This is big. Dutch Parliament has moved to ban all neonicotinoids. Holland has one of the most intensive agricultural regions in the world and some of the most highly contaminated soil and groundwater. Some of the groundwater is so heavily contaminated that it could be used itself as a pesticide.
This morning as the news was breaking June Stoyer of the Organic View interviewed Dutch toxicologist Henk Tennekes and myself. Listen on YouTube below.
This article by Graham White, PESTICIDES, THE BIRDS AND THE BEES, appeared in the International Beekeepers Quarterly and explores the wider ramifications of how neonicotinoid insecticides are affecting the entire food chain, especially the insectivorous birds.
Recently the United States Geological Survey released a huge database of Pesticide Use Maps that map the use of 459 pesticides from 1992-2011.
BCBA’s webmaster has animated these maps for three of the most widely used neonicotinoids: clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam. These animations show the sudden explosion of these pesticides across the American landscape.
As dramatic as these maps are however, seed treatments were not included in these calculations, and yet seed treatments are perhaps the most widely employed pesticide delivery system in history. You would think that the EPA, in its efforts to protect mankind and the environment, would want this usage tracked, but instead is pressing to have these seed treatments exempted from the category of “pesticide use”, so that there would be no data kept on these massive uses.
Click on each of the maps below to see them animated.
[pesticide_map type=”H_CLOTHIANIDIN_” start=”2003″ stop=”2011″][pesticide_map type=”H_IMIDACLOPRID_” start=”1993″ stop=”2011″][pesticide_map type=”H_THIAMETHOXAM_” start=”1999″ stop=”2011″]
Originally published on: Jun 17, 2013
Updated on: Feb 1, 2014 (added 2010 and 2011 maps)
This link will take you to the podcast of an interview conducted recently on The Organic View with Randy Oliver and Walter Haefeker of Germany. While it is long, those of you trying to understand these issues should listen to it all. Scroll down about half way for the podcast.
This is a very informative interview with University of Saskatchewan biologist Christy Morrissey on her second year of a four year study of neonicotinoid contamination of prairie wetlands. The industry line is “no problem in Canada’s prairie provinces” where millions of acres of canola are grown, but I hear otherwise from Canadian beekeepers, who tell me the colony losses are 50% or higher, however beekeepers are reluctant to speak out. Listen to the audio of the interview, but read the text as well.
“Normally by now, hundreds of Mexico trees would be covered by wintering monarchs, but so far it’s only 12 trees.”
– Lincoln Brower, Ph.D., Biologist, Sweet Briar College, VA.
While this article, Monarch Butterfly Migration at Lowest Numbers on Record, and interview focus on the Monarch Butterfly, the parallels to the plight of the honey bees are clear. The Monarch Butterfly may be the next poster child testifying to the ongoing environmental damage. What we aren’t hearing about much in the media is the destruction of a wide range of life forms which have no mentors to represent them. Scroll down about half way through the article for the MP3 and the audio interview of Dr. Brower.
If you are trying to understand the competing arguments on the issue of neonicotinoids and bee losses, the video at the link below is well worth your time. It is the first 17 minutes of the video.
Here is a link to a very discouraging article, Bee Kill Investigation Continues, but it is also a very cautionary tale. The bumblebee kill in Oregon, estimated at 50,000, most likely eliminated nearly every bumblebee colony within flight range and it could take years to re-establish that population.
There has been a lot of talk about label changes, and this article does as well, but these label changes are smoke and mirrors, sleight of hand, intended to give the illusion of concern and action when in fact they do virtually nothing beyond what has been in effect for years, commonly referred to as the “bee caution.” “Do not apply this product or allow it to drift to blooming crops or weeds if bees are visiting the area to be treated. . . .”
There are two kinds of wording on labels, advisory and imperative. Advisory language is just that, advice, with no force of law. Imperative language is imperative. It is the “thou shalts” and it does have the force of law. The bulk of the label changes are in advisory language, but at the few points where imperative language is used the EPA goes to great length offering a long list of exceptions under which the label can be disregarded.
Worse, the EPA clearly runs away from the challenge before it, focusing solely on foliar applications to bloom. It does little to increase the safety or avoid bee kills by suggesting that applicatioins be made after sunset or when it is too cold for bees to be flying when the insecticide may have a residual effect of days, weeks or months. There were bee kills on Linden trees in other Oregon towns where the spraying had been done months before. The purpose of the label changes, purportedly, was to address the new family of systemic pesticides, the neonicotinoids. and yet their mode of action – long term toxicity – is completely avoided in the label changes.
After a good start, in which several of the neonics were temporarily banned, Oregon authorities appear to be bending to chemical industry pressure. 35 years ago aerial applicators in Boulder County would claim that they were following label directions on corn, for example, because they checked the corn at 4:30 in the morning and saw no bees, knowing full well that by 10:00 A.M. the field they had just sprayed would be full of foraging bees. Oregon Department of Agriculture inspector Mike Odenthal appears to be caving in to the same ridiculous reasoning.
“‘The pesticide application that killed thousands of bees in a Wilsonville, Oregon parking lot may not have been off-label,’ a state investigator says. ‘There may not have been any bees present at 6 a.m. when they made the application,’ Odenthal said.”
For those of you who are trying to understand the neonics issue, here is a good interview on a program called Before You Leap with Alex Lu of Harvard, Peter Jenkins of the Center For Food Safety (lead attorney in the EPA lawsuit) and Steve Ellis, commercial beekeeper from Minnesota.
Excerpt:
Before You Leap
Some critics say that Professor Lu is just an anti-pesticide, anti-GMO academic activist But according to the Boston Globe story, those who know him best say Professor Lu is actually a pretty moderate guy.Professor Lu
I’m not really a die hard tree hugger, but on neonicotinoids I do have a strong feeling that this class of pesticide does not belong to modern society.
Interview is 50 min. long, but worth the time.
Tom Theobald discusses the current suit against the EPA regarding pesticides and bees on 92.5 Krush, San Luis Obispo, California.