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Still more CCD info, YES the EPA knew...

2011-01-21T17:21:00Z

EPA Allows Continued Sale and Use of Bee Killing Pesticide After Agency Report Shows it Causes Hive Collapse

Submitted by Annie White on January 8, 2011 – 10:51 pm

A study by the EPA on the pesticide clothianidin which has been used widely in the U.S. though it is banned in France, Itlay and Germany for its toxic effects shows what those countries have known for years. The chemical that is produced by Bayer and used mainly to pre-treat corn seeds is toxic to bees which are attracted to corn. The pesticide scooped up $262 million in sales in 2009 by farmers, who also use the substance on canola, soy, sugar beets, sunflowers, and wheat. What is worse then this is the EPA knew that clothianidin could be toxic when it came out in 2003, but gave Bayer the go ahead to use the product.

Bayer was permitted to sell the product and seed processors could freely use it, on the condition that Bayer complete a life cycle study of clothianidin on corn by December 2004. Bayer was granted an extension until May 2005 (and permission to use canola instead of corn in its tests), but didn’t complete the study until August 2007. The EPA continued to allow the sale of clothianidin even though Bayer was not holding up their end of the deal. Once the Bayer study finally did came out, it was flawed and now the EPA’s own studies done on the product have come forth on wiki-leaks exposing information that originally was ignored. Here is an exert from their report:

“This compound is toxic to honey bees. The persistance of residues and the expression clothianidin in nectar and pollen suggest the possibility of chronic toxic risk to honey bee larvae and the eventual stability of the hive.”

Now the EPA has the truth and obviously knows the threat yet somehow this product will be available for sale again in the spring! Ready to poison and degrade the bee pollination for another season. Why is the EPA allowing this to happen? David Hackenberg, the beekeeper who first discovered Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) doesn’t think that the EPA will take action unless it’s sued by a major environmental organization. This is an agency that is supposed to be protecting our health and environment, why does it only feel spurred to action when citizens organizations move to protest? Hackenberg tells Fast Company that an EPA official recently told him that clothiandin is still on the market in part because of fears that Bayer would sue the agency if it is removed. Much more to be afraid of from overly powerful corporations who rule with money then to take real action to protect the food supply and the (duh) Environment.

Without honeybees our entire food supply is in trouble yet the EPA has decided to continue to stand by and watch the poison that is killing them be dumped on fields across the nation. They let Bayer slide on research deadlines and then approved the companies shoddy report. It seems that a German based company would not have much ground to defy decisions made by a U.S. federal agency that is presumably protecting it’s citizens. The EPA should perhaps consider a name change to CPPA, Corporate Profit Protection Agency.

~Health Freedoms

Beekeepers across the U.S. are reporting record low honey crops as their bees fail to make it through the winter. One-third of American agriculture, which relies on bee pollination, is at stake. And the problem may be at least partially attributable to clothianidin, a Bayer-branded pesticide used on corn and other crops.

But as we revealed last week, the EPA knew that clothianidin could be toxic when the product came on the market in 2003. So why is it still on the market?

The bee-toxic pesticide problem can be traced back to 1994, when the first neonicotinoid pesticide (Imidacloprid) was released. Neonicotinoids like imidacloprid and clothianidin disrupt the central nervous system of pest insects, and are supposed to be relatively non-toxic to other animals. But there’s a problem: The neonicotinoids coat plant seeds, releasing insecticides permanently into the plant. The toxins are then released in pollen and nectar–where they may cause bees to become disoriented and die.

After imidacloprid was released in France (under the name Gaucho) the number of bees in the country dropped rapidly, from 75 kg per hive down to 30 kg per hive between 1995 and 2001. France conducted an official study on the pesticide in 1998, but found no solid evidence that imidacloprid played a part in bee deaths. Nevertheless, Imidacloprid was banned for use on sunflowers and, later, sweet corn.

Enter clothianidin, a next-generation neonicotinoid released by Bayer in 2003. “In terms of the neonicotonoid family, clothianidin is one of the most toxic members,” explains Dr. James Frazier, a professor of entomology at Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences.

The EPA first brought up the link between clothianidin and bees before the pesticide’s release in February 2003. The agency originally planned to withhold registration of the pesticide because of concerns about toxicity in bees, going so far as to suggest that the product come with a warning label (PDF): “This compound is toxic to honey bees. The persistance of residues and the expression clothianidin in nectar and pollen suggest the possibility of chronic toxic risk to honey bee larvae and the eventual stability of the hive.”

But in April 2003, the EPA decided to give Bayer conditional registration. Bayer could sell the product and seed processors could freely use it, with the proviso that Bayer complete a life cycle study of clothianidin on corn by December 2004. Bayer was granted an extension until May 2005 (and permission to use canola instead of corn in its tests), but didn’t complete the study until August 2007. The EPA continued to allow the sale of clothianidin, and once the Bayer study finally came out, it was flawed.

In a statement to the Pesticide Action Network, beekeeper Jeff Anderson explains:

“The Bayer study is fatally flawed. It was an open field study with control and test plots of about 2 acres each. Bees typically forage at least 2 miles out from the hive, so it is likely they didn’t ingest much of the treated crops. And corn, not canola, is the major pollen-producing crop that bees rely on for winter nutrition.

“This is a critical point because we see hive losses mainly after over-wintering, so there is something going on in these winter cycles. It’s as if they designed the study to avoid seeing clothianidin’s effects on hive health.” [Emphasis ours]

The U.S. bee population didn’t start dying off until 2005, says David Hackenberg, the beekeeper who first discovered Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). “We started seeing problems where bees were disappearing in the fall. We blamed it on mites, viruses and a lot of other stuff because we didn’t know what to blame it on.”

But soon Hackenberg made the connection: bee die-off seemed to follow corn crop plantings so much that “you can follow the trail of this stuff to where bees are collapsing,” says Hackenberg.

Frazier first started paying attention to the problem in 2007. “Ever since we started this work, the sheer magnitude of the use of neonicotonoids in the environment has always made them suspect for us,” he explains.

Frazier and Hackenberg weren’t alone in their concern. Germany suspended the use of neonicotinoids in 2008 after the misapplication of clothiandin by beekeepers in the Baden-Württemberg area caused the pesticide to get into the air. Two-third of the beekeepers’ bees in the region died as a result (tests on dead bees showed that 99% had clothiandin build-up).

Italy also suspended the use of neonicotinoids in 2008. The country has evidence that the ban is saving bees. In 2009, Italy saw zero cases of bee mortality in apiaries surrounding neonicotinoid-free corn crops. Bee mortality had been an issue around corn crops in the country since 1999.

The EPA’s response to these suspensions: “Several European countries have suspended the use of certain pesticides in response to incidents involving acute poisoning of honey bees. To EPA’s knowledge, none of the incidents that led to suspensions have been associated withColony Collapse Disorder.”

And then came last week’s news that the EPA recently conducted another study on clothiandin (PDF) in response to Bayer’s request to use the pesticide on cotton and mustard (the chemical can currently be used on corn, canola, soy, sugar beets, sunflowers, and wheat).

The new study, unearthed by Colorado beekeeper Tom Theobald, invalidates Bayer’s previous study, claiming that “after another review of this field study in light of additional information, deficiencies were identified that render the study supplemental. It does not satisfy the guideline 850.3040, and another field study is needed to evaluate the effects of clothianidin on bees through contaminated pollen and nectar.” The study also warns that clothiandin is highly toxic to bees on both a contact and oral basis.

And yet, the EPA is continuing to allow the sale of clothiandin, even though the study that the agency based its decision on proved to be invalid. “It’s a matter of perspective,” says Frazier. “If the core study to judge registration is no longer considered a valid core study, do you allow continued use of something without good scientific data behind it? That’s the choice that’s been left to be made by the EPA.”

Hackenberg doesn’t think that the EPA will take action unless it’s sued by a major environmental organization (note: in 2008, the NRDC sued the EPA to release Bayer’s studies on neonicotinoid safety). Indeed, Hackenberg tells Fast Company that an EPA official recently told him that clothiandin is still on the market in part because of fears that Bayer would sue the agency if it is removed.

“I was at the EPA yesterday,” Hackenberg says. “They keep telling us that bee scientists have to prove to the EPA that there’s a problem. The problem is that the EPA is supposed to protect the environment, it’s their responsibility to make sure that the chemical companies are doing their job.”

No one can say for sure that neonicotinoids alone are causing bees to die off–many more studies have to be done. But the EPA would do well to err on the side of caution for the beekeepers who are rapidly losing their bees. Tom Theobald, for example, saw his smallest honey crop in 35 years of beekeeping, and Hackenberg claims that he has talked to beekeepers across the country who have lost up to 90% of their output this year.

Is it really worth waiting to find out what happens if the EPA doesn’t take neonicotinoids off the market? There isn’t time to waste. Clothiandin has a half-life of 19 years in heavy soils favored by farmers.

The EPA has not responded to our requests for comment.

By: Ariel Schwartz

Sources:

http://www.fastcompany.com/1709815/why-has-the-epa-allowed-a-bee-killing-pesticide-to-stay-on-the-market

AND YES, Still MORE...

Leaked document shows EPA allowed bee-toxic pesticide despite own scientists’ red flags

by Tom Philpott

10 Dec 2010 8:36 AM

Follow the honey: Smoking bees makes them less mad when you move them, but leaked EPA documents might have the opposite effect.Photo: Kris FrickeIt's not just the State and Defense departments that are reeling this month from leaked documents. The Environmental Protection Agency now has some explaining to do, too. In place of dodgy dealings with foreign leaders, this case involves the German agrichemical giant Bayer; a pesticide with an unpronounceable name, clothianidin; and an insect species crucial to food production (as well as a food producer itself), the honeybee. And in lieu of a memo leaked to a globetrotting Australian, this one features a document delivered to a long-time Colorado beekeeper.

All of that, plus my favorite crop to fixate on: industrial corn, which blankets 88 million acres of farmland nationwide and produces a bounty of protein-rich pollen on which honeybees love to feast.

It's The Agency Who Kicked the Beehive, as written by Jonathan Franzen!

Hive talking

An internal EPA memo released Wednesday confirms that the very agency charged with protecting the environment is ignoring the warnings of its own scientists about clothianidin, a pesticide from which Bayer racked up €183 million (about $262 million) in sales in 2009.

Clothianidin has been widely used on corn, the largest U.S. crop, since 2003. Suppliers sell seeds pre-treated with it. Like other members of the neonicotinoid family of pesticides, clothianidin gets "taken up by a plant's vascular system and expressed through pollen and nectar," according to Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA), which leaked the document along with Beyond Pesticides. That effect makes it highly toxic to a crop's pests -- and also harmful to pollen-hoarding honeybees, which have experienced mysterious annual massive die-offs (known as "colony collapse disorder") here in the United States at least since 2006.

The colony-collapse phenomenon is complex and still not completely understood. While there appears to be no single cause for the annual die-offs, mounting evidence points to pesticides, and specifically neonicotinoids (derived from nicotine), as a key factor. And neonicotinoids are a relatively new factor in ecosystems frequented by honeybees -- introduced in the late 1990s, these systemic insecticides have gained a steadily rising share of the seed-treatment market. It does not seem unfair to observe that the health of the honeybee population has steadily declined over the same period.

According to PANNA, other crops commonly treated with clothianidin include canola, soy, sugar beets, sunflowers, and wheat -- all among the most widely planted U.S. crops. Bayer is now petitioning the EPA to register it for use with cotton and mustard seed.

The document [PDF], leaked to Colorado beekeeper Tom Theobald, reveals that EPA scientists have declared essentially rejected the findings of a study conducted on behalf of Bayer that the agency had used to justify the registration of clothianidin. And they reiterated concerns that widespread use of clothianidin imperils the health of the nation's honeybees.

On Thursday, I asked an EPA press spokesperson via email if the scientists' opinion would inspire the agency to remove clothianidin from the market. The spokesperson, who asked not to be named but who communicated on the record on behalf of the agency, replied that clothianidin would retain its registration and be available for use in the spring.

Wimpy watchdogging

Before we dig deeper into the leaked memo, it's important to understand the sorry story of how an insecticide known to harm honeybee populations came to blanket a huge swath of U.S. farmland in the first place. It's nearly impossible not to read it as a tale of a key public watchdog instead heeling to the industry it's supposed to regulate.

In the EPA's dealings with Bayer on this particular insecticide, the agency charged with protecting the environment has consistently made industry-friendly decisions that contradict the conclusions of its own scientists -- and threaten to do monumental harm to our food system by wiping out its key pollinators.

According to a time line provided by PANNA, the sordid story begins when Bayer first applied for registration of clothianidin in 2003. (All of the documents to which I link below were provided to me by PANNA.) By 2003, U.S. beekeepers were reporting difficulties in keeping hives healthy through the winter, but not yet on the scale of colony collapse disorder. In February of this year, the EPA's Environmental Fate and Effects Division (EFED) withheld registration of clothianidin, declaring that it wanted more evidence that it wouldn't harm bee populations.

In a memo [PDF], an EFAD scientist explained the decision:

The possibility of toxic exposure to nontarget pollinators [e.g., honeybees] through the translocation of clothianidin residues that result from seed treatment (corn and canola) has prompted EFED to require field testing that can evaluate the possible chronic exposure to honeybee larvae and the queen. In order to fully evaluate the possibility of this toxic effect, a complete worker bee life cycle study (about 63 days) must be conducted, as well as an evaluation of exposure to the queen.

So, no selling clothianidin until a close, expert examination of how pollen infused with it would affect worker bees and Her Majesty the queen.

Again, that was in February of 2003. But in April of that year, just two months later, the agency backtracked. "After further consideration," the agency wrote in another memo, the EPA has decided to grant clothianidin "conditional registration" -- meaning that Bayer was free to sell it, and seed processors were free to apply it to their products. (Don't get me started on the EPA's habit of granting dodgy chemicals "conditional registration," before allowing their unregulated use for years and even decades. That's another story.)

The EPA's one condition reflected the concerns of its scientists about how it would affect honeybees: that Bayer complete the "chronic life cycle study" the agency had already requested by December of 2004. The scientists minced no words in reiterating their concerns. They called clothianidin's effects "persistent" and "toxic to honeybees" and noted the the "potential for expression in pollen and nectar of flowering crops."

These concerns aside and "conditional registration" in hand, Bayer introduced clothianidin to the U.S. market in spring 2003. Farmers throughout the corn belt planted seeds treated with clothianidin, and billions -- if not trillions -- of plants began producing pollen rich with the bee-killing stuff.

A bee does what it does best -- thankfully, not in a corn field.Photo: PurplekeyIn March of 2004, Bayer requested an extension on its December deadline for delivering the life-cycle study. In a March 11 memo [PDF], the EPA agreed, giving the chemical giant until May 2005 to complete the research. Clothianidin continued flowing from Bayer's factories and from corn plants into pollen.

But the EPA also relayed a crucial decision in this memo: It granted Bayer the permission it had sought to conduct its study on canola in Canada, instead of on corn in the United States. The EPA justified the decision as follows:

[Canola] is attractive to bee [sic] and will provide bee exposure from both pollen and nectar. An alternative crop, such as corn, which is less attractive to bees as a forage crop, would provide exposure from pollen, only.

Bee experts cite three problems with this decision:

Corn produces much more pollen than does canola;
its pollen is more attractive to honey bees; and
canola is a minor crop in the United States, while corn is the single most widely planted crop.

What happened next was ... not much. Bayer let the deadline for completing the study lapse; and the EPA let Bayer keep selling clothianidin, which continued to be deposited into tens of millions of acres of farmland.

Not until August of 2007, more than a year after its deadline, did Bayer deliver its study. In a November 2007 memo [PDF], EPA scientists declared the study "scientifically sound," adding that it, "satisfies the guideline requirements for a field toxicity test with honeybees."

Beeing and nothingness

So what were the details of that study, on which the health of our little pollinator friends depended?

Well, the EPA initially refused to release it publicly, prompting a Freedom of Information Act by the Natural Resources Defense Council. When the EPA still refused to release it, NRDC filed suit in response. Eventually, the study was released. Here it is [PDF].

Prepared for Bayer by researchers at Canada's University of Guelph, the study is a bit of a joke. The researchers created several 2.47-acre fields planted with clothianidin-treated seeds and matching untreated control fields, and placed hives at the center of each. Bees were allowed to roam freely. The problem is that bees forage in a range of 1.24 to 6.2 miles -- meaning that the test bees most likely dined outside of the test fields. Worse, the test and control fields were planted as closely as 968 feet apart, meaning test and control bees had access to each other's fields.

Not surprisingly, the researchers found "no differences in bee mortality, worker longevity, or brood development occurred between control and treatment groups throughout the study."

Tom Theobald, the Colorado beekeeper who obtained the leaked memo, assessed the study harshly on the phone to me Thursday. "Imagine you're a rancher trying to figure out if a noxious weed is harming your cows," he said. "If you plant the weed on two acres and let your cows roam free over 50 acres of lush Montana grass, you're not going to learn much about that weed."

James Frazier, professor of entomology at Penn State, concurred. Frazier has been studying colony-collapse disorder since 2006. "When I looked at the study," he told me in a phone interview, "I immediately thought it was invalid."

Meanwhile, Bayer continued selling clothianidin under its conditional registration. Then, on April 22 of this year, the EPA finally ended clothianidin's long period of "conditional" purgatory -- by granting it full registration.

The agency gifted the bee-killing pesticide with its new status quietly; to my knowledge, the only public acknowledgment of it came through the efforts of Theobald, who is extremely worried about the fate of his own bee-keeping business in Colorado's corn country. Theobald forwarded me a Nov. 29 email exchange with Meredith Laws, the acting chief of the EPA's herbicide division in the Office of Pesticide Programs, to whom he'd written to enquire about clothianidin's registration status. Laws' reply is worth quoting in its entirety:

Clothianidin was granted an unconditional registration for use as a seed treatment for corn and canola on April 22, 2010. EPA issued a new registration notice, [but] there is no document that acknowledges the change from conditional to unconditional. This was a risk management decision based on the fulfillment of data requirements and reviews accepting or acknowledging the submittal of the data.

So, the EPA gave Bayer and its dubious pesticide a full pass without even bothering to let the public know.

Just bee very careful, please

Now we get to the leaked memo [PDF]. It is dated Nov. 2 -- three weeks before Laws' reply to Theobald. It relates to Bayer's efforts to expand clothianidin's approved use into cotton and mustard. Authored by two scientists in the EPA's Environmental Fate and Effects Division -- ecologist Joseph DeCant and chemist Michael Barrett -- the memo expresses grave concern about clothianidin's effect on honeybees:

Clothianidin's major risk concern is to nontarget insects (that is, honey bees).

Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid insecticide that is both persistent and systemic. Acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis. Although EFED does not conduct ... risk assessments on non-target insects, information from standard tests and field studies, as well as incident reports involving other neonicotinoids insecticides (e.g., imidacloprid) suggest the potential for long term toxic risk to honey bees and other beneficial insects.

The real kicker is that the researchers essentially invalidated the Bayer-funded study -- i.e., the study on which the EPA based clothianidin's registration as an fully registered chemical. Referring to the pesticide, the authors write:

A previous field study [i.e., the Bayer study] investigated the effects of clothianidin on whole hive parameters and was classified as acceptable. However, after another review of this field study in light of additional information, deficiencies were identified that render the study supplemental. It does not satisfy the guideline 850.3040, and another field study is needed to evaluate the effects of clothianidin on bees through contaminated pollen and nectar. Exposure through contaminated pollen and nectar and potential toxic effects therefore remain an uncertainty for pollinators. [Emphasis mine.]

So, here we have EPA researchers explicitly invalidating the study on which clothianidin gained registration for corn. But as I wrote above, despite this information's being made public, the EPA has signaled that it has no plans to change the chemical's status.

In the 2011 growing season, tens of millions of acres of farmland will bloom with clothianidin-laced pollen -- honeybees, and sound science, be damned.

Now, in my correspondence with the EPA, the agency has denied that the downgrading of the Bayer study from "acceptable" to "supplemental" meant that the agency should be compelled to clothianidin's approval. In a Thursday email to me, the agency delivered a limp defense of the Bayer study, contradicting its own scientists and addressing none of the critiques of it:

EPA's evaluation of the study determined that it contains information useful to the agency's risk assessment. The study revealed the majority of hives monitored, including those exposed to clothianidin during the previous season, survived the over-wintering period.

And it downplayed the study's importance to Bayer's application to register clothianidin: The study in question is "not a 'core' study for EPA as claimed," the agency insisted. "It is not a study routinely required to support the registration of a pesticide."

I ran that response by Jay Feldman of Beyond Pesticides, the group that collaborated with PANNA in publicizing the leaked document. "I find the EPA response either misinformed or misleading," he told me. "The paper trail on this is clear. We're talking about a bad study required by EPA [that is central] to the registration of this chemical."

Feldman's assessment appears to bear out. He pointed me back to the above-linked Nov. 27 document in which EPA originally accepted the Bayer study. There, on page 5, we find this statement:

Specifically, the test was conducted in response to a request by the Canadian PMRA [Pesticides and Pest Management Agency] and the U.S. EPA; as a condition for Poncho@ [clothianidin] registration in these countries, Bayer CropScience was asked to investigate the long-term toxicity of clothianidin-treated canola to foraging honey bees.

So evidently, the discredited Bayer study does lie at the heart of clothianidin's acceptance. (I have requested an interview with an EPA official who can talk knowledgeably and on the record about these matters; the anonymous-by-request spokesperson is, at the time of publication, still looking for the "right person," I was informed via email.)

A stinging assessment

At the very least, we have ample evidence that the EPA has been ignoring the warnings of its own staff scientists and green-lighting the mass deployment of a chemical widely understood to harm pollinators -- at a time when honeybees are in grave shape.

But why? Tom Theobald, the Colorado beekeeper who broke this story, ventured an answer. "It's corporatism, the flip side of fascism," he said. "I'm not against corporations, I think they have a good model. But they're like children -- we have to rein them in or they get out of hand. The EPA's supposed to do that."

When regime change came to Washington in 2008, many of us hoped that an EPA under Barack Obama would be a better parent. EPA Director Lisa Jackson inherited quite a mess from her predecessor, and she faces the Herculean challenge of regulating greenhouse gases against fierce Republican and industry opposition.

But as concern mounts -- from her own staff and elsewhere -- that clothianidin is harming honeybees, there's no excuse for Jackson's agency to keep coddling Bayer. Frazier, the Penn State entomologist, put it to me like this: "If the Bayer study is the core study the EPA used to register clothianidin, then there's no basis for registering it." He urged the EPA to withdraw registration to avoid unnecessary risk to a critical player in our ecosystem -- as have the governments of Germany, France, Italy, and Slovenia.

Tom Philpott is Grist’s senior food and agriculture writer.

How sad is this, the people tasked with 'protecting" us knew all along and did nothing...

More CCD info...

2010-12-10T18:28:00Z

Annie Spiegelman

Author, "Talking Dirt: The Dirt Diva’s Down to Earth Guide to Organic Gardening"

Posted: December 8, 2010 03:31 PM

Beekeepers Ask EPA to Remove Bayer Pesticide Linked to Colony Collapse Disorder

Though worldwide honey bee health has been on the decline since the 1980's, it wasn't until the fall of 2006 that beekeepers nation wide began noticing honey bee colonies disappearing in large numbers without known reason. This syndrome, named Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD, is characterized by the inexplicable disappearance of the hive's worker bees, leaving the newborns to fend for themselves.

Researchers globally have been trying to pin down the cause or causes of this mysterious ailment. Most entomologists believe a combination of factors are involved: exposure to pesticides, urbanization, disruption of habitat, water pollution, climate change, the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, the Varroa mite and literally trucking bee hives around the world to pollinate crops. However, more and more evidence is pointing to sub-lethal pesticide exposures as critical contributing factors.

Beekeepers and environmentalists today called on EPA to remove the pesticide Clothianidin, citing a leaked EPA memo that discloses a critically flawed scientific support study. The November 2nd memo identifies a core study underpinning the registration of the insecticide clothianidin as unsound after EPA quietly re-evaluated the pesticide just as it was getting ready to allow a further expansion of its use. Clothianidin (product name "Poncho") has been widely used as a seed treatment on many of the country's major crops for eight growing seasons under a "conditional registration" granted while EPA waited for Bayer Crop Science, the pesticide's maker, to conduct a field study assessing the insecticide's threat to bee colony health. Bayer's field study was the contingency on which clothianidin's conditional registration was granted in 2003.

Pesticide Action Network and Beyond Pesticides joined forces with beekeepers from around the country to call for an immediate stop-use order on the pesticide while the science is redone, and redesigned in partnership with practicing beekeepers. They claim that the initial field study guidelines, which the Bayer study failed to satisfy, were insufficiently rigorous to test whether or not clothianidin contributes to CCD in a real-world scenario: the field test evaluated the wrong crop, over an insufficient time period and with inadequate controls. The pesticide is already illegal in Germany, Italy and France based on scientific findings.

"The Bayer study is fatally flawed. It was an open field study with control and test plots of about 2 acres each. Bees typically forage at least 2 miles out from the hive, so it is likely they didn't ingest much of the treated crops," said Jeff Anderson, experienced beekeeper and owner of California Minnesota Honey Farms, a farm and beekeeping operation of just under 3000 bee colonies. "And corn, not canola, is the major pollen-producing crop that bees rely on for winter nutrition. This is a critical point because we see hive losses mainly after over-wintering, so there is something going on in these winter cycles. It's as if they designed the study to avoid seeing clothianidin's effects on hive health."

Clothianidin has been on the market since 2003. With a soil half-life of up to 19 years in heavy soils, and over a year in the lightest of soils, commercial beekeepers are concerned that even an immediate stop-use of clothianidin won't save their livelihoods or hives in time.

"We are losing more than a third of our colonies each winter. We rebound as much as we can each summer, and then just take it on the chin -- eat our losses. So even these big loss numbers understate the problem," says 50-year beekeeper, David Hackenberg, Co-Chair of the National Honey Bee Advisory Board.

What folks need to understand is that the beekeeping industry, which is responsible for a third of the food we all eat, is at a critical threshold for economic reasons and reasons to do with bee population dynamics. Our bees are living for 30 days instead of 42, nursing bees are having to forage because there aren't enough foragers and at a certain point a colony just doesn't have the critical mass to keep going. The bees are at that point, and we are at that point. We are losing our livelihoods at a time when there just isn't other work. Another winter of "more studies are needed" so Bayer can keep their blockbuster products on the market and EPA can avoid a difficult decision, is unacceptable.

A letter was sent to EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson, from Steve Ellis, National Honey Bee Advisory Board, Kenneth Haff, President American Honey Producers Association, Heather Pilatic, Co-Director Pesticide Action Network North America, Jay Feldman, Director Beyond Pesticides, David Mendes, President American Beekeeping Foundation and Justin Augustine, staff attorney at Center for Biological Diversity.

The letter asked, "In light of new revelations by your agency in a November 2, 2010 memorandum that a core registration study for the insecticide clothianidin has been downgraded to unacceptable for purposes of registration, we are writing to request that you take urgent action to stop the use of this toxic chemical. Clothianidin is a widely used pesticide linked to a severe and dangerous decline in pollinator populations... The conditional registration of clothianidin in 2003 with outstanding data critical to its safety assessment represents a failure that could and should have been avoided. Clearly, the impacts on pollinators were not adequately evaluated prior to the issuance of the conditional registration, despite knowledge of "chronic toxic risk to honey bee larvae and the eventual instability of the hive." This is the case with pollinator protection and a host of other issues that have direct bearing on environmental protection and public health."

Clothianidin is of the neonicotinoid family of systemic pesticides, which are taken up by a plant's vascular system and expressed through pollen, nectar and gutation droplets from which bees then forage and drink. Scientists are concerned about the mix and cumulative effects of the multiple pesticides bees are exposed to in these ways. Neonicotinoids are of particular concern because they have cumulative, sublethal effects on insect pollinators that correspond to CCD symptoms -- namely, neurobehavioral and immune system disruptions.

According to James Frazier, PhD., professor of entomology at Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences,

Among the neonicotinoids, clothianidin is among those most toxic for honey bees; and this combined with its systemic movement in plants has produced a troubling mix of scientific results pointing to its potential risk for honey bees through current agricultural practices. Our own research indicates that systemic pesticides occur in pollen and nectar in much greater quantities than has been previously thought, and that interactions among pesticides.

Clothianidin was given a 'conditional registration' in 2003. EPA is supposed to license ("register") pesticides only if they meet standards for protection of environment and human health. But pesticide law allows EPA to waive these requirements and grant a "conditional" registration when health and safety data are lacking in the case of a new pesticide, allowing companies to sell the pesticide before EPA gets safety data. The company is supposed to submit the data by the end of the conditional registration period. Conditional registrations account for 2/3 of current pesticide product registrations.

Unfortunately, it is a common practice for the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs, to afford rapid market access for products that remain in use for many years before they are tested. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, of the 16,000 current product registrations: 11,000 (68%) have been conditionally registered.

"The environment has become the experiment and all of us - not just bees and beekeepers - have become the experimental subjects," said Tom Theobald, a 35-year beekeeper who began beekeeping after working with IBM. "In an apparent rush to get products to the market, chemicals have been routinely granted "conditional" registrations. Of 94 pesticide active ingredients released since 1997, 70% have been given conditional registrations, with unanswered questions of unknown magnitude. In the case of clothianidin those questions were huge. The EPA's basic charge is "the prevention of unreasonable risk to man and the environment" and these practices hardly satisfy that obligation. We must do better, there is too much at stake."

Wow, about time and Duh!!! :-)

2010-12-07T05:03:00Z

FYI, Clothianidin is a stronger Neonicotinoid derivative of Imidacloprid...

Beekeepers Ask EPA to Remove Pesticide Linked to Colony Collapse Disorder, Citing Leaked Agency Memo...

Pesticide Already Illegal in Germany, Italy & France Based on Scientific Findings

SAN FRANCISCO and WASHINGTON, D.C. – Beekeepers and environmentalists today called on EPA to remove a pesticide linked to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), citing a leaked EPA memo that discloses a critically flawed scientific support study. The November 2nd memo identifies a core study underpinning the registration of the insecticide clothianidin as unsound after EPA quietly re-evaluated the pesticide just as it was getting ready to allow a further expansion of its use.

Clothianidin (product name “Poncho”) has been widely used as a seed treatment on many of the country’s major crops for eight growing seasons under a “conditional registration” granted while EPA waited for Bayer Crop Science, the pesticide’s maker, to conduct a field study assessing the insecticide’s threat to bee colony health. Bayer’s field study was the contingency on which clothianidin’s conditional registration was granted in 2003. As such, the groups are calling for an immediate stop-use order on the pesticide while the science is redone, and redesigned in partnership with practicing beekeepers. They claim that the initial field study guidelines, which the Bayer study failed to satisfy, were insufficiently rigorous to test whether or not clothianidin contributes to CCD in a real-world scenario: the field test evaluated the wrong crop, over an insufficient time period and with inadequate controls.

According to beekeeper Jeff Anderson, effects on hive health.”

Clothianidin is of the neonicotinoid family of systemic pesticides, which are taken up by a plant’s vascular system and expressed through pollen, nectar and gutation droplets from which bees then forage and drink. Scientists are concerned about the mix and cumulative effects of the multiple pesticides bees are exposed to in these ways. Neonicotinoids are of particular concern because they have cumulative, sublethal effects on insect pollinators that correspond to CCD symptoms – namely, neurobehavioral and immune system disruptions.

who has testified before EPA on the topic, “The Bayer study is fatally flawed. It was an open field study with control and test plots of about 2 acres each. Bees typically forage at least 2 miles out from the hive, so it is likely they didn’t ingest much of the treated crops. And corn, not canola, is the major pollen-producing crop that bees rely on for winter nutrition. This is a critical point because we see hive losses mainly after over-wintering, so there is something going on in these winter cycles. It’s as if they designed the study to avoid seeing clothianidin’s

According to James Frazier, PhD., professor of entomology at Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, "Among the neonicotinoids, clothianidin is among those most toxic for honey bees; and this combined with its systemic movement in plants has produced a troubling mix of scientific results pointing to its potential risk for honey bees through current agricultural practices. Our own research indicates that systemic pesticides occur in pollen and nectar in much greater quantities than has been previously thought, and that interactions among pesticides occurs often and should be of wide concern." Dr. Frazier said that the most prudent course of action would be to take the pesticide off the market while the flawed study is being redone.

“We are losing more than a third of our colonies each winter; but beekeepers are a stubborn, industrious bunch. We split hives, rebound as much as we can each summer, and then just take it on the chin – eat our losses. So even these big loss numbers understate the problem,” says 50-year beekeeper, David Hackenberg. “What folks need to understand is that the beekeeping industry, which is responsible for a third of the food we all eat, is at a critical threshold for economic reasons and reasons to do with bee population dynamics. Our bees are living for 30 days instead of 42, nursing bees are having to forage because there aren’t enough foragers and at a certain point a colony just doesn’t have the critical mass to keep going. The bees are at that point, and we are at that point. We are losing our livelihoods at a time when there just isn’t other work. Another winter of ‘more studies are needed’ so Bayer can keep their blockbuster products on the market and EPA can avoid a difficult decision, is unacceptable.”

Citing the imminent economic and environmental hazards posed by the continued use of clothianidin, the National Honey Bee Advisory Board, Beekeeping Federation, Beyond Pesticides, Pesticide Action Network, North America and Center for Biological Diversity are asking EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to exercise the Agency’s emergency powers to take the pesticide off the market.

"The environment has become the experiment and all of us – not just bees and beekeepers – have become the experimental subjects," said Tom Theobald, a 35-year beekeeper. "In an apparent rush to get products to the market, chemicals have been routinely granted "conditional" registrations. Of 94 pesticide active ingredients released since 1997, 70% have been given conditional registrations, with unanswered questions of unknown magnitude. In the case of clothianidin those questions were huge. The EPA's basic charge is "the prevention of unreasonable risk to man and the environment" and these practices hardly satisfy that obligation. We must do better, there is too much at stake."

Tom Theobald’s Article - Do We Have A Pesticide Blowout?

Bee Culture Magazine, July, 2010

(This story is available on Bee Culture’s web page here.)

You can listen to a PBS interview about this with Tom here)

I doubt that there are many readers who have escaped reports of the oil well blowout - the explosion and collapse of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform and the subsequent environmental disaster that has ensued.

Evidence is mounting that the blowout of the Deepwater Horizon was brought on by a climate of lax oversight by the federal agency responsible for 'insuring the safety and environmental protection of offshore drilling operations,' the Mineral Management Service, or MMS. As I’ve listened to the news and read the articles describing events leading up to the explosion I’m struck by the parallel to what has been occurring in the beekeeping world over the past several years.

In May of 2008 there were massive bee kills in the Baden-Wurttemberg region of Germany, with two thirds of the colonies there killed. The damage was quickly traced to one of the pesticides in the controversial family of neonicotinoids produced by the German corporation Bayer. Planting of corn seed coated with clothianidin, by way of pneumatic planters, supposedly resulted in fugitive clothianidin dust which caused the disaster. Within two weeks Germany banned clothianidin on corn and several other crops, but the damage was done.

Clothianidin is just one of a number of pesticides in the family of neonicotinoids. Neonicotinoids are systemic pesticides, which means that they become incorporated into the system of the plant when the seed germinates. In the United States clothianidin was given a conditional registration by the EPA in 2003. Originally approved for use as a seed coating on corn and canola, it is now being approved for a growing list of other crops as well.

The German bee kill came as no surprise to the beekeeping community, which had been concerned about clothianidin since its registration in the U.S. in 2003, and in Germany in 2004. For four years those concerns were met with repeated assurances of safety, until finally disaster struck in Germany. Even in the aftermath of this huge bee kill the assurances continued. Bayer’s explanation was that the bee kill was caused by '. . . an application error by the seed company which failed to use the glue-like substance that sticks the pesticide to the seed . . . It is an extremely rare event and has not been seen anywhere else in Europe . . .' This is reminiscent of the finger pointing in the oil industry over the past several weeks.

It appears that two years later we have now had a repeat of this 'rare event,' this time here in the United States. This bee kill occured in Indiana in April, reported by two entomologists at Purdue University in an article written for the Indiana Beekeepers Association newsletter and circulated widely. Titled 'Pesticide Kill at the Purdue Bee Lab?' it reports a significant bee kill across Indiana, again believed to have come from fugitive dust from pneumatic corn planters.

According to these two entomologists 'Every corn seed that goes into the ground in Indiana these days has a coating of clothianidin on it. It has been a dry spring. We have had very warm, windy weather this week. As I watched my neighbor planting, I could see huge clouds of dust being stirred up.' As researchers at a major university, the authors had the resources to do some immediate analysis that would have been beyond the reach of most beekeepers, and they found high levels of clothianidin in the dead bees and the incoming pollen.

Along with other beekeepers, I have been concerned about clothianidin for some time, in part because it is not the first neonicotinoid to cause problems. Imidacloprid, the first, was registered in the U.S. in 1994 and was soon implicated in widespread bee kills. Several commercial beekeepers in North Dakota filed suit because of damage from imidacloprid used on sunflowers and similar damage in France from use on sunflowers led to a ban there in 1999. However it is still used without change in the U.S. France declined to even register clothianidin.

I became concerned about clothianidin in 2007 as the possible cause of a break in the Fall brood cycle I was seeing in my bees and in early 2008 I began digging into the facts surrounding its approval. That story is instructive and cause for great concern I believe.

The first record I found on the consideration of clothianidin comes in the form of an EPA memo dated February 23, 2003, titled 'Risk Assessment for Seed Treatment of Corn and Canola.' To their credit, EPA scientists raised serious concerns in that document and called for strong label language if clothianidin was to be approved for use. They cited the experience in France with imidacloprid as the basis for extreme caution and called for label language which would highlight the dangers. Quite responsibly, they called for a field test of the dangers prior to registration:

'The possibility of toxic exposure to nontarget pollinators through the translocation of clothianidin residues that result from seed treatment (corn and canola) has prompted EFED [Environmental Fate and Effects Division] to require field testing that can evaluate the possible chronic exposure to honey bee larvae and queen. In order to fully evaluate the possibility of this toxic effect, a complete worker bee life cycle study must be conducted, as well as an evaluation of exposure and effects to the queen.'

and they called for strong label language as well:

'This compound is toxic to honey bees. The persistence of residues and the expression of clothianidin in nectar and pollen suggests the possibility of chronic toxic risk to honey bee larvae and the eventual stability of the hive.'

This level of concern expressed by EPA scientists in February of 2003 wasn’t to last however. In the next memo just two months later, dated April 10, 2003 - an Addendum to the Risk Assessment - EFED retreated. They stuck to their guns on the label language, sort of, but they appear to have been handed their heads by an EPA management that would brook no interference with corporate objectives. 'However, after further consideration …' is what the scientists had to say after having their attitudes adjusted:

'However, after further consideration, EFED would like to suggest that the registrant be given a conditional registration that is contingent on their conducting the chronic honey bee study that evaluates the sublethal effects of clothianidin over time. EFED will therefore defer the requirement for this bee labeling statement until after the chronic study has been reviewed.'

Bayer was given eight months, until December of 2003, to complete the study, but clothianidin was released to the market and the horses were out of the barn.

It is here, with the April memo, that the regulatory process begins to unravel. The condition of registration, the [chronic] life cycle field study, would go undone for years. 'After further consideration…' meant that the real field test was to take place across the farmlands of America, without control and with serious concerns as to the safety of this pesticide unanswered.

The next memo, which established the final protocols for the field study, is dated March 11, 2004. The original deadline for the field study, upon which the conditional registration had been granted, had already passed three months before. Bayer requested and was granted, retroactively, an extension to complete the field study by May of 2005. All the while however clothianidin would be out on the market and useage would increase rapidly. This has become a common tactic in the corporate playbook, get these products out there by whatever means possible, get agriculture hooked, and then convince farmers they can’t live without them.

Previously EPA scientists had clearly stated that any study should be done in the United States, but Bayer was given permission to do it in Canada instead. More significantly, rather than require that the field study be done on both crops, corn and canola, Bayer was allowed to test only canola, while corn was dismissed with a single sentence. This is significant because in the United States canola is a relatively minor crop, with less than a million acres grown. Corn on the other hand accounts for about 88 million acres. Further, we had just seen a decade of enormous damage to bees from a product called encapsulated methyl parathion, where contaminated corn pollen had been the major vector of damage and EPA scientists were well aware of this. I knew the biologist who signed off on the March, 2004 memo which dismissed corn so casually and he most certainly would have known of the dangers cor n pollen could represent, yet Bayer was given a pass and was allowed to disregard corn.

Since clothianidin becomes part of the plant it is expressed in all parts of the plant, thus any insect which chews or sucks on the plant ingests the pesticide and dies. Don’t worry though, we were told, it only affects the bad bugs. Besides, it’s one of the new 'green' pesticides, derived from a natural substance, nicotine (this is a whole other story, because like many other 'green' pesticides it is a product of heavy chemistry, not nature). It also reduces the need for the application of other, supposedly more toxic pesticides we’re told. Neonicotinoids have come under increasing criticism however, not the least of which has been leveled by the beekeeping industry and others for the alleged detrimental effects on honey bees and other pollinators.

The word 'alleged' could start the fight I suppose, because critics believe the case against the neonicotinoids is complete and compelling. On the other hand, Bayer, and apparently the EPA, would have us believe otherwise. Much of the evidence is in the public arena now, and with the publication of this article, the conduct of the EPA, revealed through its own documents, will be as well. The readers can judge the evidence for themselves and draw their own conclusions. I’m presenting my view of the goings on and that can be part of your consideration. Obviously, I’m not without my own opinions in these matters.

The official life cycle study was to languish for years. In March of 2004 the initial deadline for the study had passed and the EPA granted Bayer an extension, until May of 2005, allowing further that if accurate data could not be produced in the summer of 2004, the study might be extended yet again, through the 2005 growing season. According to its own records, dated March 11, 2004, the EPA says 'EFED wants usable data to decide the potential adverse effects to bees from clothianidin’s seed treatment use and opposes rushing the study and having deficient information.'

While this may seem to evidence concern, you must remember that this would mean a pesticide with serious questions as to its environmental consequences could then have been on the market and in wide use for three full growing seasons without any answers to those questions. While there may have been concern about rushing the study, there seemed to be no comparable concern about rushing an untested pesticide onto the market. These tests should have been completed before clothianidin was ever registered, as EPA scientists had initially recommended.

Then in May of 2008 we have the German incident – two thirds of the colonies in the Baden-Wurttemberg region killed, with 99% of the dead bees showing high levels of clothianidin. Within two weeks of this incident Germany had suspended the registration for clothianidin and this action was soon followed by bans in Italy and Slovenia. And what came from regulators in the U.S.? Silence. Worse than silence actually, because it soon began to appear that the EPA was going into hiding.

It was in the Spring of 2008, before the German incident, that I began investigating clothianidin. I did so because the previous Fall I had discovered that there was a break in the Fall brood cycle in nearly all of my colonies, and when I tried to match the symptoms to some known or suspected cause, the trail led to clothianidin.

I wasn’t the only one who was concerned about pesticides. In the Fall of 2006 Pennsylvania beekeeper David Hackenberg had broken the story of huge bee losses, what would come to be called Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD. Dubbed the great mystery by many researchers, over time more and more beekeepers began to believe that there was little mystery and that pesticides were a major ingredient in CCD.

The Natural Resources Defense Council had begun questioning the safety of clothianidin and subsequent to the incident in Germany asked the EPA to provide the long awaited life cycle study, which was by now four years overdue. The EPA failed to respond so the NRDC filed a Freedom of Information Act request. The EPA failed to respond once more and on August 18, 2008 the NRDC filed suit for the study.

It was just prior to the NRDC suit that I discovered the infamous missing study; the internet can be an amazing resource if you just keep digging and prying. Within a month of my discovery the EPA had put their review and approval of the study on their web site, apparently flushed out by the NRDC lawsuit. What the review does and doesn’t reveal is disturbing.

Let me first put the study in a more agricultural context, and then look at it more closely. Let’s say you had a noxious weed that was affecting your cattle and you wanted to assess the dangers. So you plant two and a half acres of the suspect weed in the middle of 2000 acres of lush Wyoming grassland and put four cows on the test plot. The cows aren’t fenced in, however, and are free to roam over the entire 2000 acres. What do you think is going to happen? How long do you think your four cows are going to stay on your dinky little test plot? How significantly is that noxious weed going to be represented in their diet? I think you know the answers.

Here’s what the life cycle study of bees and canola consisted of: four colonies of bees were set in the middle of one hectare (2½ acres) of canola planted from treated seed, with the bees free to forage over thousands of surrounding acres in bloom with untreated canola, which they most surely did. What do you think the results were? They were exactly what Bayer wanted of course.

Why was the chronic life cycle study and the EPA’s review unavailable? Was it ineptitude? Perhaps it was simply embarrassment, because the study had been completed on August 1, 2006, already long overdue, and yet despite all the controversy had not been reviewed by the EPA until November 16, 2007, nearly a year and a half later, after clothianidin had been on the market for five full growing seasons.

Perhaps it was because in the opening paragraph of its review the EPA states unequivocally 'This study is scientifically sound and satisfies the guideline requirements for a field toxicity test with honeybees (OPP Gdln. No. 141-5; OPPTS 850.3040).' Scientifically sound? If you’re in 4^th grade perhaps, but certainly not if you have a Phd after your name. They should be embarrassed, this makes a mockery of science.

Further concerns are emerging as a consequence of the Indiana bee kill. High levels of atrazine were found in the dead bees and pollen along with clothianidin. This suggests that dust alone may be a vector, with the atrazine contamination coming from airborn soil. We now find evidence, again from the EPA’s own documents, that clothianidin can be persistent in the soil, remaning for years in some cases, and that it may accumulate from successive uses of treated seed, a common practice in the corn belt. Has the soil itself become a source of toxicity as a consequence of clothianidin use? Only further tests will give us answers to those questions.

What are we to do with circumstances like these? It is simply nuts, and yet this bogus science has now been used as justification to approve the use of clothianidin on a rapidly growing roster of other crops while there is mounting evidence of problems coming from around the globe. The EPA still seems to lack any sense of urgency and says it will not review clothianidin until 2012.

I still believe that most of the working level people at the EPA want to do things right, but there seems to be a serious management failure and nobody seems to be stepping in to get the ship back on course. Some very spooky chemicals are coming onto the market without proper testing and once out are virtually unregulated. We are seeing the legacy of more than a decade of deregulation and self regulation and it has not worked.

This is the Deepwater Horizon in agriculture. America’s farmland is awash in these questionable chemicals as surely as the shorelines of the Gulf Coast are awash in crude oil, and for many of the same reasons.

The bees are telling us something. We need to start listening before it’s too late.

Specials n Spring!

2009-12-01T18:45:00Z

The Special for the Christmas/Yule season are these wonderful beekeeping gloves They are the BEST around. I have not found any that are better or more durable & long lasting. Made from super soft leather & canvas; perfect for picking up and handling frames and still having a feel for what your grabbing yet still being fully protected. Leather for the high wear and protection, ventilated canvas uppers so it breaths well. Other gloves wear out quickly or are big and bulky you have no feel. Vented to help keep you cool for those hot days in the bee yard. Made with a keystone style thumb for full range of motion & comfort. You pick the size S, M, L, XL, or 2XL.
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Specials & Thinking Spring!

2009-12-01T06:45:00Z

Great Christmas gift for your favorite BeeKeeper

Buy more then one and save on shipping, we can ship up to 3 for $5.

Package bee's for April pick-up. Pre-Ordered..

Italian 3 lbs. with Clipped & Marked Queen, $100
Buckfast 3 lbs.with Clipped & Marked Queen, $130
Nuc's will be available as well in late May
These can be paid in person at our store...

Yet more CCD news...

2009-12-01T05:54:00Z

Dallas
As bees continue to die off, suspicion turns to chemically coated seeds and other factors

Posted Sunday, Nov. 29, 2009.

By BILL HANNA billhanna@star-telegram.com

For Collin County commercial beekeeper John Talbert, the mysterious malady that is killing off bees means he’s keeping his hives close to home.

"It’s like people and the swine flu: The more people you get together in one spot, the higher probability you’re going to have a health problem," said Talbert, who lives near Josephine in southeastern Collin County. "I don’t move them around and keep them isolated."

But here and abroad, many other beekeepers haven’t been as fortunate.

Last winter, 29 percent of U.S. hives were lost to the mysterious phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder, according to a survey conducted by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the U.S. Agriculture Department. The disorder was first noticed in 2005.

Colony collapse disorder has a variety of suspected causes: pesticides, varroa mites, viruses, stress from shipping hives long distances to pollinate crops — or some combination. Colony collapse disorder typically affects commercial hives and generally not those kept by hobbyists.

But some researchers and environmentalists are focusing again on pesticides as the key culprit.

"We do feel like pesticides are playing a role in pollinator decline," said Maryann Frazier, a senior extension associate with Penn State University. "We know that the pesticides are there. We don’t know yet exactly what role they’re playing."

Penn State’s research is undergoing peer review and is expected to be published by the end of the year.

Focus on neonicotinoids

Environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club, are targeting chemically coated seeds, called neonicotinoids. They have called on the Environmental Protection Agency to suspend use of neonicotinoids, an artificial form of nicotine, until more conclusive research can be completed. Italy, France, Germany and Slovenia have restricted the use of some of these pesticides.

California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation, where more than 1 million honeybees are needed each winter to pollinate the almond crop, is also re-evaluating some neonicotinoids that may be harmful to bees.

"What we’re asking the EPA is to go with precautions," said Laurel Hopwood, chairwoman of the Sierra Club genetic engineering action team. "Let’s go ahead and suspend them until we get all of the research completed."

Bees are crucial to U.S. agriculture, adding an estimated $15 billion in value each year to staples such as nuts, fruit and vegetables, many of which require bee pollination.

Commercial beekeeper Clint Walker, who is based in the Central Texas town of Rogers, has been suspicious of pesticide use since the number of his hives dropped from 2,000 in summer 2005 to 600 in January 2006. The portion of his hives that pollinated cotton fields that had been sprayed in West Texas collapsed, while his hives that stayed in Central Texas and pollinated wildflowers experienced no problems.

But he will wait for definitive proof before assigning blame.

"I’m convinced in the next 24 months there will be evidence-based data that will irrefutably show why we are having colony collapse," said Walker, vice chairman of the National Honey Board and a former co-chairman of the National Honeybee Advisory Board.

Now, Walker has been far more selective on where he sends his bees. "My bees haven’t been exposed to chemicals in three years," he said. "I’m still shipping some of them to California for the almond crop late this winter — there are some fungicides there — but that’s the only exposure they’re having. We’re making honey crops on wildflowers; we’re managing them with health-protein supplements. We’re boosting their nutrition and letting them rest."

In Texas, most commercial beekeepers are based to the east of the Interstate 35 corridor and in the southern half of Texas. But most risk exposure from shipping their hives across the country.

Paul Jackson, chief apiary inspector with the Texas A&M’s Apiary Inspection Service, remains skeptical that any one thing can be blamed.

"I hope someone hits the nail on the head that can prove it, but I personally think it’s a combination of two, three or four things," Jackson said. "That’s the reason it is so hard to understand. I guess we can put the blame on pesticides, but I don’t believe that."

Multiple causes?

The Sierra Club is touting a documentary, Nicotine Bees, suggesting that neonicotinoids, which went into wide use in 2005, are the cause.

Kevin Hansen, the Albuquerque-based director of the documentary, said the fact that these seeds were distributed worldwide then is strong anecdotal evidence. But he says his film is not an attack against the chemical companies.

"I think it is more of a public-policy issue more than blaming a single chemical company," Hansen said.

The makers of neonicotinoids have insisted that there is no hard evidence against the seeds.

"Everybody knows this is about the varroa mite, the nosema pest and a number of fungal and viral diseases," Dr. Julian Little, a British spokesman for Bayer CropScience told The Independent newspaper in London in September. "The healthiest bees in the world are in Australia, where they have lots of neonicotinoids, but they don’t have varroa. If you look at a country where they have restricted the use of neonicotinoids, France, they have a worse bee problem there than they do in the U.K."

In the United States, the EPA created a pollinator protection team in June and announced a strategic plan to deal with colony collapse disorder. In August, the Natural Resources Defense Council filed a lawsuit after the EPA failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request for agency documents on pesticide use and colony collapse disorder.

Talbert, the Collin County beekeeper, wonders whether bees and colony collapse disorder are "canaries in the coal mines" for humans.

"Some of us think we’ve got enough chemicals out there killing bees, which begs the question: What is it doing to people?" Talbert said.

BILL HANNA, 817-390-7698

Honey News

2009-09-01T18:43:00Z

Important Honey News

"Antimicrobial activity of honey against food pathogens and food spoilage microorganisms," Cornell University. This study investigated the antimicrobial activity of different types of honey against food pathogens and food spoilage microorganisms. The study showed that certain varieties of honey inhibited the growth of these organisms. Thus, incorporating some varieties of honey into foods could enhance the safety and shelf life of the products without the use of chemical preservatives. ( read the the full version of this research click here.)

"Buckwheat honey, a natural sweetener, conveys antioxidant protection to healthy human subjects," University of California at Davis. Antimutagenic effect of honeys against Trp-p-1 Free Radicals have been implicated in aging and many diseases such as cancer and heart disease. Antioxidants in the human diet protect us from some of this damage. The study found that antioxidant compounds in Buckwheat honey could provide some level of antioxidant protection. Since more than 150 pounds of sugar are consumed annually by each U.S. citizen, this investigation suggests that if honey was substituted for sweeteners traditionally used in food products, it could substantially improve total antioxidant intake by humans. (to read the the full version of this research click here.)

"Antimutagenic effect of honeys against Trp-p-1," University of Illinois at Urbana. Antioxidants often have antimutagenic properties, but nothing was known about honey in this regard. (Antimutagenic compounds interfere with or reduce the effect of harmful changes in cells in the body.) This research shows that honey is antimutagenic, offering yet another reason to use it as an ingredient and in the diet. (to read the the full version of this research click here.)

Newest CCD info and the EU

2009-05-16T07:12:00Z

Bayer Pesticide Chemicals Linked to Devastating Collapse of Honeybee Populations

(NaturalNews) German government researchers have concluded that a bestselling Bayer pesticide is responsible for the recent massive die-off of honeybees across the country's Baden-Württemberg region. In response, the government has banned an entire family of pesticides, fueling accusations that pesticides may be responsible for the current worldwide epidemic of honeybee die-offs.

Researchers found buildup of the pesticide clothianidin in the tissues of 99 percent of dead bees in Baden-Württemberg state. The German Research Center for Cultivated Plants concluded that nearly 97 percent of honeybee deaths had been caused directly by contact with the insecticide.

"It can unequivocally be concluded that a poisoning of the bees is due to the rub-off of the pesticide ingredient clothianidin from corn seeds," said the federal agricultural research agency, the Julius Kuehn Institute.

The pesticide was applied to rapeseed and sweet corn seeds along the Rhine River Valley, which borders Baden-Württemberg to the west and south.

"Beekeepers in the region started finding piles of dead bees at the entrance of hives in early May, right around the time corn seeding takes place," said Walter Haefeker, president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association.

A total of two-thirds of all bees in the entire state are believed to have been killed by the chemical.

"It's a real bee emergency," said Manfred Hederer, president of the German Professional Beekeepers' Association. "Fifty to 60 percent of the bees have died on average, and some beekeepers have lost all their hives."

Clothianidin, marketed in Europe under the brand name Poncho, is a widely used insecticide in the neonicotinoid family. Like all neonicotinoids, it is a systemic pesticide that is applied to the seeds of plants and then spreads itself throughout all plant tissues. Based on nicotine, the neonicotinoids function as neurotoxins that attack the nervous systems of insects such as honeybees.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has classified clothianidin as "highly toxic" to honeybees. The chemical was approved for U.S. use in 2003 and German use in 2004.

Clothianidin manufacturer Bayer CropScience, a subsidiary of chemical giant Bayer, blamed the honeybee deaths on incorrect application of the pesticide. Before seeds are sprayed, a fixative should be applied to keep the poison from spreading into the rest of the environment. In the current situation, Bayer says, the fixative was not applied and clothianidin spread into the air.

But beekeepers and pesticide critics rejected this explanation, calling for Germany to follow France's footsteps in banning the chemical - and indeed, all neonicotinoids.

"We have been pointing out the risks of neonicotinoids for almost 10 years now," said Philipp Mimkes, spokesman for the Coalition Against Bayer Dangers. "This proves without a doubt that the chemicals can come into contact with bees and kill them. These pesticides shouldn't be on the market."

While stopping short of a total ban, the German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety acted quickly upon release of the study data, placing a provisional ban upon all seven pesticides in the neonicotinoid family. These chemicals may not be used in Germany until the manufacturers can supply enough data to convince the government that they are safe.

The seven provisionally banned pesticides are the clothianidin-based brands Poncho and Elado; the imidacloprid-based brands Antarc, Chinook and Faibell; methiocarb-based Mesurol; and thiamethoxam-based Cruiser

Six of the seven products are made by Bayer, while Mesurol is manufactured by Syngenta.

Bayer's neonicotinoids have been blamed for killing honeybees before, most notably in France. There the company's best-selling pesticide, imidacloprid, was banned from use on sunflower seeds in 1999 after being blamed for killing off a third of the country's honeybees. In 2004, France extended the ban to sweet corn seeds. The government rejected Bayer's application for clothianidin use in France only a few months ago.

In North Dakota, a group of beekeepers is suing Bayer, alleging that imidacloprid was responsible for Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in that state in 1995. One-third of North Dakota honeybees died that year after imidacloprid was applied to rapeseed there.

Imidacloprid is marketed in France under the brand name Gaucho, but is also sold as Admire, Advantage, Confidor, Hachikusan, Kohinor, Merit, Premise, Prothor, and Winner.

Around the world, honeybee stocks are in decline, which scientists have warned could have devastating impacts on global food supplies. A total of 80 percent of world food crops are primarily or exclusively pollinated by honeybees, amounting to 130 crops and $15 billion worth of food each year in the United States alone.

Yet two million honeybee colonies have been lost in the United States in recent years, with massive dieoffs also reported across Europe and in Taiwan, where 10 million bees recently disappeared over the course of only two weeks.

"If nothing is done about it, the [British] honeybee population could be wiped out in 10 years," warned U.K. Farming Minister Lord Rooker in 2007.

While in many cases bees have actually been found dead, as in the Baden-Württemberg incident, beekeepers have been particularly alarmed by CCD, in which the bees simply vanish, leaving empty hives behind them.

Neonicotinoid pesticides have been suggested as a possible cause of CCD, with advocates of this theory noting that since the pesticide spreads through all plant tissues, bees might be exposed through the pollen of treated plants. At least one study concluded that neonicotinoids are likely to become concentrated in bee hives in high levels, transported by contaminated pollen.

A number of studies have found that in low doses, neonicotinoids produce symptoms consistent with CCD. Termites exposed to imidacloprid experienced disorientation and immune system failure, while bees exposed to low levels of the chemical experienced impaired communication, homing and foraging ability, flight activity, and olfactory discrimination and learning.
Sources for this story include: www.guardian.co.uk. pubs.acs.org, www.allheadlinenews.com

Another great story...
BAYER Neonicotinoid Pesticides cause Mass Death of Bees
author: CBGnetwork
March 6, 2009 - Bayer managers have known the risks of a pesticide class called neonicotinoids for the environment since the beginning of the 90ies. The company downplayed the risks, submitted deficient studies to authorities and accepted the loss of honey bees in many parts of the world. After huge bee deaths in Germany last year the Coalition against Bayer Dangers brought a charge against Bayer for knowingly endangering the environment.
Neonicotinoid Pesticides cause Mass Death of Bees

Bayer CropScience is the world leader in agrochemicals. Bayer´s annual pesticide sales amount to €5.8 billion (£4.6bn). Since 1991 Bayer has been producing the insecticide imidacloprid which belongs to the substance class of neonicotinoids. Imidacloprid is one of the most used insecticides in the world for field and horticultural crops. It is often used as seed-dressing, especially for maize, sunflower, and rape. The substance is Bayer´s best-selling pesticide.
Since patent protection for imidacloprid ran off in most countries, Bayer brought a similarly working successor product on the market in 2003. Clothianidin sales last year amounted to 223 million euros. The substance is mainly used for seed coating of maize and rape.
The beginning of the marketing of neonicotinoids coincided with the occurrence of large bee deaths, first in France, later on also in Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Poland, England, Slovenia, Greece, Belgium, Canada, the USA and Brazil.
The bee dangers of imidacloprid and clothianidin are indisputable. In the data sheets published by the German Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) it is noted: "The substance is classified as dangerous for bees (B1). It may not be applied on flowering plants; this applies also to weeds". According to the US Environmental Protection Agency imidacloprid and clothianidin are "highly toxic" to honeybees.
Because of their high persistence neonicotinoids can remain in the ground for several years. For clothianidin half-lives of up to five years were observed. Therefore even untreated plants, on whose fields imidacloprid or clothianidin was applied in previous years, can take up the substance over the roots and can contain a concentration dangerous for bees.

Banned in France

In France imidacloprid has been banned as a seed dressing for sunflowers since 1999, after a third of French honeybees died following its widespread use. Five years later it was also banned as a sweetcorn treatment in France. Clothianidin was never approved in France.
In 2003 the Comité Scientifique et Technique, convened by the French government, declared that the treatment of seeds with imidacloprid leads to significant risks for bees. The 108-page report that was made by order of the French agricultural ministry by the universities of Caen and Metz and by the Institut Pasteur states: "The results of the examination on the risks of the seeds-treatment Gaucho (imidacloprid) are alarming. The treatment of seeds by Gaucho is a significant risk to bees in several stages of life. (... ) Concerning the treatment of maize-seeds by Gaucho, the results are as alarming as with sunflowers. The consumption of contaminated pollen can lead to an increased mortality of care-taking-bees, which can explain the persisting bee-deaths even after the ban of the treatment on sunflowers".
The studies also showed that even very small dosages, few parts per billion, could impair honeybees´ learning performance. Residues of imidacloprid in sunflower nectar and pollen were found at potentially hazardous levels that "can affect honeybees´ learning abilities" and impair their memory. When individual bees were exposed to sublethal doses their foraging activity decreased and they became disorientated, which researchers concluded "can temporarily damage the entire colony".

Approval of Clothianidin

Clothianidin is the successor to imidacloprid and was brought on the American market in 2003 and the German market in 2006.
The EPA fact sheet states: "Clothianidin is highly toxic to honey bees on an acute basis (LD50>0.0439 μg/bee). It has the potential for toxic chronic exposure to honey bees, as well as other non-target pollinators through the translocation of clothianidin resides in nectar and pollen. In honey bees, the affects of this toxic chronic exposure may include lethal and/or sub-lethal effects in the larvae and reproductive effects on the queen". The Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency PMRA even states that "Clothianidin was determined to be highly toxic to the honey bee, Apis mellifera, on an acute oral basis with a LD50 of 0.00368 μg/bee" which is 1/10 of the quantity the US EPA states.
German beekeepers warned of clothianidin´s risks already in 2006. In a letter to German authorities Manfred Hederer, chairman of the German beekeepers federation DBIB, criticized that clothianidin´s harmlessness maintained by Bayer is based on one-sided studies. This is confirmed by the Canadian PMRA which judges on Bayer´s application: "All of the field/semi-field studies, however, were found to be deficient in design and conduct of the studies and were, therefore, considered as supplemental information only. Clothianidin may pose a risk to honey bees and other pollinators, if exposure occurs via pollen and nectar of crop plants grown from treated seeds ".

Bee deaths in southern Germany

In May 2008 in southern Germany beekeepers reported that two thirds of their bees died, some beekeepers lost all their hives. Wild living insects decreased likewise. The loss for the affected beekeepers is on average about 17.000 euros.
Tests on dead bees showed that 99% of those examined had a build-up of clothianidin. The chemical had been applied to the seeds of sweetcorn planted along the Rhine river. The Julius Kuehn Institut, a federal research institute dealing with agricultural issues, stated that "Clothianidin is clearly responsible for the death of the bees in parts of Baden-Wuerttemberg". The German Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) immediately ordered the suspension of the approval for both imidacloprid and clothianidin; Bayer.
Beekeepers and agricultural officials in Italy, France, Slovenia and Holland noticed similar phenomena in their fields when planting began a few weeks ago. Slovenian and Italian authorities also forbade clothianidin.
Environmental groups across Europe are demanding a total ban of imidacloprid and clothianidin. The Coalition against Bayer Dangers, based in Germany, brought a charge against Werner Wenning, chairman of the Bayer Board of Management. Bayer is accused of marketing dangerous pesticides and thereby accepting the mass death of bees all over the world. The Coalition introduced the charge in cooperation with German beekeepers who lost their hives after the poisoning last year.

more information:
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW; August 28, 2008
EPA sued after allegations Bayer pesticide killing honeybees
http://www.cbgnetwork.org/2605.html

Press Release, August 25, 2008
Coalition against BAYER Dangers (Germany)
Pesticides cause mass death of bees
Germany: Charge against Bayer´s Board of Management
http://www.cbgnetwork.org/2596.html

Aug 26, 2008, The News & Observer (Raleigh/USA)
Bayer on defensive in bee deaths
German authorities look into allegation that RTP maker's pesticide harms environment
http://www.cbgnetwork.org/2599.html

The Guardian, May 23 2008
Pesticides: Germany bans chemicals linked to honeybee devastation
http://www.cbgnetwork.org/2518.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/23/wildlife.endangeredspecies
=> Sierra Club urges EPA to suspend nicotinyl insecticides: http://www.sierraclub.org/biotech/whatsnew/whatsnew_2008-07-30.asp
=> French Institutes Finds Imidaproclid Turning Up in Wide Range of Crops
=> 2003 report from the "Comité Scientifique et Technique de l'Etude Multifactorielle des Troubles des Abeilles" http://agriculture.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/rapportfin.pdf

Coalition against BAYER Dangers
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CBGnetwork@aol.com
Tel: (+49) 211-333 911 Fax: (+49) 211-333 940
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Advisory Board
Prof. Juergen Junginger, designer, Krefeld,
Prof. Dr. Juergen Rochlitz, chemist, former member of the Bundestag, Burgwald
Wolfram Esche, attorney, Cologne
Dr. Sigrid Müller, pharmacologist, Bremen
Eva Bulling-Schroeter, member of the Bundestag, Berlin
Prof. Dr. Anton Schneider, biologist, Neubeuern
Dorothee Sölle, theologian, Hamburg (died 2003)
Dr. Janis Schmelzer, historian, Berlin
Dr. Erika Abczynski, pediatrician, Dormag
CBGnetwork
e-mail: CBGnetwork@aol.com
Homepage: http://www.CBGnetwork.org

March 6, 2009 - Bayer managers have known the risks of a pesticide class called neonicotinoids for the environment since the beginning of the 90ies. The company downplayed the risks, submitted deficient studies to authorities and accepted the loss of honey bees in many parts of the world. After huge bee deaths in Germany last year the Coalition against Bayer Dangers brought a charge against Bayer for knowingly endangering the environment.

Neonicotinoid Pesticides cause Mass Death of Bees

Bayer CropScience is the world leader in agrochemicals. Bayer´s annual pesticide sales amount to €5.8 billion (£4.6bn). Since 1991 Bayer has been producing the insecticide imidacloprid which belongs to the substance class of neonicotinoids. Imidacloprid is one of the most used insecticides in the world for field and horticultural crops. It is often used as seed-dressing, especially for maize, sunflower, and rape. The substance is Bayer´s best-selling pesticide.
Since patent protection for imidacloprid ran off in most countries, Bayer brought a similarly working successor product on the market in 2003. Clothianidin sales last year amounted to 223 million euros. The substance is mainly used for seed coating of maize and rape.
The beginning of the marketing of neonicotinoids coincided with the occurrence of large bee deaths, first in France, later on also in Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Poland, England, Slovenia, Greece, Belgium, Canada, the USA and Brazil.
The bee dangers of imidacloprid and clothianidin are indisputable. In the data sheets published by the German Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) it is noted: "The substance is classified as dangerous for bees (B1). It may not be applied on flowering plants; this applies also to weeds". According to the US Environmental Protection Agency imidacloprid and clothianidin are "highly toxic" to honeybees.
Because of their high persistence neonicotinoids can remain in the ground for several years. For clothianidin half-lives of up to five years were observed. Therefore even untreated plants, on whose fields imidacloprid or clothianidin was applied in previous years, can take up the substance over the roots and can contain a concentration dangerous for bees.

Want more? Need more??
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_14369.cfm &
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/11/26/millions_of_bees_dead_bayers_gaucho_blamed.htm & http://www.manataka.org/page1397.html &
http://www.sunjournal.com/story/214193-3/Business/Possible_culprit_identified_in_decline_of_honeybees/ A wonderful little story of how neonicotinoids affect bee's and make them more suseptible to other things.
AND the best one of all http://www.britishbeekeeping.com/ seems that since 2000, The British Bee Association have been accepting money from pesticide manufacturers in return for the use of their logo to advertise their products as 'bee friendly'.
And I thought the US was bad... Tsk Tsk...

Imidacloprid‏

2009-05-16T07:11:00Z

CATCH THE BUZZ Comments to EPA on Imidacloprid‏

From:	Kim Flottum (Kim@BeeCulture.com)
Sent:	Thu 3/26/09 10:07 AM
To:	blackcathoney@hotmail.com

This ezine is also available online at http://home.ezezine.com/1636/1636-2009.03.26.10.08.archive.html

CATCH THE BUZZ

These comments, submitted by the National Honey Bee Advisory Board to EPA concerning the registration of imidacloprid, a systemic pesticide produced by Bayer Chemical Company, have been edited here because of length. But the stories have not been changed or altered. The NHBAB consists of beekeepers from both the AHPA and the ABF, and represents most of the nation’s commercial beekeepers. EPA now must act on these and other comments regarding this compound. At the same time, this group of beekeepers and Bayer are meeting to discuss continued research with this compound. Time will tell if increased regulation, or more precise research improve the situation.

Beekeepers from around the United States, and around the world, have had persistent problems associated with the use of the systemic pesticide imidacloprid. Since the first uses of imidacloprid in France in 1994 on sunflowers beekeepers reported problems. Soon the condition was given a name in France: “mad bee disease.” Problems reported by beekeepers, combined with mounting independent scientific data, caused the French Minister of Agriculture to suspend the use of imidacloprid on sunflowers in January of 1999. In February 2004, France extended the suspension to include uses on corn. At the same time they further broadened the ban on systemic insecticides to includ e the chemical fipronil.

In Europe the debate goes on, important data from toxicity studies is being produced. Conclusions from this data vary. The chemical manufacturers continue to maintain that the systemic compound imidacloprid is safe for use around honeybees, native pollinators, birds, and does not pose an unreasonable risk to the environment. Reports from the field, however, are telling a different story. The recent dramatic increase in use of imidacloprid on a greatly expanded list of cropland, rangeland, forest, residential, and recreational (golf courses and parks), has greatly increased exposure of pollinators to contaminated nectar and pollen expressed from flowering crops and weeds.

Imidacloprid is only one of six product formulations in the broader class of “systemic neonicotinoids.” Although only imidacloprid is currently ‘up’ for public comment, all six of these products in this class are of great concern to beekeepers. Much attention has been given to the seed treatments such as Gaucho, a trade name for a formulation of imidacloprid.

Recent data from Penn State on crabapple trees, although unpublished, and not yet replicated is extremely concerning. Two controls, and two treated trees were used in the experiment. After three weeks no imidacloprid was detected. However the next spring pollen samples from pollen sacs and anthers tested over 900 ppb combined Imidacloprid and 2 principal degradants: 5- hydroxe and olefin. In nectaries the combined number was 1,450 ppb. Although further research is required for this study to be properly concluded, the initial data raises questions about how imidacloprid is stored and translocated in woody plants, like fruit trees.

Find out what's new at Mann Lake www.mannlakeltd.com/catchthebuzz/index.html

Farmers, pesticide applicators, and beekeepers all look to EPA to provide guidance on safe and unsafe ways to apply these economic poisons. We will quote the public comment of Roger Haldenby (Plains Cotton Growers, Inc. tracking number 808bfe56, February 23, 2009) on Imidacloprid: “There are reports of imidacloprid toxicity to bees, birds, earthworms, and some fresh water crustaceans. The impact of imidacloprid on these organisms can be mitigated by proper application of the insecticide in accordance with label instructions.”

Systemic pesticides, like imidacloprid, work on a different principal. The chemical is taken up into the plant tissue, and becomes systemic. Active chemical is moved throughout the plant including the nectar and pollen of the treated crop plant, or inadvertently treated weed. Once the chemical is in the nectar and pollen of the plant, no protective means can be employed to protect the pollinator who gathers the poisoned food. There is no “label warning” currently to protect pollinators from imidacloprid tainted nectar and pollen. EPA does not have “safe label” instructions for imidacloprid.

In an advertisement for Premise 200SC, an imidacloprid product for termite control, Bayer states, “Premise 200SC interferes with (the) instinctive social behavior (of termites), contributing to the termites’ demise. Low doses of Premise 200 SC disorientate the termites and cause them to cease their natural grooming behavior. Grooming is important for termites to protect them against pathogenic soil fungi. When termites stop grooming, the naturally occurring fungi in the soil attack and kill termites. Premise 200SC makes fungi 10,000 times more dangerous to termites. Nature assists Premis in giving unsurpassed control.” (Bayer Premise SC Brochure)

For a comprehensive listing of beekeeping events around the country and around the globe seewww.my.calendars.net/bee_culture/To send Your Calendar events to us, send to info@BeeCulture.com

Major incidents have been reported by beekeepers linked to imidacloprid. EPA is aware that their incident reporting database of pesticide effects on honeybees is not working. At the December 2, 2008 meeting between US EPA Office of Pesticide Programs and Beekeepers, the beekeepers explained how the incident reporting system, which utilizes state departments of agriculture and chemical manufacturing companies, is not reporting beekeeper field incidents with pesticides. The beekeepers at the meeting presented a wall chart showing all incidents reported to EPA and then detailed how their own personal incidents, as well as incidents of colleagues not there. Providing a mechanism for reporting bee incidents was one of the eight “action items” listed as coming out of that meeting.

Recognizing that EPA is not aware of beekeeper incidents related to pesticides, we would like to provide you with a partial list of our own. Many beekeepers will be reporting their individual incidents independently. The list below by no means should be considered as complete; it only attempts to showcase a few of the most prominent incidents. Many commercial beekeepers have had problems related to the use of imidacloprid.

Subscribe to the Apis Newsletter www.apis.shorturl.com

The largest incident involved seven beekeepers in North Dakota and Minnesota with Gaucho, a product formulation of Imidacloprid seed treatment on canola. The seven beekeepers initiated legal action against Bayer Crop Science in Federal Court. Private laboratory tests performed on the beekeepers’ wax comb and honey in barrels. “ADPEN analyzed the material for imidacloprid, carbofuran, dichlotvos and coumaphos. They found residues of imidacloprid in all of the samples. The levels of imidacloprid found ranged from 22 to 671 ppb. These levels are much higher than the LD50 and are certainly killing honeybees and causing sub lethal effects” (Mayer sworn and notarized DOC dated 12^th January 2007). Chris Charles explained that placing these boxes on top of his hives would cause an immediate die off of the fie ld bees. Concerns about this lethal mix in his wax combs caused him to replace his entire comb with new. He observed that his bees recovered after being given new fresh wax.

Clint Walker relates his experience with imidacloprid and cotton in Texas. “In the summer of 2006 we shipped 500 bee hives to the cotton fields of West Texas. It was a drought year where the only green plants were under irrigation. During the active bloom phase of the cotton it was treated with aerial and ground applications of imidacloprid (Gaucho and Admire) for aphids. All of our 500 hives received sustained exposure to this chemical with no immediate ill effects. Our crop was short due to the drought. As we relocated the bees back to our home territory (Central Texas) in the early fall, the bees were strong and apparently healthy.”

By In January of 2007 we began to see a significant portion of our nearly 2000 hives begin to collapse with Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) symptoms. As we searched for an explanation to our losses, a disturbing pattern emerged: All of the collapsing hives had been in West Texas four months earlier. We saw no CCD in the Central Texas bee colonies. This was the only difference in the cultural practice of the bees that collapsed and those that were healthy.”

Dave Hackenberg tells his story of CCD on the East coast. In 2004, when our bees were first exposed to imidacloprid, we saw things happen in our bees that we have never seen before. Good colonies of bees run through pollinations and honey crops over the summer that we now know were exposed to Assail in Apple pollination and Admire in pumpkin pollination, by fall when no new food was coming into the hives, began to collapse at a rapid pace, leaving nothing but a queen and a few bees in the boxes. The farmers that I work with are sensitive to using anything that would hurt my bees because they recognize how important good pollination is to the success of their crops. They were told by their chemical suppliers that these ‘new’ pesticides were ‘safer’ for honeybees and they could even apply them during bloom without damage to the bees. We did not see any dead bees in front of our hives while they were in these pollinations. In the fall, it was clear that the bees that had been on honey locations were OK with normal mortality of 10 to 15% loss, while the pollination hives had 75 to 80% loss. The ‘surviving’ pollination hives were not healthy and they failed to build properly in the spring. We saw this same problem with pollination hives in 2005 and 2006. It was in the fall of 2006 that we began to associate these losses with summer pollination exposure. Since then we have communicated to our growers some of our concerns and the losses have gotten better in apple pollination where the grower had ‘options’ to use other products. In pumpkin pollination, the growers have not had such luck since there are few other ‘approved’ products available to them.

Gene Brandi tells his story of watermelon pollination in California. “Another route of imidacloprid exposure to which my bees have been subjected is by chemigation with Admire on watermelons. Growers who chemigate with pesticides highly toxic to bees are not required to notify registered beekeepers in California, so I was not aware until after the fact that this practice was occurring. In the summer of 2007 I pollinated watermelons with nearly one thousand colonies of my bees. After approximately 50% of these colonies died during the following winter (compared to an 18% winter loss in my colonies that did not pollinate watermelons), I contacted the grower and discovered that the watermelons had been chemigated with Admire. My colonies that were not in watermelon pollination were exposed to other products, and yet did not sustain the same magnitude of w inter loss. Although I do not have conclusive proof that exposure to imidacloprid was the cause of this bee loss, the correlation of this loss to watermelon pollination was enough for me to stop pollinating watermelons.

Dave Mendes tells his story of orange orchards in Florida. “I am a commercial beekeeper operating 7500 hives for honey production and crop pollination in the states of Florida, California, Maine, and Massachusetts. I participated in a research project organized through Penn State from March 2007 until January 2008 to follow a group of beehives through a complete season to monitor several different conditions in these hives to determine what factors may contribute to hive mortality. I was one of three beekeepers in this study who each selected 18 to 24 hives that would be sampled each time they were moved to a new location. My hives were sampled 7 times during the test period. I started the stud y with 18 hives and ended with 4 hives total and only one of these was in good enough shape to produce honey or pollinate an agricultural crop. The first samples taken while the bees were in Florida citrus showed levels of 14 to 17 ppb of imidacloprid in the pollen inside the hives. I spoke to the grove manager and found out that Admire Pro had been applied to the younger trees in his grove (40,000 trees in a grove of 600,000 trees) in February as a ground application as the trees began to bloom. The research on imidacloprid that I could find showed levels of 3 to 5 ppb as the highest recorded levels in citrus nectar or pollen. I inquired to Bayer Crop Science and the Florida pesticide regulatory people to find out more about what effect these levels of imidacloprid could cause in my beehives. I found very little information that addressed my concerns.

Imidacloprid, a systemic insecticide, moves through the treated plant to the nectar and pollen. The chemical remains persistent in soils for several years, can be taken up by subsequent plantings and weeds, and expressed in their pollen and nectar. No mechanism exists to protect honeybees from this exposure. Due to the vitally important nature of pollinators we recommend that imidacloprid be removed from use in the United States. Simply stated there is just no way to protect bees from this danger.

The reader may ask how did we find ourselves at the point where an extremely dangerous chemical compound has come into such widespread use, threatening the very existence and viability of the pollination framework of the country. The answer is simple. Deregulation, the same concept which precipitated our financial collapse, has precipitated an environmental collapse no less serious. At the same time that financial institutions were being given a free reign to regulate themselves on the naive assumption that industry knew best, pesticide regulation was being turned over from EPA to industry on the same assumption.

US EPA used to do pesticide screening in honeybees, do pesticide toxicity study themselves, but today industry directs and funds the critical toxicity studies to determine product safety themselves. The studies are shown to EPA for registration purposes, then filed away as “proprietary information” far from the scrutiny of the public eye. Enforcement actions are not taken by EPA; instead these critically important functions are delegated to individual state departments of agriculture, under an arrangement ironically called a “primacy agreement.”

The problems faced by the beekeeping industry are not limited to one single chemical compound. They are in fact linked to a pervasive regulatory failure. When the EPA was first set up, it was in response to environmental challenges of an unprecedented nature. At that time the country was using 200,000,000 pounds of active ingredient chemical pesticides. Today that number is over 5,000,000,000 pounds of active ingredient. Simply put, the country is drowning in chemicals. These very “economic poisons” are doing their job too well, and because of the deregulation process we are faced with a perfect storm today capable of destroying our countries pollinator base which will carry with it agricultural and environmental catastrophe.

The fundamental change which is necessary is to return to a system at EPA which independently tests chemical compounds before they are released for widespread use. Precaution and prevention are words which need to return to environmental protection. Massive field experiments, such as what has occurred with the neonicotinoid class of systemic insecticides is just too high risk of a behavior. Environmental catastrophe such as global warming, and our current pollinator crisis are big flashing warning lights. These warning lights are there to tell us something, they are telling us to take action before it is too late.

The message brought to you by Bee Culture, The Magazine Of American Beekeeping

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More CCD & more thoughts and points to ponder...

2009-05-16T07:10:00Z

When CCD first broke last fall--before it was even called Colony Collapse--a lot of people pointed the finger at high-fructose corn syrup. Now it is in some 30+ states. Some suspected contamination from genetically modified corn; others just surmised that this crap was not any better for bees than it is for us. I feel that if it is in the corn, it's probably in the syrup. A lot of beekeepers have stopped using HFCS, joining a small number of purists, like myself, who'd always shunned it, preferring instead to feed the bees honey or a self made sugar syrup. This costs the beekeepers money, since honey still fetches a decent price on the market, but it pays off in the long run. Don't ever feed your bees honey that you don't know and trust the source of the honey tho, many off the shelf honeys are not as pure as you might thing and can carry AFB (American Foul Brood) spores. I don't use any HFCS. I'm convinced that as a result, my bees are stronger; even on the bees I move, I have kept my losses this past year under 10%, while some of my colleagues lost more than half and sometimes up to 90 percent, including one in Shelburne Falls Mass that lost 75%.

Is hauling bees around the countryside in the back of a truck and feeding them soda sweetener what is making them weak? As Jerry Hayes, the CCD top man, puts it, "What would happen to you if I made you run marathons, sleep every night in the back of a moving car, and only fed you chocolate bars?" Think about how you'd feel..

Another thought is Genetic Diversity. Many bee breeders sell there own bees. Many are line "line" breeders with out even knowing it. Anyone that breeds good dog or cats will tell you line breeding si very bad. Line breeding is incest, and thats so easy to do with bee's and drones. Many drones are the off spring of the mother queen, even if from your other hives.. where did you get all the bees from? the same place, so I'd bet they are all related.

For most of the 20th century, the federal government maintained four laboratories dedicated to honeybee research. But in the last seven or eight years, funding has fluctuated and the feds have threatened to shutter some labs entirely, even as threats to bee health and demand for pollination have increased. Solutions to so many of the problems plaguing the bee industry seem tantalizingly close--the bee genome was just sequenced, for instance, and anecdotal evidence suggests that a hardier, more industrious bee could be produced by controlled cross-breeding domestic bees with Africanized "killer" bees--but the resources to produce these breakthroughs just aren't there. I feel this might be a really bad idea. I have heard of a local Keene NH area hobby beekeeper that got a package of Africanized bee's.. they most likely would not have lived thru the winter, BUT did go after the family, including the dog, when the dog brushed against the hive.. They stopped counting at 600 stings on the dog.. and yes it did not make it. I have to wonder if this is a path that might be better if we stayed off. If you recall the Africanized bee's came in the Americas by a similar breeding plan back in the 1950's in Brazil. I much prefer picking up where Brother Adams left off after his lives work.

Brother Adam has devoted a lifetime, nearly 70 years, to developing a new bee, the Buckfast bee. He was born Aug. 3. 1898 in southern Germany under the name of Karl Kehrle. In 1910, as a very sickly little11-year-old boy, he was dropped off at Buckfast Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Devon, England by his mother. By 1915 he began his work with bees and by 1919 he took over the responsibility for the bee yard and saved the British beekeepers in the process.

Brother Adam has in his book Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey, page 52, formulated his aim of breeding as follows : "Our ultimate aim is the formation of a bee that will give us a constant maximum average crop consonant with a minimum of effort and time on our part."

Brother Adam's overriding idea of breeding is that none of the native races alone have all the best possible combinations of qualities to suit man. But just like the corn breeding program, like crosses followed by selection can give us better bees. Brother Adam wanted to combine the best qualities from different races into a new super bee possessing a combination of qualities that give the modern beekeeper maximum crops with a minimum of work. Something he did very well,tho was never really finished. He was able to go back 50 years in maternal AND paternal genealogy with his bees and all this long before computers and the like.

When the Acarine mite (Tracheal Mite) came to the British Isles, it exterminated the native black bees. Thirty of the monastery's 46 colonies died in 1915/16 due to the mite infestation (the black bees in England today are descendants from imported black bees). The surviving 16 colonies were all headed by Italian queens mated with native black drones. The best of these crosses formed the base of Brother Adam's new bee.

The last time the beekeeping industry was threatened was in the late '80s, by the varroa mite. Back then, bees were raised primarily for their honey, profit margins were small, and bees traveling to the coast on pollination trips was basically unheard-of. Alarms were raised, but nothing much was done, and 20 years later, beekeepers are still battling varroa. But in the last 10 years, fees for pollination have increased by 600 percent--from $20 to $25 per hive in the late '90s to more than $150 per hive now. Even taking into account the rising costs of maintaining bees, that's staggering. Package bees themselves have risen quite a bit and many bee breeders are little more than "puppy mills". Package bees here in New England vary from about $60 to $125. Cheaper is not always the better deal, think dogs.. This growth was stimulated by expansion of the almond market (among others), and the simultaneous decline of natural pollinators by mites and the destruction of their natural habitats. All this new money created a small elite of relatively wealthy, bottom-line über-beekeepers. These people already have significant capital invested in equipment; they're unable or disinclined to reform their practices, they know how to use the system to their advantage, and they are determined not to let this become another chronic problem to be managed by more hang-ups in time and money, à la varroa. Enter: Colony Collapse Disorder?

One would be hard-pressed to come up with something more topical, more media-friendly, more sexy than CCD. Colony Collapse Disorder, with its undertones of apocalypse and extinction, is intensely appealing to our collective sense of guilt about shitting all over the environment and our expectation of (and perhaps even desire for) some kind of divine punishment. Almost all the beekeepers I talked to, even the obscure hobbyists, were already sick and tired of talking to reporters, such has been the blitz. "The bees are dying, and you could be next" is the new "we've got to take out Saddam or he'll drop the A-bomb on us!" And cell phones are not the cause.. well maybe if the bee si flying while talking on it.. but otherwise no..
In the end, perhaps Colony Collapse isn't much of a mystery at all. Bees are dying because they eat too much corn syrup, work too much, spend too much time in a truck rather than outside, and are being poisoned by pollutants. The same things that are killing us are killing the bees, there life cycle is just faster . Think back some years with the 3 eyed fish and the mutated frogs..

But while it's clear that commercial practices are weakening bees, rendering them susceptible to all kinds of opportunistic pathogens, there's still a major missing piece of the puzzle. The sudden onset of CCD this past year leads one to suspect that there was something that set off the die-offs, some new pathogen or environmental pressure that tipped the scale. But what?

I remember that most beekeeper use high-fructose corn syrup. I also remember reading that alot of corn grown in the US is genetically modified. So I have to wonder if high-fructose corn syrup tainted with genetically modified organisms could be the culprit. I have been asked quite a bit about what's causing CCD.

I don't feel I need to guess anymore.
I don't know if I should talk about this, and do wonder whom might complain and file a lawsuit in these lawsuit happy days. I'm connected with a lot of people very close to this CCD investigation, and I know that there are researchers who are very careful about what they say and just as importantly don't say --they're almost afraid for their lives and lively hood.

I feel CCD was triggered, by a class of pesticides widely used to treat seeds and plants. Alot of corn seeds come treated with it before the farmer even gets it to plant. Then many treat the whole field with more. The plants that grow from these treated seeds incorporate the pesticide into their entire systems, called a systemic poison, from roots to leaves to stems to pollen and nectar. When pests (or bees) feed on treated plants, the chemical destroys their nervous system. The people in charge know that this particular type of pesticide is causing CCD, but they're keeping it quiet--and spending millions to make sure others keep it that way. At the end of this story--it takes an hour to tell and includes other nefarious and high-level government conspiracies. The pesticides, marketed under the names Poncho, Gaucho, Admire, Calypso and many other names, all belong to a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids, "systemic" pesticides which, when applied to seeds, manifest themselves throughout the mature plant. When an insect ingests any part of the plant--leaf, seed, stem, or, in the case of bees, pollen or nectar, it gets a dose of a neurotoxin that can cause a swift and lethal breakdown of an insect's nervous and immune system. For growers, this pesticide is efficient and limits their own exposure to nasty chemicals sprayed directly on their crops. Introduced in the early '90s, these pesticides were a true revolution in pest control.

But not all insects are pests. In fact, one of these chemicals, imidacloprid, is the very same pesticide--marketed here as Admire and overseas as Gaucho--that was banned in France in 1999 as a suspected culprit in drastic and mysterious die-offs in honeybees. Bayer, the German pharmaceutical and chemical company better known for aspirin, has a crop science division that manufactures and sells Gaucho and many other pesticides. The company protested the ban in France, citing studies that found no correlation between imidacloprid and bee die-offs; beekeepers countered with their own studies that found the opposite result. The French government sided with the beekeepers, and the ban stayed in place and was expanded in 2004. Imidacloprid/Gaucho/Admire is used on a wide selection of fruits and vegetables in the United States, including apples, strawberries, and melons--all crops routinely pollinated by bees--and countless others.

Now thinking about the hives that have been lost, those that seem like textbook cases of CCD. Could the bees have been exposed to this particular type of pesticide? Looking at a map you might not see much, which wasn't encouraging; bees have a flight radius of only 2-5 miles in each direction from their hive, and there didn't seem to be any cultivated farmland nearby. But when you ask the beekeeper if he knows of any crops nearby, they usually says yes immediately. There's a huge farm a couple mile away.

Most Farms use pesticides. Depending on which pests they have at the time. Most wouldn't reveal the brand names or the specific chemicals they use to kill bugs.

Even if the local farm isn't using imidacloprid, it's entirely possible that there's someone else in the flight radius who is. Imidacloprid is also approved for uses ranging from flea control on dogs and cats (for which it's sold as Advantage, over the counter) to breaking up termite colonies, with little or no restrictions. If you find a termite mound in your backyard, you can simply go on eBay or down to the local hardware store, get a big ol' vat of imidacloprid, and dump it on the ground. And so it's nearly impossible to keep track of who's using imidacloprid where, and for what purpose.

You can buy it at Wal-Mart & Home Depot. And you know what Joe Consumer is like. He thinks a little is good so a lot is better. They're not following the directions on the bottle.

In the last three years, they've just been pouring this chemical on crops. It's approved for everything....All I'm saying is, you go buy this stuff to use on aphids or whatnot, and the little insert from the chemical company says straight out that it, one, makes bugs quit eating, two, induces memory loss and confusion, and, three, gives them a nervous system disorder. And that's exactly what's happening to bees. But then I'm just a dumb beekeeper who's been keeping bees for years. What do I know? Does not seem to hard to make the connection if you use a little common sense..

Well surely, knowing that bees are such an important part of the ecosystem, not to mention the economy, chemical companies and farmers alike wouldn't just indiscriminately soak the countryside with a chemical that turns both bees and pests into convulsing, gibbering zombies, would they? There must be a fail-safe in there to prevent killing all the bees.

No, says Jerry Hayes, of the CCD Working Group. "Imidacloprid kills bugs, insects, good and bad alike. It works on bees in the exact same way it works on all other insects."

So did someone drop the ball?

Hayes pauses, weighing his words. He is too nice a guy to put it just so. "Someone didn't look closely enough," he says.

This isn't as surprising as it initially seems, considering the process by which a pesticide comes to market. The EPA often doesn't even test a pesticide before it goes on the shelf; it entrusts the chemical companies themselves to oversee safety testing on their own products, almost always rubber-stamping the results without verifying them independently, says Laura Hepting of the D.C.-based nonprofit Beyond Pesticides, which monitors the pesticide industry. "The large majority of the data is provided by the companies themselves," she says. "The EPA has a panel that reviews this information, but they only do their own tests if a red flag pops up. But this data can be--and often is--skewed. Not only results, but the procedures that produce those results, can be tweaked. There are loopholes."

The studies the chemical industry had to submit to gain approval for imidacloprid merely required demonstration that the levels of the chemical found in the nectar and pollen of treated plants were "sub lethal" to bees. Strictly speaking, this is true. For instance, imidacloprid can make bees stop grooming themselves, which allows lethal fungal infections to thrive in bee colonies--in this case one could truthfully, if disingenuously, say that the fungus killed the bees, not imidacloprid. You could say the same in cases when impaired bees can't find their way home and die of exposure, that it was the elements that killed them, not the pesticide. When imidacloprid causes the bee's to jitter in their dance, sending worker bees off in the wrong direction and they get lost.. It's bad directions to blame, not the imidacloprid. Also a point to think about.. "sub lethal" in the nectar and pollen of treated plants.. What do the bees do with the nectar? They simmer it down, kinda like maple sap into maple syrup, they simmer the nectar down into honey. This "boils off" the water and concentrates the toxins.. again, some common sense..

We're wasting our time picking on poor little old chemical companies when we should be out there lobbying for a ban on fungi, bad directions and weather!

So why not just ban imidacloprid? Because Big Chemical (due to corporate consolidation, six corporations--Syngenta, Bayer, Monsanto, DuPont, BASF, and Dow--control almost the entire global market for crop protection) is, well, big. According to Bayer's 2006 Annual Report, Bayer CropScience sales of imidacloprid pesticides topped â‚¬560 million (about $746 million). That's about 10 percent of Bayer CropScience's approximately $7.5 billion in total sales, making imidacloprid products, according to the company, the world's No. 1 best-selling pesticide.

With so much money at stake, any ban on imidacloprid would be an uphill battle. Even after France's government shut down use of the pesticide, Bayer insisted it was harmless to bees and went so far as to file a lawsuit against a French beekeeper for derogatory remarks he made in the media about Gaucho. (The suit was dismissed by a judge in 2003.)

Bayer's position on imidacloprid had not changed when I contacted them a couple weeks ago for comment. "When used according to label instructions, imidacloprid does not kill bees," Greg Coffey, a Bayer spokesperson tells me when I ask him flat out if his company's product is causing CCD. Sounding somewhat hopeful, he adds, "in fact, current research indicates a number of non chemical causes may be to blame."

But respected experts in the bee industry I've talked to say that imidacloprid does kill bees, and the way it works--disrupting a neural receptor in the insect nervous system --suggests that it has the same effect on all insects, bees or otherwise. It's simply working as it was made to and as per the Bayer website says it would.

Coffey sighs. "When used according to label instructions, imidacloprid does not kill bees," he says again, slower this time.

That's not how Henri Clement, the president of the National Union of French Apiculture who was instrumental in getting Gaucho outlawed in France, sees it. Although the ban went into place in 1999, he wrote in an e-mail, "we still saw effects in 2005 and 2006, as it remains in the ground for a very long time." (Studies have found that imidacloprid can have a half-life of 1 to 3 years in soil and can still be present decades later.) So one full dose this year, and one full dose next = 1.5 or more for the second year.. 1.75+ for year 3 and 1.875+ the next, you can do the math and see where this is going to end up. He also reported that Bayer is trying to get other neonicotinoid pesticides, which work in the very same manner as Gaucho and would be equally as potentially lethal to bees, approved for use in France. At the same time, a recent Bayer presentation claims studies have found that imidacloprid "even in the absence of infestation with insects, exerts a supportive, stress-reducing, protective effect" on plants. A cynic might suspect the company is trying to position imidacloprid as less of a poison and more of a supplement or vitamin for crops--a subtle redefinition that would make it infinitely harder to ban.

When I contacted EPA for its response, a spokesperson forwarded me a copy of its standard statement on CCD:

EPA is coordinating with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, academia, professional organizations, and beekeepers to identify the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, a massive die-off of adult bees in established honeybee colonies. Though agricultural records indicate that sudden honeybee colony collapse is not a new phenomenon, it is imperative that we learn the cause and do what we can to prevent it. The current scientific consensus is that the cause of CCD is unknown. EPA and USDA have met with insect scientists and beekeeping professionals to discuss leading theories. A report of the results of that meeting is being prepared by USDA, and scientists around the nation and the globe are moving forward with research to test the various theories. EPA is committed to protecting human health and the environment and will continue to work with USDA and others to assess this potential threat. If there are actions identified that EPA can take to prevent CCD, EPA stands ready to take the appropriate steps.

When I point out that this statement doesn't specifically address anything, Enesta Jones, the EPA press officer, has no further response.

Whether or not my conspiracy theories hold water, if imidacloprid really is killing bees, we're left with at least two equally discomfiting possibilities. One: Big Chemical failed to adequately test imidacloprid and unknowingly released a pesticide that's killing the only natural pollinators we have left. Or, two: Big Chemical knew imidacloprid would kill off our primary pollinators and released it anyway.

If the latter seems puzzling, consider this question: If all the bees died out, how much would Big Chemical, the global leaders in genetically modified crops, stand to gain from a sudden demand for self-pollinating genetically modified crops? Again, apply a little common sense and think about it. Very few things in life just "happen". So to look for who might be to blame, it might be faster and easier to look for who's to GAIN...

Bees are sensitive creatures. They're easily irritated, They hate noise and vibration and bananas.. Yes bananas. They smell like their alarm pheromone. Please don't eat a banana right before going to check your hives..

But it's not bananas making bees crazy on a global scale. The heart of the question seems to be: Is CCD something correctable--if we stop trucking bees cross-country and feeding them Oreo stuffing and having them pollinate crops chocked full of pesticides, will they stop dying? Or have we set something larger in motion that doesn't just affect the bees directly under human stewardship, but bees everywhere? And who's next? Other insects, mammals, and eventually humans? Think about the mercury in seafood.. It can suck, really really suck to be at the top of the food chain..

Keith Tignor, the state apiarist for Virginia, says research on whether there have been parallel die-offs in other insect populations has just now started. The early signs are not good. In the D.C. region alone, naturalists and researchers have observed an increasing number of fish die-offs within the past several years--tens of thousands of dead fish washing up onshore, some killed by dead water or pollution, but others with no discernible cause of death except a mysterious weakening of the immune system. The same symptoms have also been observed in snails, butterflies, birds, and trees across the nation. If these phenomena are related to CCD and continue to spread across other species, well, that's quite probably all she wrote for the human race.

Please, if you have any thoughts to share on either side of this or any beekeeping issue, please share it here. I have room for and welcome all points of view and comments.

TTFN

Richard
6/12/2007

CCD and My thoughts...

2009-05-16T07:09:00Z

After reading varied articles and the following email from Victoria, looking at the links and other googled info, including stuff from Bayer itself, I really wonder if this is not the main cause of the problem with CCD. IMIDACLOPRID.. It's marketed under many differant trade names. It is used alot in corn from what I read, even the seeds come sprayed with it before the farmer even gets it.. Reading what this stuff does and how it works, it makes the "pests" forget if it does not kill them fast, forget where home is, sounds like it could explain alot of where the bee's go, No? they fly off to find pollen & nectar and forget how to get home, forget what they are doing, gives them jumpy and gittery, has to mess up the bee dance. What do most beekeepers feed there
bees.. a syrup of high frutose corn syrup..(I don't) Does anyone know if this stuff transfers into that? the bees sure could be doubling up on the toxin if it does... Not to mention, Ok, I'll mention it.. , The water supply, a run off of the stuff the fields are sprayed with.
Just another thought from a lowly bee keeper in a veil.
Could many bee keepers be making it worse with the chemical treatments for mites being added to this? I have not had any problem as of yet, knock on a wooden hive body.. I do everything organic and natural and have really stayed on top of the little mite issues that have come up. BUT I do ask that you look this stuff up and think about it, make up your own mind.

Thanks and TTFN,
Richard Waite.
Black Cat Honey & Products 603-392-0008
Parker Street
Winchester NH 03470
3/16/2007

RE:
From: Victoria MacPhail <vmacphai@uoguelph.ca>
To: pollinator@coevolution.org
Subject: [Pollinator] Is CCD really just starting in 2005/2006?
Previouswork on imidacloprid?
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:58:05 -0400

I have been following the latest theme with interest, and had been wondering when imidacloprid would be raised.

When I was an undergraduate student in 2002, I worked with Dr. Jim Kemp and Dick Rogers in Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick (Eastern Canada) investigating possible reasons (incl. diseases, food sources, pesticides, management practices, among others) behind the disappearance and overall decrease in honeybee populations in the Maritimes. What had initated their research in the previous year (2001) was the concern that imidacloprid, trade name Admire, used in furrow in potato fields, persisted in the soil and came up in the clover flowers two years later, which then killed off the foraging bees. I believe a similar concern with imidacloprid had been raised in France under the trade name Gaucho and used on sunflowers.

My understanding is that beekeepers in the Maritimes noticed in the late 1990s or early 2000s that bees were disappearing/dying and colonies crashing unexpectedly, with some beekeepers having limited losses and some having almost total losses. They heard reports from France of the similar symptoms, said that that was their problem too, accused imidacloprid and the producer (Bayer), who then got Jim and Dick involved in the investigation.

I found an old newspaper article on-line saying essentially the same thing: May 25, 2002 - National Post, www.safe2use.com/ca-ipm/02-05-27.htm. You could probably find
other sources too.
The background information I had heard and learned about in 2002, and in 2003 when I was only peripherally involved in the project, sounds just like what is supposedly only just happening this year in the US. Now, I am new to the field and may be way off base, but to me this
sounds like the same thing, so why are most of these reports saying this is a new phenomenon, happening either only this year or maybe last year too? Are these two different problems/scenarios, or is the media just having a field day with it this year?

Anyway, just another thought to mull over.

Victoria MacPhail

MSc Candidate
Dept. of Environmental Biology
University of Guelph
Guelph, ON N1G 2W1
vmacphai@uoguelph.ca
lab) 519-824-4120 ext. 56243
fax) 519-837-0442

More Imidacloprid info & links

2009-05-16T07:08:00Z

IMIDACLOPRID

Imidacloprid is a relatively new, systemic insecticide chemically related to the tobacco toxin nicotine. Like nicotine, it acts on the nervous system. Worldwide, it is considered to be one of the insecticides used in the largest volume. It has a wide diversity of uses: in agriculture, on turf, on pets, and for household pests. Symptoms of exposure to imidacloprid include apathy, labored breathing, incoordination, emaciation, and convulsions. Longer-term exposures cause reduced ability to gain weight and thyroid lesions. In studies of how imidacloprid affects reproduction, exposure of pregnant laboratory animals resulted in more frequent miscarriages and smaller offspring. An agricultural imidacloprid product increased the incidence of a kind of genetic damage called DNA adducts. Imidacloprid is acutely toxic to some bird species, including sparrows, quail, canaries, and pigeons. Partridges have been poisoned and killed by agricultural use of imidacloprid. It has also caused eggshell thinning. The growth and size of shrimp are affected by imidacloprid concentrations of less than one part per billion (ppb). Shrimp and crustaceans are killed by concentration of less than 60 ppb. Imidacloprid is persistent. In a field test in Minnesota, the concentration of imidacloprid did not decrease for a year following treatment. It is also mobile in soil, so is considered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to be a potential water contaminant.

The development of resistance to imidacloprid by pest insects is a significant concern. In Michigan potato fields, the Colorado potato beetle developed resistance to imidacloprid after just two years of use.
Please follow this link for a full write up of this:
http://www.pesticide.org/imidacloprid.pdf
http://www.epa.gov/opprd001/factsheets/thiacloprid.pdf a newer stronger version of Imidacloprid.
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/PI117
http://www.bijensterfte.nl/nl/node/2
http://www.livingwithbugs.com/merit_insecticide.html
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1603/0022-0493(2008)101%5B784:LASEOI%5D2.0.CO%3B2
http://www.coursehero.com/file/636383/imidacloprid/
http://nlquery.epa.gov/epasearch/epasearch?areaname=&areacontacts=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epa.gov%2Fepahome%2Fcomments.htm&areasearchurl=&result_template=epafiles_default.xsl&action=filtersearch&filter=&typeofsearch=epa&querytext=imidacloprid Lots here to thumb thru, tho wirth the read. You can narrow your search as needed.

Newest news!

2009-03-26T14:15:00Z

Newest News! The real website is being redesigned and will be back shortly, a change in the phone number to 603-392-0008, finally a New Hampshire number... and Honey Soda is here..
No Corn Syrups, No High Fructose Corn Syrups, no Sugar, no artificial flavor or color.
So far, 3 flavors..
1 WoodLand Brew made with Dark Fall WildFlower Honey, RootBeer extract and a hint of Wintergreen and Anise..

2 Honey Cream made with Dark Fall WildFlower Honey, Natural Cream soda flavoring with a hint of Vanilla

3 Lemonade made with Summer WildFlower Honey and natural lemon juice and extract.

All are bottled in glass returnable & re-usable bottles, better for the environment..
Retails for $2.25 a bottle cases of 24 for $48, all prices plus refundable deposit.
We're back to normal hours, which are...
We're open

Mon - Tuesday	By Appointment or chance
Tues - Thurs	11 am - 7 pm
Fri & Sat	11 am - 8 pm
Sundays	By chance or Appointment

I don't usually get political, but this effects everyone here in the US...
I ask that you please have a look and decide for yourself.
http://the912project.com/