Hi tejek; Another crap research project done for the politically correct objective of piling onto the companies / farmers that use neonicotinoid pesticides. Read the article carefully. They never make a comparison between the amount of neonicotinoi they applied to colonies and the minuscule amounts seen in real world hives. The solution they were giving was poisoned at 136 ug/kg but only for part of the hive's food. Typical pollen poisoning rates are about 1 to 3ug/kg. So was it realistic? To make a realistic experiment, they need to apply the pesticide at the labeled amounts to one field and not to another, and see how beehives do according to which field they're near. Why didn't they run that experiment? Probalby because the beekeepers have already run it. It's well known in the community that many beekeepers have healthy bees even though they're next to fields that use these insecticides.
The cause of CCD is well known among beekeepers; varroa mite infections allow bees to catch viruses more easily and the virus shortens the lifespan of the bees. Bees with a virus fly off and don't come back, an evolutionary adaptation that reduces the transmission of the virus. The result is the mysterious empty hive. This happens in winter when there are the fewest bees around as new bees aren't being produced.
And beekeepers know how to keep the problem under control. This is why you can still buy honey cheap. Here's a typical article:
Mite Management Update 2013
Randy Oliver, American Bee Journal, August 2013
It’s common consensus that if the mite infestation rate (the percentage of bees actually parasitized by a mite) is kept low, that the colony can generally deal with the “varroa/virus complex.” It is only when that infestation rate exceeds some “economic threshold” that the combination of the direct damage due to varroa parasitism, combined with the mite’s vectoring of viruses within the hive, create the explosive virus epidemics that cause noticeable colony morbidity or mortality.
For my apiaries in the California foothills, I’ve found that if I keep the mite infestation rate below the 2% level (2 mites per 100 bees) that my colonies thrive. But should that rate reach 5%, then I start seeing the brood fall apart. By the time the rate reaches 15%, the colony is generally seriously on the way downhill, and even with treatment may not recover.
The most critical time to monitor and reduce the mite level is in late summer and fall, since this is when the generation of bees that form the winter cluster is raised. If there is a virus epidemic in the hive in fall, the colony will likely not survive the winter.
Surprisingly, many beekeepers allow their apiaries to enter the winter with excessive mite loads (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. Data from samples from cooperating beekeepers across the country indicate that mite levels in many apiaries exceed the economic treatment threshold in fall. Note that in 2010 the average sampled hive contained nearly 10 mites per 100 bees in November! It is not surprising that such colonies suffer from elevated winter mortality. Graph from[1].
americanbeejournal.com
What your researchers did find is that if you weaken a colony with neonicotinoids, it's more likely to die. Hell, I could have told you that a lot cheaper, LOL. In fact, there are a thousand other things you can do to a hive to kill hit and none of them are the proximate cause of CCD. To find the cause you have to (a) verify that the cause appears in collapsed colonies (b) that it doesn't in healthy colonies, and (c) that when you stop that cause from happening, you cure the problem. The researchers did exactly none of these things.
The most prestigious science journal is Nature. Here's their recent commentary on the neonicotinoid / bee issue by an entomologist:
Bees, Lies and Evidence Based Policy
Lynn Dicks, Nature, volume 494, issue 7937, February 13, 2014
Saving bees is a fashionable cause. Bees are under pressure from disease and habitat loss, but another insidious threat has come to the fore recently. Concern in conservation and scientific circles over a group of agricultural insecticides has now reached the policy arena. Next week, an expert committee of the European Union (EU) will vote on a proposed two-year ban on some uses of clothianidin, thiamethoxam and imidacloprid. These are neonicotinoids, systemic insecticides carried inside plant tissues. Although they protect leaves and stems from attack by aphids and other pests, they have subtle toxic effects on bees, substantially reducing their foraging efficiency and ability to raise young.
Whatever the EU decision, this vote will not be the end of the story. The proposed ban will buy some time for scientists and policy-makers to understand more about how neonicotinoids affect bee populations. For despite what both sides of the argument say, the link between bee declines and neonicotinoids is far from clear. I gave evidence to a UK parliamentary inquiry on the issue late last year, and my experience offers a useful window on how science informs public debate and policy-making — and, in the case of the public debate, how it does not.
There is no doubt that the proposed restriction on the use of these neonicotinoids on nectar- and pollen-rich crops such as oilseed rape will reduce a potentially serious risk to bees. It seems a crucial step towards reversing or halting observed declines in bees and other flower-feeders. But that is not enough for some environmental campaigners, who have framed the problem as one of the very survival of an unspecified number of bee species. Two and a half million people have signed an online petition telling EU decision-makers: “If you act urgently with precaution now, we could save bees from extinction.”
The assertion that a ban on neonicotinoids in Europe will save bees from extinction is absurd. There are bee species around the world in genuine danger of extinction, such as the once-common rusty-patched bumblebee in the United States, which has vanished from 87% of its historic range since the early 1990s. Diseases, rather than pesticides, are suspected of driving that decline. And although there have been dramatic falls in the numbers of managed honey bee Apis mellifera colonies in some countries, it remains a widespread and common bee, not in imminent danger of extinction.
Well-meaning exaggeration is common. The Guardian, a pro-environment British newspaper, mangled my parliamentary evidence on moths and beetles to claim that three-quarters of all UK pollinator species, including bees, were in severe decline.
There are startling claims in favour of neonicotinoids too. One headline widely reported in the UK farming press is that, without them, UK wheat yields could decline by up to 20%. This is a disingenuous interpretation of an industry-funded report, and the EU is not proposing to ban neonicotinoid use in wheat anyway, because wheat is not a crop attractive to bees.
As a scientist involved in this debate, I find this misinformation deeply frustrating. Yet I also see that lies and exaggeration on both sides are a necessary part of the democratic process to trigger rapid policy change. It is simply impossible to interest millions of members of the public, or the farming press, with carefully reasoned explanations. And politicians respond to public opinion much more readily than they respond to science.
...
nature.com
I got the above link from Scientific Beekeeping, which is a website that is one of the most popular in the beekeeping community. You can read more about the subject yourself at that website:
I started keeping bees as a hobbyist in 1967, and then went on to get university degrees in biological sciences, specializing in entomology. In 1980 I began to build a migratory beekeeping operation in California, and currently run about 1000 hives with my two sons, from which we make our livings.
In 1993, the varroa mite arrived in California, and after it wiped out my operation for the second time in 1999, I decided to “hit the books” and use my scientific background to learn to fight back. I started writing for the American Bee Journal in 2006, and have submitted articles nearly every month since then (see “Articles by Publication Date”–scroll to the bottom for the most recent).
My writing for the Journal brought me requests to speak at beekeeping conventions, which has also allowed me the chance to visit beekeepers from all over North America and several other continents. I read most every scientific study relating to beekeeping, and regularly correspond with researchers worldwide.
What I try to do in my articles and blogs is to scour scientific papers for practical beekeeping applications, and to sort through the advice, opinion, and conjecture found in the bee magazines and on the Web, taking no positions other than to provide accurate information to Joe Beekeeper.
scientificbeekeeping.com
-- Carl
P.S. It's true that modern bee hives are filled with insecticides but the insecticides were put there by the beekeepers. Even "organic" honey is now usually made by beekeepers who slather their hives with industrial chemicals. And they do this because they have to. If they don't, the Varroa mite kills off their colonies by CCD.
The beekeepers know all these things. They don't tell you this because they don't want you to know that you are buying honey that was made with pesticides. It's convenient for their business to let you (the consumer) think that the problem is factory farming rather than factory beekeeping, LOL. To understand the true situation, just read the beekeeper's own literature. |
