neonicotinoid

Minnesota's Gov. Dayton Gets Down To Beesnis

gregladen — Fri, 26 Aug 2016 18:48:24 +0000

Minnesota's Gov. Dayton Gets Down To Beesnis

Using executive power, Governor Mark Dayton, recognized as one of the best governors in the US, has laid out protections for pollinators in Minnesota.

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture is ordered to implement recently developed recommendations related to neonicotinoid pesticides. Potential users must demonstrate a real need for the products, and use them properly. This and other state agencies will coordinate and develop a Pollinator Protection Team to develop and implement statewide goals, and keep track of things. The Governor created a Committee on Pollinator Protection to advise the Governor and state agencies, including experts on conservation, agriculture, etc.

The use of pesticides on public land will be reviewed and adapted to be more pollinator friendly. This also applies to landfills, transportation related lands, and other state government run properties. There will be no neonicotinoid pesticide products of an kind used in certain state facilities, and other uses will be seriously limited.

The objective is to cut down on pesticide use in a way that does minimal damage to agriculture, and to enhance pollinator health.

“Bees and other pollinators play a critical role in supporting both our environment, and our economy,” said Governor Dayton. “This order directs state government to take immediate action to alleviate the known risks that pollinators face. It also will create a new taskforce to study the issues impacting pollinators and recommend long-term solutions.”

I note that some of the press coverage goes ahead to make the claim that there will be opposition to this plan. But there isn't any visible opposition to the plan. Perhaps it would be better to wait until some materializes before reporting that it exists. Looking at you, Star Tribune.

Here is the executive order.

gregladen Fri, 08/26/2016 - 14:48

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Pesticide confuses bees

dr. dolittle — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 18:34:08 +0000

Pesticide confuses bees

Image of honeybee By Fir0002 (Own work) [GFDL 1.2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Guelph found that the use of certain pesticides impacts wildflower pollination by bees. According to a quote by study author Nigel Raine, published in CBCNews, the use of neonicotinoid-type pesticides "modify the way in which information flows through the nervous system."

The research team found that bees gather pollen more frequently, but less efficiently, when exposed to the pesticide compared to bees that have not been exposed to neonicotinoids, such as thiamethoxam. Moreover, pesticide-exposure altered the types of flowers the bees visited.

The findings of this study may have major implications as bees are important pollinators for crops as well as the maintenance of ecosystems. Thus, one would hope, the findings may inform the use of pesticides to avoid negatively impacting the behavior of bees.

Sources:

CBCNews

Stanley DA, Raine NE. Chronic exposure to a neonicotinoid pesticide alters the interactions between bumblebees and wild plants. Functional Ecology. 2016. doi: 10.1111/1365-2435.12644

dr. dolittle Wed, 03/16/2016 - 14:34

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What is killing the bees? It's the neonicotinoids, for sure.

gregladen — Sun, 11 May 2014 06:50:50 +0000

What is killing the bees? It's the neonicotinoids, for sure.

Probably.

I want to start out by welcoming all you bee experts who think it is not the neonicotinoids, or that it is not so simple, to make your case in the comments. There is a great deal of controversy over what is causing bees to die off. That controversy even impinges on how we describe the thing we are talking about. Notice that I've not used the term "colony collapse disorder" because that is a term that may have been misused, or at least, that people who know stuff have noted has been used incorrectly thus mucking up the discussion.

Here's the thing. There is a bee crisis. Specifically, bees are an important part of modern horticulture and industrialized farming in that they pollinate many crops. Every year professional bee keepers supply bees for this purpose. These are generally not native bees just doing their jobs, but rather, just as much part of the modern technology of growing food as are combines and crop dusters. Every year, the bee keepers put their bees away (more or less) for the winter, and in the spring, the wintered-over bee colonies are ready to go to work. Every year, a certain number of bee colonies do not survive that process, but they are replaced by other new colonies that fork off from the colonies that do survive. In recent decades, the number of bee colonies in this commercial setting that don't survive the cycle has gone up, and this is associated with other worrying variables such as reduced population size in individual colonies, etc.

There has been a big fight over what causes the collapse. One of the primary suspects is neonicotinoids, a chemical that is spewed across the fields in order to kill insects. It was suggested some time ago that the decline of a particular insect, bees, might be caused by the wide spread use of a chemical designed to kill insects, neonicotinoids.

Who would have thought?

The idea was, of course, preposterous, because why would insect killing juice kill insects? Also, Big Ag owns a lot of the researchers, right? A lot of people are going to lose their jobs (as Vice Presidents In Charge of Killing Insects, or whatever) if it turns out that their insecticides kill insects. And, a very large amount of the research done these days in Ag is done by people with professorships, labs, fellowship, grants, etc with names like "Cargill" and "Monsanto" ... which of course means NOTHING ... why would paying for people's careers ever influence what they do with those careers.

Anyway, I'm told that the jury is in and neonicotinoids are convicted. I am personally not going to support this argument one way or another for one simple reason: I don't know what I'm talking about. I do not know enough about the details of how neonicotinoids kill insects, so I certainly can't easily understand the process whereby neonicotinoids DON'T affect bees in particular, so I'm certainly not going to understand the process of how neonicotinoids kill insects but not bees but end up killing the bees anyway.

But you can read about it here: Environment: Smoking gun in honey bee die-off?

Big Ag. Can't live with it, can't live without it.

(In case anyone didn't get the subtext here I'll repeat one item in clearer language: The bees are part of Big Ag. They are not part of the natural environment being messed up by Big Ag. So this is kind of like one kind of tractor being run over and crushed by another kind of factor.)

OK, start fighting:

gregladen Sun, 05/11/2014 - 02:50

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colony collapse disorder

neonicotinoid

Previously, the main contenders were immune suppression by Varroa mites and the israeli acute paralysis virus.

To what extent are these proposed contributing factors still relevant?

Well, a positive finding about one cause can't (or at least, usually won't) be a direct argument against another cause, but if there is a handful of possible causes and only one of them ends up looking strong, then the others may fade away.

(Also, since this is biology/ecology, finding a primary cause does not necessarily eliminate other causes!)

Many years ago I saw a TV show on use of bees to pollinate alfalfa. I think it is one of the best nature shows I have seen. Unfortunately I cannot immediately Google it. None of the bees, as I recall, were the usual honey bee. There were solitary ground nesting bees, and carpenter leaf cutting bees. There was an 18 wheeler filled with gang-drilled 2 x 4's full of carpenter bees. Go to the field in the morning and open the sides. One scene where the lady is telling the spray plane to hold off because all the bees are not back in. Maybe you can find it.

When I search for that the only thing I find is your comment here on this page!

PBS Nature program Silence of the Bees had something similar (sort of):

http://livedash.ark.com/transcript/nature-(silence_of_the_bees)/1020/KT…

The major use of neonicotinoids isn't really as an "insecticide", it is used as a seed dressing. That is, it is applied to seeds before they are planted.

Why?

Because it increases yields.

The effects of plant growth by neonicotinoids are not only mediated through reduction of insect predation, there are also stimulatory effects due to hormesis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20876120

via activation of stress response pathways. These stress response pathways are non-specific and can be activated in other ways. The activation causes increased growth in many types of plants.

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1236706813

It is the stimulatory effects via hormesis that cause increased yields (mostly). That the neonicotinoids also are toxic to insects is a coincidence.

The toxicity is due to disruptions of acetylcholine metabolism. Acetylcholine is used as a signaling molecule, so the effects of interference with acetylcholine signaling need to be examined over the entire lifespan, including while the acetylcholine-utilizing pathways are developing (before pupation) and while they are self-regulating their utilization of acetylcholine. Acetylcholine is used to regulate the function of nerves, so behaviors are what need to be looked at.

The effects at the earlies stages and at the lowest doses are endocrine disruption effects. These can have life-long effects by changing the thresholds for activation of signaling pathways. The effects might not show up until late in life. The last stage of bee life is foraging. If foraging behaviors are disrupted, then the hive may not gather sufficient resources to survive.

The main use of neonicotinoids is as seed-dressing compounds, not as a specific response to a specific insect threat. That is poor pesticide practice, but the neonicotinoids are not being used as insecticides for these plant growth stimulating effects.

I suspect this is the same reason that methyl mercury was used as a seed dressing compound. It increased yields.

One of the reasons against the neonicotenoids is because the bee-killing phenomena is older than the use of neonicotenoids.
I'm an agronomist (in a tropical country), and we use a neonicotenoid (tiametoxan) for killing the sucking bugs in rice, and other leaf-eating and sucking bugs in other crops. It method of actions is by ingestion.
On of the advantages of that neonicotenoid is its specificity against the crops pest and relatively harmless against other insects.
A good question is if the polen or the nectar of the crops has that neonicotenoid, and the bees eat it and die, but I think the persistence is against that. Like an agronomist I prefer not to abandon that pesticide, but is difficult to find reliable information to an agronomist level.

edivimo, what pollinates the rice? I've lived on tropical farms that grow rice (dry country, African) but somehow I don't know what pollinates the crop. I was assuming rice was wind pollenated.

One could ask the question, if neonicotenoid is being used (carefully) on crops where honey bee pollination is not being relied on, it should not make too much difference. It may be that if we want large scale production of crops that rely on hone bees that we can't use neonicotenoids in those areas.

When seeds coated with neonicotinoids are planted, the neonicotinoid particulates get blown around and picked up by bees. For example the tree in the Target parking lot that was sprayed because aphids were causing sap to drip on cars.

Bees can also get exposure from pollen and nectar from plants treated with neonicotinoids. This is true even for non-food crops.

http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/25000-bumble-bees-found-dead…

One of the largest uses of neonicotinoid insecticides is as a seed dressing on maize. Maize does not rely on bees for pollination.

http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2012/120111KrupkeBees.html

Rice is mostly self-pollinating but bees and other hymenoptera usually are seen recollecting pollen in rice fields, at least in this part of the world (Central America).
Other point to mention is that commercial bees here are africanized bees, they're tougher, but they're not used for any agricultural pollinization.
Instead there is a lot of wild tropical insects for pollinization, so here is not a problem.

“So you recommend that pregnant women eat organic produce?” I asked Grandjean, a Danish-born researcher who travels around the world studying delayed effects of chemical exposure on children.
“That’s what I advise people who ask me, yes. It’s the best way of preventing exposure to pesticides.” Grandjean estimates that there are about 45 organophosphate pesticides on the market, and “most have the potential to damage a developing nervous system.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/the-toxins-that-thr…

Greg - it's two specific neonicotinoids, imidacloprid and clothianidin, that appear to be at fault. See http://www.bulletinofinsectology.org/pdfarticles/vol67-2014-125-130lu.p… for the actual study.

...sublethal exposure of imidacloprid and clothianidin affected the winterizations of healthy bee colonies that subsequently leads to CCD

That two studies presented by cosmicomics and Smarter... are interesting.
If only that two neonicotenoids are the problem, it means is not necessary prohibitions in my country, because here the bee colonies doesn't winterize.
Other fact is that we substitute the nicotenoids pesticides usually with organophosphates pesticides, to save costs, and if the neoniotenoids are forbidden, the organophosphates will be used.

I googled around looking for the program on bees and alfalfa. I found a youtube thing on carpenter bees being used to pollinate alfalfa. There was a comment that they were 20 times as efficient as honey bees.

Honey bees evolved to pollinate widely disperses highly seasonal flowering rainforest trees in an environment with very effective honey predators. I'm not surprised they are not real efficient at temperate grasses!

I find this an interesting coincidence:

Neonicotinoids being used to stimulate rapid growth in plants.

Antibiotics being used to stimulate rapid growth in animals.

In both cases, a side-effect of these compounds is being used as a sought-after primary effect, analogous to off-list prescribing of drugs in human medicine (e.g. viagra started out as a medication for treating heart abnormalities, until a bunch of male patients reported "a curious side-effect").

In both cases there is a "second order side-effect" that gets dumped on the public as an externalized cost. In the case of antibiotics and resistant bacteria the 2nd order side-effect was foreseeable and was foreseen in detail. In the case of neonicotinoids, it probably wasn't.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect the makers of medications and insecticides etc. to have to test for 2nd order side-effects (as distinct from general medical and ecological safety) if for no other reason than combinatorial explosion. However it's entirely reasonable to regulate medicines, pesticides, etc., in such a manner as to absolutely prohibit off-list usage where public health or public safety are potentially at substantial risk, until/unless peer-reviewed research demonstrates safety and efficacy.

On the other hand, why should we worry?, just as long as there's enough food to feed the 1%, the rest of us should lose some weight anyway, right?

I don't believe Australia has a problem with CCD, so would be interesting to see if we use those neonicotinoids.

You are also welcome to come and collect our honey bees as they have become a problem in the Pilbara and Kimberley regions; they displace birds from tree hollows.

It is said that Australia has no CCD and yes, neonicotinoids are used there, but the agriculture industry is not the same, there are other differences.

I wonder what these pesticides and seed dressings are doing to the people that eat the produce.

Warmer winters?

A lot of our 'honey' industry is in native forests; we have a lot of flowering trees, so perhaps we don't notice as we don't dose our forests with neonicotinoids.

Nathan, good point.

Another point that usually is forgotten is about the emergence of CCD, that is not something new.
Mike the Mad Biologist has a year-old post Mike the Mad Biologist has a year-old post, about how the CCD is not a new phenomena, it can be traced back to 1869.
That's why my first intervention in this post was: "One of the reasons against the neonicotenoids is because the bee-killing phenomena is older than the use of neonicotenoids."

Edivimo, yes, I covered that here as well. The CCD issue may, the terminology might be arguesd about and a certain number of colonies collapse anyway so it may be a matter of degree

Just a small correction - this idea that neonicotinoids are being used to stimulate plant growth is incorrect.

Wikipedia:
Most neonicotinoids are water-soluble and break down slowly in the environment, so they can be taken up by the plant and provide protection from insects as the plant grows.

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/05/06/16554/

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2012/03/30/bee-colony-collapse-could-…

GregH, you might want to read a bit more about it.

http://www.syngenta-us.com/media/emedia_kits/thiamethoxamvigorus/media/…

A link via Mike the Mad Biologist covers the problems with this claim, and it sounds very sensible.

http://turbidplaque.com/2014/05/colony-collapse-disorder-more-dead-bees…

Greg, thank you for the article pointing out that neOnics do indeed present a problem for our pollinators;honeybees and butterflies included. I do think however that it is a bit caustic to say that honeybees are part of Big Ag although I think I understand your point.
There are many non Big Ag bee guardians, enthusiasts and just plain mashochistic folks who are now getting into beekeeping to help them out. Big Ag is enslaving the honeybee may bee more appropriate as they are doing with our entire agricultural system, i.e., gmo and roundup the franken bride and groom of monsanto creation.
We need to take back our food , implement a sound and non sensational food growing system that does not rely on toxic chemicals and laboratory created seeds that destroy the balance between soil, sun, water , plant and those that inhabit the ecosystem, including humans.
Far too Much damage has been done to our world and far too much is at stake here to allow the corporate takeover of our beloved honeybees and fellow planet inhabitants.
Big Ag can only be defeated if we the people care enough to stop them and we awaken from the slumber of ingesting too many unhealthy foods laced with lies from the industry.
The GMA and Monsanto want to keep us in the dark about what they are allowing by deregulating all kinds of nonsense. we don't need gmo, but the industry is trying hard to sell it and to hide its effects from U.S citizens.
GMO and Neonicotinoids have both been banned in many EU and other countries around the world.
One thing folks can do is join their local March Against Monsanto happening in virtually every city and small towns around the USA and the World.
Solidarity against agricultural slavery and supporting our seed sovereignty is important more than ever if honeybees and other pollinators are going to ever have a chance. That goes for us as well.

The March Against Monsanto is May 24th in a city or town near you! If you cannot attend the march, you can go to just label it webpage and contact your legislators to let them know you want labels on gmo so you know what it is your food. http://www.mintpressnews.com/growing-support-for-march-against-monsanto…

Maria, good points. Let me put my complaints I context. Some of my best friends are bee keepers. But the End Of Civilization level issue is not about small bee keepers or even honey producers, it is about the big contracts servicing the almond groves and such. A friend of mine grows corn in her yard to eat. When I talk about Bog Ag in Minnesota, I'm talking about corn, but not her!

What do we do if we've planted these big box plants in our gardens? How long will it take for the soil and/or other plants to recover? This is infuriating!

The same symptom of CCD was experienced in France years ago, they labeled it "mad bee disease". They found that a pesticide named Gaucho and Poncho produced by Bayer was to blame. It started in 1994 when French farmers started using systemic pesticide treated seeds. They banned the use of it and the Bee problem stopped.. Go figure, now it is happening here and again Bayer is involved. In 2006 we started using systemic treated seeds and now we have the problem. Got to love corporate greed and the ignorance of the general population.

This is a "science blog"? How about some, you know, science? How about some citations and not just "I was told so"? Bee decline itself turned out to be bullshit, with numbers being higher than ever.

Stephen,

Yes, this is a science blog. And, you are a troll.

Nonetheless, it is a good idea to keep up on the latest. The post you comment on here was written three years ago, and this is a dynamically changing situation.

Here is a more recent item that should get you up to speed on what is happening:

https://phys.org/news/2016-05-deciphering-mysterious-decline-honey-bees…

And here is some peer reviewed literature you might want to take a look at:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v540/n7632/full/nature20588.html?W…

This recent paper done in your backyard says the jury is still out, since the ban in EU is still only three years old:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ps.4583/full

That will inform you, and others, but you are still probably going to remain a troll. Good luck with that!

Irony

"How about some citations and not just “I was told so”?"
followed by
"Bee decline itself turned out to be bullshit, with numbers being higher than ever."

EU will ban neonicotinoid pesticides to save the honey bees

gregladen — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:24:32 +0000

EU will ban neonicotinoid pesticides to save the honey bees

Being a bee is hard. I'm speaking specifically of the honey bee, Apis mellifera, the one that produces the honey you buy in the store. Many insects, and other critters, eat by finding food and then eating it, and then they do that for a while and now and then reproduce by finding a mate, laying eggs that they perhaps put in a good location but thereafter leave alone, etc. etc. But honey bees do all of these thing in a way that makes it seem like they are trying to make it harder for them than it is for everyone else. Much of the food that honey bees eat is gathered at rare and hard to find sites (flowers), carried back to a central place that may be quite far away, then processed. Offspring are produced by a very small subset of a large colony, using a system involving several individuals who make places for the queen to lay the eggs around. Larvae are then taken good care of and fed. This whole thing takes place in a hive which can only be effectively placed in one of a limited number of locations. Since there is processed food (honey) and larvae (also good to eat) all in one place, the bee colony must have multiple ways of protecting itself, including picking a good location, making the hive hard to get into, and having a hoard of suicidal stingers ready to die in defense of the nest. Beyond this, sneaky invaders, other insects that might try to sneak into the hive, must be identified by guards.

Navigation over long distances, communicating with other bees about newly found hard to get and far away sources of food, mechanisms of controlling reproduction within the colony, thermoregulation of the hive, building and maintaining architecture, species recognition, a mechanism of changing behavior among a number of different tasks (thermoregulation, foraging, building the hive, attacking selected invaders, swarming) ... Yeah, being a honey bee is hard.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is a thing where the colonies of bees in a given area are affected by something that causes the number of bees to reduce in population over time ... the worker bees seem to disappear ... so the colony dies. Think about all the things I mentioned above. Any small subset of these things could be disrupted to cause something like CCD. The transfer of information about where to go to find food, and the process of foraging and navigating to food sources and back involves a lot of different mechanisms; the disruption of any one or two of those mechanisms might cause worker bees to fly off and not come back. The process of foraging at distance and carrying back food requires a great deal of energy. Any part of the process of maintenance and distribution of food to worker bees could cause them to starve or reduce in energy level, causing them to not return to the hive. Leaving most of these tasks and mechanisms untouched and operational but adding a pathogen that demands more energy from individual bees could have a similar effect. In other words, in the absence of any good information about what causes CCD, it would be very hard to come up with a simple explanation for that phenomenon on the basis of what bees do normally. The phenomenon can also be caused by any two or three of a dozen things, such that the cause in any given case could be very different from the cause in a different case.

To this we can add another feature of honey bees. For the most part, we are talking about bees that are not living in their native habitats. Our honey comes from a subset of honey bees that have been to varying degrees domesticated, and that are living in a climate that is not where they originally evolved. Imagine going to a region where chickens are grown but that is environmentally very different from the region where a chicken like bird lives normally, and deleting one or two of the key things we do to keep those chickens alive. I.e, leave all the chickens out for the winter in Montana. Not feed them. Etc. There would be "Coop collapse disorder" in no time. The fact that honey bees exist in a sort of liminal state of wildness (they forage in the wild, although the "wild" may be human maintained farm fields and orchards) and domestication (their hives are generally built and maintained by humans who may also provide heat and protection from predators) together with the fact that honey bees have undergone some degree of selection (to make them a bit less fierce, for instance) may mean that the complex web of physiological and behavioral adaptations that make bees "work" properly is somewhat more delicate than it might be for wild bees living in their native tropics.

I don't mean to give the impression that bee experts have no idea what causes CCD. They do have ideas, evidence, and there has been a fair amount of research done (below are links to a few key blog posts that summarize much of this). The point I'm making here is that the complexity of CCD and the difficulty in understanding this phenomenon should not be a surprise.

Just now, the European Union has decided to implement a regulation that bans a certain kind of insecticide, neonicotinoid, from use in their purview, because it is possible that this insecticide has a negative impact (perhaps multiple negative impacts) on bees, contributing to CCD. This may be a good idea, even if the insecticide in question is not "the" primary cause of CCD, if the chemical simply makes CCD a much more likely thing to happen. Banning it may be like giving a patient with some horrid infection an IV of fluids. The IV is not directly treating the infection, but the patient may require the support provided by the IV (and other things they do for you in a hospital, like the great food and a TV strapped to the ceiling) may be what it takes to allow other treatments, or the patient's own immune system, to bring the individual to a state of better health.

The ban was not universally supported. Voting against the bad were the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Austria and Portugal; voting for the bad were Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Spain, France, Cyprus, Germany, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia and Sweden. Ireland, Lithuania, Finland and Greece abstained. This resulted in a vote that would not automatically institute the ban, but a decision by the controlling commission to move forward with the ban was made possible, and that is what has happened. The ban will run for two years and apply to flowering crops that normally attract bees. In a way, this is more of a giant experiment than an actual ban.

The Guardian reports:

Europe will enforce the world's first continent-wide ban on widely used insecticides linked to serious harm in bees, after a European commission vote on Monday.

The landmark suspension is a victory for millions of environment campaigners concerned about dramatic declines in bees who were backed by experts at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). But it is a serious defeat for the chemical companies who make billions a year from the products and also UK ministers - who voted against the ban. Both had argued the ban will harm food production.

...

Tonio Borg, health and consumer commissioner, said: "Our proposal is based on a number of risks to bee health identified by the EFSA, [so] the European commission will go ahead with its plan in coming weeks. I pledge to do my utmost to ensure that our bees, which are so vital to our ecosystem and contribute over €22bn annually to European agriculture, are protected."

It is almost certainly not the case that bee researchers unanimously agree that neonicotinoid is the most important cause of CCD or that banning it will work. Neonicotinoid is actually a good kind of insecticide because it works by being taken up by plants, and thus, targets invading insects selectively, and also, affects insects that are not bothered much by other insecticides because the insects bore into the plant. So, there may be some serious consequences to agriculture in Europe caused by this ban.

It will be interesting to see what happens over time. I'm not sure how long it will take for the ban to fully take effect. Since it is added to soil, neonicotinoid will remain "in use" for a while after it is no longer applied. And, even if neonicotinoid was a key cause of problems in bees, it is quite possible that other causes were exacerbated by neonicotinoid use, and the effects of those causes may take longer to go away or become less important.

One interesting aspect of this ban is the way in which environmental groups and the chemical companies that make the insecticide have bifurcated into two distinct ways of thinking. Again, from the Guardian:

Greenpeace's chief scientist, Doug Parr, said [of a dissenting vote by the UK]: "By not supporting the ban, environment secretary, Owen Paterson, has exposed the UK government as being in the pocket of big chemical companies and the industrial farming lobby."...

But a spokesman for Syngenta, which makes one of the three neonicotinoids that have been suspended, said: "The proposal is based on poor science and ignores a wealth of evidence from the field that these pesticides do not damage the health of bees. The EC should [instead] address the real reasons for bee health decline: disease, viruses and loss of habitat."

and...

Prof Simon Potts, a bee expert at the University of Reading, said: "The ban is excellent news for pollinators. The weight of evidence from researchers clearly points to the need to have a phased ban of neonicotinoids....

vs.

"Bayer remains convinced neonicotinoids are safe for bees, when used responsibly and properly," said a spokesman for Bayer Cropscience. "As a science-based company, Bayer is disappointed that clear scientific evidence has taken a back-seat in the decision making process."

Both Bug Girl and Carl Zimmer have written a fair amount on this topic, and their posts include links to a great deal of additional information.

2012-03-29 Carl Zimmer in the New York Times: 2 Studies Point to Common Pesticide as a Culprit in Declining Bee Colonies
2012-03-31 Bug Girl's Blog: Are Neonicotinoid Pesticides Killing Bees?
2012-05-23 Bug Girl's Blog: Bees and Pesticides (again)

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Photo Credit: Chalkie_CC via Compfight cc

gregladen Mon, 04/29/2013 - 07:24

Tags

insects

colony collapse disorder

honey bees

neonicotinoid

insects

Bees do not actually move eggs. The queen lay the egg in an empty cell. The larva hatches in the same cell. It is fed until it is ready to pupate then the cell is closed with wax.

In CCD something is killing bees in the field or impairing their ability to find the hive. Extra energy expenditure is easily noted in reduced honey crop. Merely damaged bees die also in the hive and can bee examined. So it is none of these.

Neoinicotinoids apparently impair the bees orientation ability long before it is killed. This conforms really well with the observed result. The bees that find the hive are fine. At least until the next trip.

Also, I'm surprised no one has commented on this, bees that navigate poorly will enter the wrong hives much more often. And being laden with pollen will be admitted by the new hive. This is a vector for other deceases! It could very well be that affected zones have much higher spread of other deceases than normal. Someone should study this.

Ah, you are right, thanks. I was thinking of ants.