acting together—pesticides and lack of food might weaken honeybees, and pests like Varroa could finish them off, spreading diseases the bees don’t have the strength to resist. Unfortunately, that means there’s no simple way to save the honeybees either. Simply banning, say, neonicotinoids might take some of the pressure off honeybees, but most scientists agree it wouldn’t solve the problem. (And getting rid of neonicotinoids would have unpredictable consequences for agriculture—the pesticides were adopted in part because they are considered safer for mammals, including human beings.) Honeybees are suffering because we’ve created a world that is increasingly inhospitable to them.

Still, for all the alarm, honeybees are likely to pull through. As I point out in the magazine piece, beekeepers have mostly managed to replace lost colonies, though at a cost high enough that some long-time beekeepers are getting out of the business altogether. Beekeepers are buying new queens and splitting their hives, which cuts into productivity and honey production, but keeps their colony numbers high enough to so far meet pollination demands. They’re adding supplemental feed—often sugar or corn syrup—to compensate for the lack of wild forage. The scientific and agricultural community is engaged—see Monsanto’s recent honeybee summit, and the company’s work on a genetic weapon against the Varroa mite. Randy Oliver, a beekeeper and independent researcher, told me that he could see honeybees becoming a feedlot animal like pigs or chickens, bred and kept for one purpose and having their food brought to them, rather than foraging in the semi-wild way they live now. That sounds alarming—and it’s not something anyone in the beekeeping industry would like to see—but it’s also important to remember that honeybees themselves aren’t exactly natural, especially in North America, where they were imported by European settlers in the 17th century. As Hannah Nordhaus, the author of the great book A Beekeeper’s Lament, has written, honeybees have always been much more dependent on human beings than the other way around.

(WATCH: Are Robotic Bees the Future?)

The reality is that honeybees are very useful to human beings, and species that are very useful to us—think domesticated animals and pets—tend to do OK in the increasingly human-dominated world we call the Anthropocene. But other wild species aren’t so lucky—and that includes the thousands of species of wild bees and other non-domesticated pollinators. Bumblebees have experienced recent and rapid population loss in the U.S., punctuated by a mass pesticide poisoning in Oregon this past June that led to the deaths of some 50,000 bumblebees. A 2006 report by the National Academies of Science concluded that the populations of many other wild pollinators—especially wild bees—was trending “demonstrably downward.” The threats are much the same ones faced by managed honeybees: pesticides, lack of wild forage, parasites and disease. The difference is that there are thousands of human beings who make it their business to care for and prop up the populations of honeybees. No one is doing the same thing for wild bees. The supposed beepocalypse is on the cover ofTIME magazine, but “you don’t hear about the decline of hundreds of species of wild bees,” says Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

(MORE: Behind the Bee’s Knees: The Origins of Nine Bee-Inspired Sayings)

That’s meant almost literally—we don’t hear them anymore. The plight of the bees illustrates our outsized influence on the this planet as we reshape it—consciously and not—to meet our immediate needs. But just because we have this power doesn’t mean we fully understand it, or our impact on our own world. We are a species that increasingly has omnipotence without omniscience. That’s a dangerous combination for the animals and plants that share this planet with us.  And eventually, it will be dangerous for us, too.

Subscribe here to read Bryan Walsh’s full TIME cover story on A World Without Bees. Already a subscriber? Read it here.

Read more: Wild bees are in even worse shape than honeybees | TIME.com http://science.time.com/2013/08/09/the-trouble-with-beekeeping-in-the-anthropocene/#ixzz2u9ME679K

Stimulating Honeybees for 2014 Almond Pollination

Via  a new, great find, Wayward Spark

- See more at: http://waywardspark.com/stimulating-honeybees-for-2014-almond-pollination/#mc_signup

Bad for bees, bad for kids | Pesticide Action Network

Bad for bees, bad for kids | Pesticide Action Network

USDA’s Green Light for Pesticide-Promoting, Genetically-Engineered (GE) Corn Opposed by Farmers, Scientists and Public Interest Groups | Pesticide Action Network

USDA’s Green Light for Pesticide-Promoting, Genetically-Engineered (GE) Corn Opposed by Farmers, Scientists and Public Interest Groups | Pesticide Action Network

http://www.panna.org/blog

Pesticides & Pollinator Decline

Bees have been dying off in droves around the world since the mid-1990s. First in France, then in the U.S. and elsewhere, colonies have been mysteriously collapsing with adult bees disappearing, seemingly abandoning their hives. In 2006, about two years after this phenomenon hit the U.S., it was named “Colony Collapse Disorder,” or CCD. Each year since commercial beekeepers have reported annual losses of 29% - 36%. Such losses are unprecedented, and more than double what is considered normal.

While wild pollinators like bats and bumble bees are also facing catastrophic declines, managed honey bees are the most economically important pollinators in the world. According to a recent U.N. report, of the 100 crops that provide 90% of the world's food, over 70 are pollinated by bees. In the U.S. alone, honey bees’ economic contribution is valued at over $15 billion.

What the bees are telling us

State of the Science

PAN's report Honey Bees and Pesticides: State of the Science presents findings from dozens of scientific studies, focusing on the link between pesticides and CCD. Download here»

U.S. commercial beekeepers report that their industry is on the verge of collapse, and farmers who rely on pollination services are increasingly concerned. It's unlikely that such a collapse will directly result in a food security crisis, but crop yields would decline signficantly, and more acres of land would need to be put into production to meet demand.[1] With most fruits, many vegetables, almonds, alfalfa and many other crops all dependent upon bees for pollination, the variety and nutritional value of our food system is threatened.

In addition to their agricultural value as pollinators, honey bees are a keystone, indicator species. Their decline points to (and will likely accelerate) broader environmental degradation in a kind of ripple effect. Pollinator population declines are thus a disproportionately important piece of the current collapse in biodiversity that seven in ten biologistsbelieve poses an even greater threat to humanity than the global warming which contributes to it. Little-known fact: we are today living through a sixth mass extinction. During the last one, dinosaurs went extinct.

As indicator species, honey bees are sounding an alarm that we ignore at our peril. Among their lessons: industrial agriculture has gone off the rails, kicking the pesticide treadmill into high gearwith a new class of dangerous systemic pesticides while regulators were asleep at the switch.

Visit the new Honey Bee Haven site and sign the pledge to protect pollinators.

Neonicotinoids at-a-glance

• Very persistent in soil & water soluble.
• Systemic pesticides applied at the root (as seed coating or drench) & then taken up through the plant’s vascular system to be expressed in pollen, nectar & guttation droplets(like dew) from which bees then forage & drink.
• Systemics on food cannot be washed off.
• Nicotine-like, neurotoxic insecticides that bind to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in insects’ brains.
• Bees have a particular genetic vulnerability to these & other pesticides because they have more of these receptors, as well as more learning & memory genes, & fewer genes for detoxification.
• Widely used on more than 140 crop varieties, as well as on termites, flea treatments, lawns & gardens.
• Fastest-growing class of synthetic pesticides in history. Imidacloprid is Bayer Crop Science's top-sellingproduct.

What we know

Much has been made over the "mystery" surrounding CCD, but in recent years two points of consensus have emerged:

1. Multiple, interacting causes are in play – key suspects include pathogens, habitat loss and pesticides; and
2. Immune system damage is a critical factor that may be at the root of the disorder.

Meanwhile, a new class of systemic, neurotoxic pesticides that are known to be particularly toxic to honey bees has rapidly taken over the global insecticide market since their introduction in the 1990s: neonicotinoids. Neonicotinoids (like imidacloprid and its successor product clothianidin) are used as seed treatments in hundreds of crops from corn to almonds, as well as in lawn care and flea products. These products persist for years in the soil, and, as systemics, permeate the plants to which they are applied to be expressed as pollen, nectar andguttation droplets (like pesticide dew).

Honey bee exposure to this class of pesticides is, in other words, nearly pervasive – and in the U.S. the rate of seed treatment with these insecticides increased five-fold around the same time CCD hit the U.S.

Recent science shows that extremely low dose exposures to neonicotinoids undermine immunity – rendering honey bees more susceptible to pathogens. And beekeepers in the U.S. and Europe have, for years, been asking governments to pull or restrict this class of pesticides because they believe them to be harming hive health.  

Decisive action is overdue

Governments in Italy, Germany, France and elsewhere have already taken action against neonicotinoids to protect their pollinators. And beekeepers there are reporting recovery. Yet regulators in the U.S. remain paralyzed, apparently captive to industry-funded science and a regulatory framework that finds chemicals innocent until proven guilty.

It seems that only massive public outcry will compel U.S. policymakers to take action on a timeframe that is meaningful for bees and beekeepers. With one in every three bites of food dependent on honey bees for pollination, the time for decisive action is now.

[1] Spivak M, Mader E, Vaughan M, et al., The plight of the bees, Environmental Science and Technology (45) 34-38, 2011.

Why Are Bees Disappearing?

50% of US Bees Dead.

“We’ve been doing this 30 years, & we’ve never experienced this kind of loss before.”~ Jeremy Hance

Colony Collapse Disorder: Common Pesticides Disrupt Brain Functioning in Bees.

Update via Reddit r/permaculture:

Recent bee related death reports:

Bee deaths a result of pesticide Safari; count upped to 50,000 dead insects

Meanwhile, other reports of bees dying around Wilsonville and surrounding towns have prompted Xerces to check whether similar pesticides were used elsewhere.

“My worry is that we’re going to lose sight of the real message,” said Mace Vaughan of Xerces. “I think we’re (using insecticides) all over the place, and people are doing it in their backyards without even knowing it.”

U.S. Bee Deaths From Colony Collapse Disorder May Be Tied To Diet, Study Finds (Boston, MA)

Agrichemical and pesticide makers like Monsanto, Bayer AG and Syngenta are also launching projects to study and counter colony collapse.

Few deny that pesticides – particularly a class of commonly used insecticides called neonicotinoids – can be harmful to bees in the laboratory. It is unclear what threat the insecticides pose under current agricultural usage. Some scientists say habitat decline and disease-carrying parasites, such as the Varroa mite, are the chief cause of bee deaths.

Agri-giants trying to solve bee deaths (St. Louis, MO)

One of every three bites of food we consume depends on pollination by honeybees, but these overlooked contributors to our food system are continuing to die in stubbornly perplexing ways.

In 2006, beekeepers started noticing that bees were abandoning their hives, a phenomenon scientists dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder. Since then, the American bee population has dropped by an average of 30 percent every year, sending researchers, beekeepers and farmers into a head-scratching frenzy to figure out the cause.

Study links insecticides to bee deaths (Quebec, Canada)

According to Jean-Pierre Chapleau, spokesman for the Quebec Beekeepers’ Federation, beekeepers want neonicotinoid insecticides banned.

“Neonicotinoid insecticides are overused,” he says. Chapleau said that beekeepers don’t blame farmers, because they can’t buy seeds that have not been treated with insecticides even if they want to.

The industry says that’s not accurate.

Scottish bee deaths double in a single year (Scotland)

SBA president Phil McAnespie said: “Last summer and autumn were very bad, which is obviously an issue and viruses are associated with that. “I think most of the losses are down to the weather. Obviously, there is concern about neonicotinoids and there is ongoing research into that but I don’t think they have played any major part in this [the increase in bee deaths].”

Update: Animal agriculture carnage: Third of all honeybee colonies in England did not survive winter(guardian.co.uk)

Update: Bee keepers’ use of corn syrup and other honey substitutes as bee feed may be contributing to colony collapse (reuters.com)

Update: 1/3 of US Honeybee Colonies Died Last Winter, Threatening US Food Supply – “We’re getting closer & closer to the point where we don’t have enough bees in this country to meet pollination demands,” said entomologist Dennis vanEngelstorp, who led survey documenting declines. (wired.com)

Update: It’s confirmed: It’s getting worse. Cover of the NY Times today, edging out even the Taliban. Thing is, this threat we know how to stop.

“Bee Die-Off Soars, Putting Crops at Risk A mysterious malady seems to have expanded drastically in the past year, wiping out as many as half of the beehives needed to pollinate much of America’s produce.”

Exposure to commonly used pesticides directly disrupts brain functioning in bees, according to new research in Nature.”

While the study is the first to record that popular pesticides directly injure bee brain physiology, it adds to a slew of recent studies showing that pesticides, especially neonicotinoids, are capable of devastating bee hives and may be, at least, partly responsible for on-going Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

Christopher Connolly with the University of Dundee in Scotland and his team exposed honeybees to two pesticides at levels encountered in the wild: neonicotinoids and miticidal pesticides.

By recording brain activity after exposure, the researchers found that both pesticides directly hampered bee brain functioning, including blocking neurons from firing. The findings are especially notable for studying bees after exposure to the miticidal pesticide, which is used directly on bee hives to safeguard them from a common parasite, the Varroa destructor mite. In this case, however, the cure may be worse than the disease. Connolly explains:

“Much discussion of the risks posed by the neonicotinoid insecticides has raised important questions of their suitability for use in our environment. However, little consideration has been given to the miticidal pesticides introduced directly into honeybee hives to protect the bees from the Varroa mite. We find that both have negative impact on honeybee brain function.”

Furthermore the researchers found that when bees were exposed to both chemicals—the neonicotinoids and miticidal pesticides—their brain functioning and learning abilities were hurt even more.

The study is the first to show the direct brain impacts that may explain why bees exposed to these pesticides slow aberrant behavior, including losing their way easily and slow reactions.

Scientists both in the U.S. and Europe have recorded the complete collapse of hives following exposure. However, pesticide companies have continually argued that their products cause no harm to bees even as high-profile independent research from multiple sources appears to be telling a very different story.

The research has spurred some policy movement. France has banned the use of neonicotinoids on certain crops. The EU proposed a ban on neonicotinoids for two years after a committee looked at the research for six months. However, the ban was scuttled by opposition from Germany and the UK, though it could still come up in appeal.

Most recently, nine beekeeping and environmental groups sued the U.S. Environment Protection Agency (EPA) for failing to take action to protect bees.

Bees are key plant pollinators, and their decline has worried scientists, farmers, and policymakers worldwide. In the U.S. alone, bee pollination is estimated to be worth $8-12 billion. While bee declines have occurred in the past, researchers believe this one is much more severe.

Citation: Mary J. Palmer,Christopher Moffat, Nastja Saranzewa, Jenni Harvey, Geraldine A. Wright, Christopher N. Connolly. Cholinergic pesticides cause mushroom body neuronal inactivation in honeybees. Nature Communications. 4, Article number: 1634. doi:10.1038/ncomms2648.