Neonicotinoids cause massive honeybee deaths

by Heather Pilatic

In the last few weeks beekeepers have reported staggering losses in Minnesota, Nebraska and Ohio after their hives foraged on pesticide-treated corn fields. Indiana too, two years ago. What's going on in the Corn Belt?

No farmer in their right mind wants to poison pollinators. When I spoke with one Iowa corn farmer in January and told him about the upcoming release of a Purdue study confirming corn as a major pesticide exposure route for bees, his face dropped with worn exasperation. He looked down for a moment, sighed and said, "You know, I held out for years on buying them GE seeds, but now I can't get conventional seeds anymore. They just don't carry 'em."

This leaves us with two questions: 1) What do GE seeds have to do with neonicotinoids and bees? and 2) How can an Iowa corn farmer find himself feeling unable to farm without poisoning pollinators? In other words, where did U.S. corn cultivation go wrong?

The short answer to both questions starts with a slow motion train wreck that began in the mid-1990s: Corn integrated pest management (IPM) fell apart at the seams. Rather, it was intentionally unraveled by Bayer and Monsanto.

Honey bees caught in the cross-fire

Corn is far from the only crop treated by neonicotinoids, but it is the largest use of arable land in North America, and honey bees rely on corn as a major protein source. At least 94 percent of the92 million acres of corn planted across the U.S. this year will have been treated with either clothianidin or thiamethoxam (another neonicotinoid).

As we head into peak corn planting season throughout the U.S. Midwest, bees will once again "get it from all sides" as they:

• fly through clothianidin-contaminated planter dust;
• gather clothianidin-laced corn pollen, which will then be fed to emerging larva;
• gather water from acutely toxic, pesticide-laced guttation droplets; and/or
• gather pollen and nectar from nearby fields where forage sources such as dandelions have taken up these persistent chemicals from soil that's been contaminated year on year since clothianidin's widespread introduction into corn cultivation in 2003.

GE corn & neonicotinoid seed treatments go hand-in-hand

Over the last 15 years, U.S. corn cultivation has gone from a crop requiring little-to-no insecticides and negligible amounts of fungicides, to a crop where the average acre is grown from seeds treated or genetically engineered to express three different insecticides (as well as a fungicide or two) before being sprayed prophylactically with RoundUp (an herbicide) and a new class of fungicides that farmers didn't know they "needed" before the mid-2000s.
A series of marketing ploys by the pesticide industry undergird this story. It's about time to start telling it, if for no other reason than to give lie to the oft-repeated notion that there is no alternative to farming corn in a way that poisons pollinators. We were once -- not so long ago -- on a very different path.

How corn farming went off the rails

In the early 1990s, we were really good at growing corn using bio-intensive integrated pest management (bio-IPM). In practice, that meant crop rotations, supporting natural predators, using biocontrol agents like ladybugs and as a last resort, using chemical controls only after pests had been scouted for and found. During this time of peak bio-IPM adoption, today's common practice of blanketing corn acreage with "insurance" applications of various pesticides without having established the need to do so would have been unthinkable. It's expensive to use inputs you don't need, and was once the mark of bad farming.

Then, in the mid-to-late 1990s, GE corn and neonicotinoid (imidacloprid) seed treatments both entered the market -- the two go hand-in-hand, partly by design and partly by accident. Conditions for the marketing of both products were ripe due to a combination of factors:

• regulatory pressures and insect resistance had pushed previous insecticide classes off the market, creating an opening for neonicotinoids to rapidly take over global marketshare;
• patented seeds became legally defensible, and the pesticide industry gobbled up the global seed market; and
• a variant of the corn rootworm outsmarted soy-corn rotations, driving an uptick in insecticide use around 1995-96.

Then, as if on cue, Monsanto introduced three different strains of patented, GE corn between 1997 and 2003 (RoundUp Ready, and two Bt-expressing variants aimed at controlling the European Corn Borer and corn root worm). Clothianidin entered the U.S. market under conditional registration in 2003, and in 2004 corn seed companies began marketing seeds treated with a 5X level of neonicotinoids (1.25 mg/seed vs. .25).

... and in the space of a decade, U.S. corn acreage undergoes a ten-fold increase in average insecticide use. By 2007, the average acre of corn has more than three systemic insecticides -- both Bt traits and a neonicotinoid. Compare this to the early 1990s, when only an estimated 30-35 percent of all corn acreage were treated with insecticides at all.

Adding fuel to the fire, in 2008 USDA's Federal Crop Insurance Board of Directors approved reductions in crop insurance premiums for producers who plant certain Bt corn hybrids. By 2009,40 percent of corn farmers interviewed said they did not have access to elite (high-yielding) non-Bt corn seed. It is by now common knowledge that conventional corn farmers have a very hard time finding seed that is not genetically engineered and treated with neonicotinoids.

Enter fungicides

In 2007, what's left of corn IPM was further unraveled with the mass marketing of a new class of fungicides (strobilurins) for use on corn as yield "boosters." Before this, fungicide use on corn was so uncommon that it didn't appear in Crop Life's 2002 National Pesticide Use Database. But in the last five years, the pesticide industry has aggressively and successfully marketed prophylactic applications of fungicides on corn as yield and growth enhancers, and use has grown dramatically as a result. This despite the fact that these fungicides work as marketed less than half the time. According to this meta-analysis of efficacy studies, only "48% of treatments resulted in a yield response greater than the economic break-even value of 6 bu/acre."

Back to the bees. Neonicotinoids are known to synergize with certain fungicides to increase the toxicity of the former to honey bees up to 1,000-fold, and fungicides may be key culprits in undermining beneficial bee microbiota that do things like make beebread nutritious and support immune response against gut pathogens like Nosema. Fungicide use in corn is likewise destroying beneficial fungi in many cropping systems, and driving the emergence of resistant strains.

As with insecticides and herbicides, so too with fungicide use on corn: Corn farmers are stuck on a pesticide treadmill on high gear, with a pre-emptively pressed turbo charge button (as "insurance"). Among the many casualties are our honey bees who rely on corn's abundant pollen supply.

Keeping us all tethered to the pesticide treadmill is expected behavior from the likes of Monsanto. But what boggles the mind is that all of this is being aided and abetted by a USDA that ties cheap crop insurance to planting patented Bt corn, and a Congress that refuses to tie subsidized crop insurance in the Farm Bill to common-sense conservation practices like bio-intensive IPM. Try explaining that with a waggle dance.

Heather Pilatic is Co-director, Pesticide Action Network North America

New meaning to a "talk about birds and bees"

Bee pollinating a peach tree flower


The Toronto Star's gardening columnist Mark Cullen recently published an article about the importance of bees to humanity's food supply, and i found it so inspiring I have decided to share it with our readers.

Time to talk about the birds and the bees

April 01, 2011

by Mark Cullen, Special to the Star

Father to pre pubescent son: “It is time for you and me to talk about the birds and the bees.”

Son: “Sure Dad. What do you want to know?”

I am impressed by many of the things that kids learn about in school today that were never talked about in my day. Subjects like multiculturalism, character, fairness, recycling, worm composting and bullying are just a few. But ask a kid today about the importance of fostering honey bees in the neighbourhood and chances are he will give you a blank stare. In fact, most adults do not seem to understand that the future of civilization as we know it depends on a thriving culture of honey bees.

Albert Einstein said, “Mankind will not survive the honeybees’ disappearance for more than five years.”

What, you might ask, did Einstein know that the rest of us don’t? I wondered the same thing and did some digging for answers. What I came up with is surprising, alarming and hopeful all at the same time.

Bees are nature’s primary pollinators. Given that many of the plants that produce our food are pollinated by bees, we would be doing ourselves a service to pay attention to survival. Reports over the last six years indicate that their population is in steep decline throughout much of the world, including where you live. Nurturing and protecting them seems like a good idea.

Perfect and Imperfect Flowers

It is true that many plants have “perfect” flowers, complete with both male and female parts. This might lead you to think that a pollinator with wings is hardly necessary. Your tomato plants, for example, do not require pollination from bees or hummingbirds or butterflies. But any experienced gardener will tell you that the greater the population of bees in a neighbourhood, the more productive the tomatoes, peppers and potatoes (all members of the same solanaceae family). The pollinating activity of bees is beneficial even when it is not entirely necessary.

“Imperfect” flowers exist on a host of food plants, including all members of the cucurbit or squash family. They have female and male flowers, usually on the same plants though not always, which require a visit from one of nature’s flying pollinators in order to mix things up. It is the transfer of pollen from flower to flower (anther to stamen, to be exact) that fertilizes your pumpkin or cucumber and nothing does it quite as efficiently as bees. About one-third of everything that we eat has been pollinated by a bee, according to Cathy Kozma, past chair of the Toronto Beekeepers Co-operative.

Bees dig in to a nice squash flower looking for food and come out covered in pollen grains. I have heard that they buzz a lot when they are in the middle of the flower in an effort to dig as deeply as possible for what they are really looking for. Buzzing is nature’s way of removing the pollen and maximizing the exposure of it to the body and pollen pockets of the bee, so the theory goes. Like power sanding a wood-working project: buzzing makes bees one of nature’s most efficient pollinators.

Bees in Decline

The population of bees is in decline, this is a fact. In Southern Ontario we have experienced about a 30 to 40 per cent decline in bee population since 2005. In other parts of the continent, the decline is much greater, especially in arid areas.

According to Kozma, it is because of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). While there is no one cause for it, CCD is blamed on:

• The Varroa Destructor mite.

• The loss of natural habitat.

• Monoculture agricultural practices.

• Widespread pesticide use.

What can the average hobby gardener do to help?

Considering that the average bee performs her work (and they are all female) between a six and 10 kilometre radius of their home, there is lots that you can do. First of all I recommend that you plant plants that are attractive and useful to bees. My list includes:

• Bachelors Buttons an easy to grow annual.

• Borage, a useful herb and soil enhancer.

• Russian sage, a metre-high reliable perennial that flowers for up to eight weeks.

• Bee Balm or monarda, which is one of my favourite perennials for the sun. Grows up to one metre.

• Sunflowers. The kids will love these, too.

• Sage, a useful herb and rather fragrant.

• Oregano. Plant one and enjoy a lot. An aggressive perennial groundcover in sun.

• Basil. You want this for your tomatoes come September anyway.

In addition, Kozma recommends that we:

• Plant larger patches of flowering plants to encourage bee foraging.

• Diversify your blooming plant portfolio. Have bee-friendly plants in bloom throughout the season.

• Avoid the use of pesticides.

• Let some of your garden naturalize. This will encourage bees to nest and tunnel without being disturbed. Note: bumble bees nest in the ground; some native bees build their nests in dead raspberry canes.

• Provide a constant source of water. A hive will consume about half a litre of water a day. Put out small containers of clean water and float a small piece of wood in it to provide a landing strip and access to the water.

Want to Learn More?

Whether you want to foster bees in your neighbourhood, help out the Toronto Beekeepers Co-operative or have a hive in your own yard (for which you will need about half acre), here are some suggestions of where you can learn more:

• Toronto Beekeepers Co-operative: An active group since 2001, the TBC’s mission is to “create an opportunity for Torontonians interested in working with bees to learn about hive ecology and maintenance, honey and products of the hive, and gain hands-on beekeeping experience in a supportive environment.” More information at www.torontobees.ca.

• They have placed bee hives at Downsview Park, Evergreen Brickworks, Fairmont Royal York rooftop and most recently at the Toronto Botanical Garden.

• They are active presenters at the Evergreen Brickworks Farmers Market, Downsview’s Farming in the City and the Royal Winter Fair.

• A series of seminars are being offered at the Toronto Botanical Garden aimed at novice beekeepers. For details go to www.torontobotanicalgarden.ca.

• Read: Keeping the Bees, by Laurence Packer (2010); Sweetness and Light, by Hattie Ellis; Fruitless Fall, by Rowan Jacobsen.

“I feel privileged to have the opportunity to get up close and personal with honeybees,” says Kozma, “to teach others about their incredible world, and I see this as an easy way to make a significant contribution to making my world a better place.”

Touché. Next time I am called upon to talk to a youngster about the birds and the bees I think I will call Cathy Kozma.

I urge you to support your local beekeepers by buying their bee products. I can assure you that this is a labour of love, not a profitable venture. Sources are available at their website, TorontoBees.ca .

CCD link to neonicitinoids deepens; honey bees colony collapse disorder multiple causes

One of the most important issues requiring the attention of the new President of the USA will be ensuring the safety of the honeybee population and thus America's food crops.

From LandLineMag.com:

SPECIAL SERIES: Bee crisis – OOIDA member credited with discovery
Editor’s note: Staff Writer Clarissa Kell-Holland searches for answers from OOIDA member David Hackenberg of Lewisburg, PA, who is credited with discovering colony collapse disorder or CCD, a mystery that is decimating bee hives worldwide. (To read Part One click here. For Part Two click here.)

Part Three: Lawsuit filed on behalf of honeybees

OOIDA Member and beekeeper David Hackenberg and other beekeepers he talks to regularly are worried that a seed treatment being used in corn and soybeans is slowly poisoning their bees. The treatment, known as neonicitinoid, is a nicotine-based product that became readily available in the U.S. around 2004, about the time he and other beekeepers started noticing a decline in their bees’ immune systems.

His beekeeper contacts in Canada started noticing problems with their bees in 2002, according to Hackenberg, after neonicitinoid insecticides were used on potato crops in Eastern Canada. Then clover was planted on that same land the next year for cover crop. The neonicitinoid wasn’t being used on crops in the U.S. at that point, so when his Canadian beekeeper friend called to tell him this new chemical seemed to be “killing his bees,” Hackenberg told him it was “probably just mites.”

But when the product started becoming widely used in the U.S. around 2004, Hackenberg said he started noticing his bees’ immune systems were weakening. It wasn’t until CCD hit his hives in 2006, though, that he focused on insecticides as a possible source.

In August of 2008, the Natural Resources Defense Council filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to force it to disclose studies that were supposed to be done on the effect pesticides are having on honeybees.

In 2003, EPA granted a registration to a new pesticide called clothianidin, manufactured by Bayer CropScience. Josh Mogerman, public information officer for the NRDC, said registration came with a caveat that the company study its product’s effects on the bees.

Mogerman told Land Line Magazine in August that the NRDC filed the lawsuit only after the EPA failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request, filed on July 17.

He said the EPA still has not provided the studies Bayer CropScience was to have completed at least two years ago. Those studies could be an important resource for scientists and researchers studying CCD.

“The federal government needs to do much more to address why these bees are dying and disappearing,” Mogerman said.

Germany and France have both banned the pesticide product, known as clothianidin, because of concerns about its impact on bees. CCD has also been reported in Canada and Italy as well.

The British Beekeepers’ Association is reporting that one in three honeybees did not survive winter and spring, although it has not yet been confirmed that CCD is the source of the problem.

Mogerman said scientists on staff at the NRDC say there is a possible connection between clothianidin and honeybees’ collapse.

“If you read up on what this product is supposed to do to pests, it is supposed to compromise their nervous system and limit their ability to navigate. And that’s one of the things that is central to CCD,” he said.

After losing a significant number of bees in the previous two seasons and having to pump a huge amount of money back in to keep his beekeeping business operating, Hackenberg has seen his fuel costs and operating costs go up as well.

“In the U.S., we truck a lot of bees,” he said. “Most people don’t have the foggiest idea what goes on and how much bee movement there is in this country.”

Currently, many beekeepers are planning to go to the West Coast for the almond pollination. Hackenberg estimates that beekeepers will truck between 1 million and 2 million hives of bees out to California this year to pollinate the almond crop. That breaks down to about 500 hives loaded on each truck.

There are few opportunities for backhauls when you are hauling bees, especially on short runs like to Maine for blueberry pollination, Hackenberg said. He said he’s paying on average about $3.50 per mile to get his freight moved.

Adee Honey Farms – one year later

Richard Adee of Adee Honey Farms owns the largest beekeeping operation in the U.S. He lost more than 40 percent of his bees that he trucked out to California in the fall of 2007 in preparation to pollinate the almond crop, which starts in early February.

Around Dec. 1, 2007, he said his bees were looking real “nice,” but Adee said things went downhill quickly from that point.

“All of a sudden they started collapsing through the rest of December and through most of January and early February, so it was a big hit,” he said. “We lost a lot of them before they started pollinating the almonds, so we had to scramble all over the U.S. to find bees to fill our contracts, which we were fortunate to do. That really takes a toll on a person.”


Online article about Beehives Colony Collapse Disorder - Part Three


Land Line Article Part Two: Toxic cocktail may be causing bee collapse


LandLineMag.com Article Part One: What’s happening to our bees?


From ResponseSource.com:

The honeybee crisis: paradoxical findings deepen the CCD mystery
Submitted by: Palam Communications
Wednesday, 22 October 2008
Vita urges beekeepers to become more proactive to prevent bee deaths

Beekeeping practices must change to ensure that honeybees survive and thrive, says Dr Max Watkins of Vita (Europe) Ltd, the honeybee health specialist, following one of the worst honey harvests in the UK and Northern Europe for many years. Although poor weather conditions may have badly affected the harvest an array of unexplained research findings indicates a more sinister and long-term challenge.

In recent decades, beekeeping has had to change radically to cope with the arrival of the varroa mite, a honeybee parasite. Minimalist or reactive management is no longer enough. Now with the threat of CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) and other unexplained colony deaths, beekeepers must now become more vigilant and pro-active and use emerging pre-emptive bio-technologies from trusted sources to avert beekeeping catastrophe.

“Although the bad weather has had a significant impact on reducing this year’s UK honey harvest by something in the order of 30-50%, something more complex is afoot,” said Dr Max Watkins, Technical Director at Vita (Europe) Ltd. “I have never before seen so many paradoxical research findings and anecdotal reports in beekeeping.

“Although I firmly believe that varroa is at the core of the problem, the developing interplay of other factors while unsettling for beekeepers, is fascinating yet perplexing for researchers. The answers can only come from a thorough scientific approach. Investigations are underway across the globe and many suspects and accomplices are under suspicion – viruses once of little consequence are now becoming more prominent killers, but a clear pattern is elusive. One novel line of enquiry in Israel is focusing on “gene silencing” in an attempt to suppress the expression of bee viruses in the honeybee genome.

“Controlling varroa is now merely the first – and still absolutely essential – line of defence. Other action is also now necessary to keep colonies healthy. As a honeybee health company we are investing heavily in researching new bio-technologies and treatments. Already we have introduced two Vita Feeds to boost honeybee immune systems and all-round health, and we are now developing several new potential products which we expect will become vital weapons in the beekeeper’s armoury. One strand of our R&D is focusing on new alternative anti-varroa treatments and another is looking at ways of inhibiting microbes which are implicated in the death of colonies.”

The array of strange recent findings, many of them aired at the recent international conference of the Society of Invertebrate Pathology at the University of Warwick, UK, organised by Rothamsted IACR and sponsored by Vita, include:

Heavy bee losses are not new. They have been recorded several times during the history of beekeeping in the USA and Europe, with some symptoms similar to those attributed to what is currently termed Colony Collapse Disorder. Denis van Engelsdorp, Pennsylvania State Apiarist, USA recounted such experiences in American beekeeping history. Mike Brown of the National Bee Unit, UK, has also pointed out previously that largely unexplained heavy bee losses have occurred at intervals throughout Europe in the past. It may be that what is now termed Colony Collapse Disorder is not new at all, but is a variant of a recurring syndrome.

Viruses are implicated in CCD, but no single one has been identified as being “the cause”. Colonies with CCD apparently present with multiple viral infection, usually with four or more viruses: commonly Deformed Wing Virus (DMV), Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV), Black Queen Cell Virus (BQCV), and Acute Paralysis Virus (APV) out of a total of 18 viruses discovered widely in US honeybee colony samples.

Varroa and nosema are also implicated in CCD and varroa saliva is now known to destabilise the immune system of honeybees. Dr Diana Cox-Foster of Penn State University, USA discussed this briefly in relation to the impact of viruses and other secondary infections where the bee’s immune system is already compromised.

Viruses can be found in almost all hive contents – and even in pollen on plants – before it enters the hive. Other pollinators, including wasps and bumble bees, have also been discovered to be infected with IAPV and DWV.

Viruses don't always debilitate: infection can be covert – Dr Elke Genersh of the Institut for Bee Research, Hohen Neuendorf, Germany showed that it depends on the threshold and the presence of infected varroa.

Full article on multiple causes of colony collapse disorder in beehives