Pesticides to blame for 'buzz kill?'

Packer managing editor Fred Wilkinson here with the latest chapter in a disturbing mystery that wallops many fruit growers in the wallet: the increasing disappearance of honeybee colonies in the past few years.

From the Los Angeles Times:

There is increasing reason to believe that Gaucho and other members of a family of highly toxic chemicals -- neonicotinoids -- may be responsible for he deaths of billions of honeybees worldwide. Some scientists believe that these pesticides, which are applied to seeds, travel systemically through the plant and leave residues that contaminate the pollen, resulting in bee death or paralysis. The French refer to the effect as "mad bee disease" and in 1999 were the first to ban the use of these chemicals, which are currently only marketed by Bayer (the aspirin people) under the trade names Gaucho and Poncho. Germany followed suit this year, and its agricultural research institute said it concluded that the poisoning of the bees was because of the rub-off of the pesticide clothianidin (that's Pancho) from corn seeds.

The Op-Ed piece's author -- Al Meyerhoff, is described in the article's tagline as "an environmental attorney in Los Angeles" and "a former director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's public health program." He details what's at stake for growers and lays some blame for bees' woes on the ag industry for its agricultural practices:

Something is killing the bees, though. Some scientists suspect a virus; others mites, even cellphones. (Bees are not known to use phones, though, having their own communications system -- a dance called the "waggle.") Here in the U.S., the bee kill is a big problem. Domesticated bees were brought to the U.S. on the Mayflower. Today, they contribute at least $15 billion to the nation's agricultural economy. For example, California's $2-billion-a-year almond crop is completely dependent on honeybees from about 1.5 million hives for pollination. This year, more than 2.4 million bee colonies -- 36% of the total -- were lost in the U.S., according to the Apiary Inspectors of America. Some colonies collapsed in two days. Part of the problem is how we farm. Rather than rotating crops, farmers grow the same one each year. This "monoculture" creates a breeding ground for pests. Farmers then use chemicals that kill not only the target organism but other life forms as well -- like honeybees.

The USDA weighed in on the topic in May here. Their take? Researchers aren't sure if the problem is related to disease (such as the varroa mite), ag chemicals or or even a mix of those two and possibly other environmental factors.

Bees and colony collapse

There was a hearing today by the House Agriculture Committee, hort subcommittee on "pollinator health and colony collapse disorder." See the opening statements from the hearing.

Here is an excerpt from the written testimony of Steve Godlin, S.P. Godlin Apiaries, Visalia, Calif.

Currently there are 660,000 acres (of almonds) producing and would be more if not for the water crisis in our state. This eequires about 1,300,000 hives of bees to pollinate them. The number of managed hives in California has dropped to around 400,000 hives despite beekeepers’ efforts to meet growers’ demands. Bees are now being shipped into California from everywhere in the U.S.; even Australia is trying to get in the game. Now I have to go to national bee conventions and defend my state as beekeepers from New York or Montana disparage us and call us a gutter for bees. We have created the biggest experiment ever performed on the honey bee. Take bees from all over the continent and stick them in the valley to mingle and forage together with mites and diseases and apparently a list of viruses as long as your arm and see what happens. Or maybe this isn’t what is wrong -- haven’t we been hearing that bees around the world are having a problem? And beekeepers here in the U. S., who do not ship bees to California are losing hives as well.

We began to notice these losses in recent years. We have had rough years from time to time with higher than usual losses, and in history there have been a few epidemics in the bee world. But nothing has been on the levels we are facing now. This is why there has been all this attention on us. People now realize that the $15 billion dollars worth of food that requires pollination to exist is a lot of pretty delicious stuff. We appreciate this attention and have been encouraged by the legislations actions. At home, the Bee Lab at U.C. Davis is up and running again thanks to generous contributions by beekeepers, almond growers, and companies like Haagen Daz Ice Cream who donated $250,000 to honey bee research and is running a priceless “save the bee” ad campaign. Researchers across the country have been collaborating on projects in an attempt to find answers. Beekeepers themselves have put aside their differences and are working with the scientific and governmental communities as well as each other on an unprecedented level. I know the fact that our two national organizations had a shared conference this year speaks volumes to the importance of this issue. I am here today to ask that you would vote to continue helping to fund honey bee research. There are some very important projects just getting up and started, and we really haven’t time to waste, or money. We need results. We need a united effort by all and shared knowledge from a variety of fields.

I hope we are getting there; the middle of July is looming and I am more than a little worried. We are providing our bees all the supplemental nutrition and fresh queens we can. We are treating for nosema ceranae aggressively and hope for a better fall than this last one.

More bee deaths

Bees keeping dying, defying hopes that a rash of bee death/colony collapse headlines we experienced in the recent past are merely sensationalistic accounts that somehow got it wrong. This time the story is from Italy, and here is the link to the USDA FAS report:

Italian beekeepers and environmentalists are once again sounding the alarm regarding the unprecedented deaths of more than 40,000 bees over the last few months. In 2007, the population dropped by 50 percent. Industry representatives maintain that the decline in the bee population is primarily due to the use of pesticides. According to UNAAPI, Italian National Union of Beekeepers, the latest disaster to hit the nation's honeybee population has coincided with the planting of maize. While drought and disease could also be factors, the key suspect remains insecticide and the use of artificial forms of nicotine called neonicotinoids. Neonicotinoids is used for seed treatment. It is estimated that in 2007, approximately 200,000 beehives disappeared in Italy causing a massive drop in honey output, with agricultural damages over 250 million Euro. The Italian regions most affected by bee deaths are Piedmont and Lombardy, however, there have been bee deaths also in Veneto, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany and the center-north regions. During the 1990’s France severely limited the use of neonicotinoids following a large loss of bees. However, Italy has yet to ban/limit the use of neonicotinoids. The Italian Ministry of Agriculture is presently reviewing the possibility of issuing a moratorium on neonicotinoids, including a constant monitoring of the situation.
Meanwhile, UNAAPI has also urged the Italian Government to petition the EU for a European assessment on the impact of chemical substances on bees. According to UNAAPI, Italy accounts for 33% of the total amount of insecticide used each year in the EU, but has less than 10% of EU farm land. The impact of recent bee deaths on agriculture in Italy could be very serious. According to Italy's leading agricultural union, Coldiretti, a third of all farming
produce depends on insect pollination, of which 80% is carried out by bees. Coldiretti has noted that, “Should bees disappear it would not only destroy Italy's 25 million Euro honey industry but also affect most fruit crops, including apples, pears, almonds, peaches, kiwi, chestnuts, tomatoes, zucchini, soy, cherries, melons and citrus fruit.” The Italian bee industry is worth 1.6 billion Euro annually, with each hive generating about 1,240 Euro. Coldiretti has even gone so far as to ask the Italian government to revoke accords to test nine crops created with genetically modified organisms (GMOs), claiming that use of GMOs could be contributing to the demise of the native bee population.

Bees:Can you hear them now?

A report published in the UK's The Independent asks "Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?" The UK's Sun's headline writer labeled that paper's story "Mobiles kills millions of bees."

From the Independent:

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.
They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.
The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.
The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.
CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.
Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."
The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".
No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks.
German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines.
Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause.
Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: "I am convinced the possibility is real."


TK: We can't bank this theory based on two stories in the British tabloids, but it does raise questions. Add colony collapse as one more strike against mobile phones: distracted drivers, brain tumors, lower sperm count, and as the article points out, "text thumb," a form of repetitive stress injury. I liked the reference to abandoned hives appearing "like so many apian Mary Celestes," The Mary Celeste was a ghost ship found in 1872 off the coast of Portugal.