What’s Up with Bees?

What do onions, carrots, corn, eggplant, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, green beans, soybeans, chili and red peppers, sunflowers, tomatoes, almonds, cashews, apples, lemons and limes, blueberries, strawberries, grapes, alfalfa, cotton, and cocoa have in common? Those crops, and nearly sixty others in a list too long to print, are all pollinated by bees and since wild and domesticated bees are in serious trouble those crops may be as well.

So, you might ask, what’s up with bees?

For those Rip Van Winkle types who have managed to sleep through the last six years of national science news headlines, since 2006 bees have been dying every year by the millions and millions at the mindboggling rate of 30 percent each year. That rate is not a misprint, misquote, or exaggeration.

What’s significant is that five recent and completely separate scientific studies have linked bee colony collapse to a pesticide approved years ago by the EPA despite strenuous objections raised by the Agency’s own scientists. Of particular concern is a group of pesticides synthetically derived from nicotine known as neonicotinoids (neonics for short). Neonics are sprayed on seeds, not on crops in the field, so the pesticide is absorbed by the plant’s vascular system and attacks the central nervous systems of bees and other pollen collecting insects. One of those chemicals in particular, clothianidin, which is made by Bayer and is used on virtually all genetically modified corn and many other GMO crops, has proved to be of enormous concern.

Neonic pesticides affect bees in two ways. The first is in lethal doses that occur at the time of seed planting when neonic-infused dust hovers around agricultural fields. The second occurs when bees bring neonic-infused pollen back to the colony in small doses, which typically does not kill them immediately but damages their immune systems and homing abilities.

Even scarier, since most of us don’t venture into agricultural fields or farmsteads and can barely relate to how our food is actually produced, is that products containing neonic pesticides that provide broad-spectrum pest control are widely available from your local Home Depot or Lowe’s. Those pesticides include Bayer’s 2-1 Systemic Rose and Flower Care, Bayer’s 3-in-1 Shrub Plant Starter, Bayer’s Complete Insect Killer for Soil and Turf, and Bayer’s Fruit, Citrus, and Vegetable Insect Control. Use those products and every bee or bumble bee that contacts pollen produced by the treated plants will carry the pesticide back to its colony with disastrous results. And don’t even think that rain or watering will dilute or wash off the pesticide since it is internal or systemic to the plant. At least eight weeks must elapse after application before the pesticide protection is reduced.

On an interesting note, a Harvard University study that will be published in the June 2012 issue of the Bulletin of Insectology reports that four different bee yards, each containing four hives treated with different levels of imidacloprid (the neonic pesticide in the Bayer products listed above), experienced a death rate of 94 percent. Yep. How about them odds of survival?

But, not to worry. Bayer has an army of lobbyists in Washington who are working night and day to keep their neonics in widespread use. And since right-wing ideologues are determined to eviscerate EPA the very first chance they get, the Agency scientists who blew the whistle on the disastrous effects of Bayer’s products will probably get axed first so our American way of life won’t be threatened. Let’s hear it for the multinational chemical companies and their fight to make deadly chemicals part of the basic food groups. Fuck the bees.

So, the question asked above at the start of this short inquiry should be replaced with: What’s Up with Us? The answer is simple: who out there really believes that an intelligent species can’t implement a course to mass suicide? Yet another nail in our coffin..

For those enquiring minds who like to read for themselves, in-depth information can be found at:

Christian H. Krupke, Greg J. Hunt, Brian D. Eitzer, Gladys Andino, and Krispn Given. (2012). Multiple routes of pesticide exposure for honey bees living near agricultural fields. PLoS ONE, 7(1): e29268. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029268; an open access journal freely available online).

Mickaël Henry, Maxime Beguin, Fabrice Requier, Orianne Rollin, Jean-François Odoux, Pierrick Aupinel, Jean Aptel, Sylvie Tchamitchian, and Axel Decourtye. (2012). A common pesticide decreases foraging success and survival in honey bees, Science, 336 (6079), 348-350.

Penelope R. Whitehorn, Stephanie O’Connor, Felix L. Wackers, Dave Goulson, (2012). Neonicotinoid pesticide reduces bumble bee colony growth and queen production, Science, 336 (6079), 351-352.

Andrea Tapparo, Daniele Marton, Chiara Giorio, Alessandro Zanella, Lidia Soldà, Matteo Marzaro, Linda Vivan, Vincenzo Girolami. (2012). Assessment of the environmental exposure of honeybees to particulate matter containing neonicotinoid insecticides coming from corn coated seeds. Environmental Science & Technology, 46(5), 2592-2599.

C. Lu, K. M. Warchol, and R. A. Callahan. (2012). In situ replication of honey bee colony collapse disorder. Bulletin of Insectology, 65, June 2012.