This afternoon (Friday, March 2nd) at 2:00 Colorado time June Stoyer will interview Dr. Christian Krupke on the Organic View Radio Show, Dr. Krupke was the lead researcher on the recently published Purdue Study which so clearly showed the connection between neonicotinoids and bee losses. This should be very good. Either listen live at 2:00 or listen to the pod cast later, but listen.
Bayer Responds to Declining Bee Population Concerns, says Farm Chemicals International.
Be sure to read the comments too.
Why Massive Bee Dieoffs May Be a Warning About Our Own Health, by Jill Richardson for AlterNet.
Tucked in the middle of the study is a bombshell: “The levels of clothianidin in bee-collected pollen [from treated maize] that we found are approximately 10-fold higher than reported from experiments conducted in canola grown from clothianidin-treated seed. This is significant because the pesticide clothianidin was deemed safe to bees by the EPA following a study of bees exposed to treated canola, a minor crop in the United States. However, according to the study, the pesticide dose bees are exposed to in the U.S. is usually ten times that, as corn (maize) covers more than 137,000 square miles in the U.S. — an area larger than the state of New Mexico. So even though bees aren’t pollinating corn directly, they still may be getting a toxic dose of pesticides from it. To beekeepers, the news is not terribly surprising. “
Honeybee Colonies Continue to Collapse, an article by BCBA member Don Studinski.
The girls knew they were in trouble and provided a place where a new queen could have been raised, but none had become “cells” and none looked anything like a new queen had emerged. This is a pattern 35-year veteran beekeeper, Tom Theobald, has been seeing for years in the Denver, Colorado metropolitan area. Tom told me, “This sounds like it may be the break in the brood cycle I discovered in 2007, which I theorize is coming from stored corn pollen containing neonicotinoids. The queen stops laying viable brood about the 3rd week in September and the brood that is fed the pollen may die also. When the summer bees die there is a rapid decline in the population.”
Read the whole story with photo illustrations at Organic Landscape Design.
This will get wide exposure.
Is new form of pesticide to blame for catastrophic decline in honey bees?
Experts believe the sharp decline in Britain’s bee population could be down to an increase in the use of nicotine-based pesticides. – Daily Mail
This two part article from Australia by Marilyn Steiner and Stephen Goodwin is well worth reading.
Part I examines neonicotinoid uses in Australia and problems ascribed to their use overseas, particularly massive losses of honey bees.
In Part II the authors explore the evidence for neonicotinoid impacts on honey bees, the role of governments in regulating pesticides, and the changes required to adequately evaluate their environmental safety.
Take a look at these three articles, starting three years ago, as they relate to the recent revelations about the neonics.
Colony Collapse Disorder Is a Fraud – Pesticides Cause Bee Die-Offs
EPA May Allow Extinction of Bees: Supports Bayer’s Profits from Nerve Poison
Colony Collapse Disorder Is a Myth. Neurotoxic Pesticide Causes Bee Deaths.
Now read this one from last Friday.
Environmental Task Force takes on honey bees and cotton pesticides
Pesticide exposure in honey bees results in increased levels of the gut pathogen Nosema
Abstract
Global pollinator declines have been attributed to habitat destruction, pesticide use, and climate change or some combination of these factors, and managed honey bees, Apis mellifera, are part of worldwide pollinator declines. Here we exposed honey bee colonies during three brood generations to sub-lethal doses of a widely used pesticide, imidacloprid, and then subsequently challenged newly emerged bees with the gut parasite, Nosema spp. The pesticide dosages used were below levels demonstrated to cause effects on longevity or foraging in adult honey bees. Nosema infections increased significantly in the bees from pesticide-treated hives when compared to bees from control hives demonstrating an indirect effect of pesticides on pathogen growth in honey bees. We clearly demonstrate an increase in pathogen growth within individual bees reared in colonies exposed to one of the most widely used pesticides worldwide, imidacloprid, at below levels considered harmful to bees. The finding that individual bees with undetectable levels of the target pesticide, after being reared in a sub-lethal pesticide environment within the colony, had higher Nosema is significant. Interactions between pesticides and pathogens could be a major contributor to increased mortality of honey bee colonies, including colony collapse disorder, and other pollinator declines worldwide.
The Purdue Study is beginning to get some traction. I was perplexed by some of the early comments on this article, Honeybee problem nearing a critical point. They still cry for the science even if it is right in front of them.
The Western Farm Press reports on the Purdue study.
Excerpt:
“Given the rates of corn planting and talc usage, we are blowing large amounts of contaminated talc into the environment. The dust is quite light and appears to be quite mobile,” Krupke said. Krupke said the corn pollen that bees were bringing back to hives later in the year tested positive for neonicotinoids at levels roughly below 100 parts per billion.
“That’s enough to kill bees if sufficient amounts are consumed, but it is not acutely toxic,” he said.
On the other hand, the exhausted talc showed extremely high levels of the insecticides – up to about 700,000 times the lethal contact dose for a bee.
“Whatever was on the seed was being exhausted into the environment,” Krupke said. “This material is so concentrated that even small amounts landing on flowering plants around a field can kill foragers or be transported to the hive in contaminated pollen. This might be why we found these insecticides in pollen that the bees had collected and brought back to their hives.”