Don’t Bee-lieve the Latest Bee-pocalypse Scare

And it interrupts the Shikimate Pathway in plants. Monsanto says that Roundup is safe for animals because the Shikimate Pathway does not exist in animals.

But it exists in most of the bacteria that live in animals. So it kills off good bacteria inside the bees, that is why there is overgrowth of other flora.

Monsanto will not be able to keep a lid on this forever...

It’ll be interesting to see what happens (with the bacteria and all) with weeds becoming glyphosate-resistant.

And then there is the similarity between glophasate and glycine, causing protein synthesis much heartache and extra work.

But Monzanto is not to be blamed, no they hire people to write articles like this one.

ping

According to the professor at U Wis extension course several weeks ago there is no such data by any pesticide harming bees when used properly or in combination. His point was: THERE IS NO DATA, just anecdotal stories, beliefs and such.

However, the whole subject is highly controversial with claims made all over the place but there is no data to back up any claim - it just has not been studied in any depth and most products have never been looked at in connection with bees.

The whole herbicide/pesticide thing is just what I said but in different words.

The honey from my own backyard is delicious

as you appear knowledgable about this situation, hopefully you can answer aquestion that’s been bothering me; the lack of honeybees on white clover...when I was a kid, 60 years ago, if I walked barefoot across the lawns, which were always mottled with white clover, I could anticipate getting stung; today, I stroll across a nearby meadow loaded with clover, and see nary a honeybee...I see plenty of bumble bees, but no honeybees...

is it simply a decline in population, or is something else happening...?

I’m afraid our Extension friend is mistaken. There is a whole body of peer reviewed research that discusses synergism in pesticide use.

Note well that I do not conclude (as is the case with most reputable researchers) that CCD is caused by the neonicotinoids.

But to suggest that insecticides that are clearly labeled as anywhere from moderately to highly toxic to bees aren’t toxic to bees is simply wrong. But that’s not the point, the point is to clearly understand that if a pesticide with mode of action “X” is applied to a crop, and another pesticide with mode of action “Y” is applied to hives for control of varroa, then the result of exposure to the combination of the two would be X+Y. It clearly is not. Here is an abstract that discusses such a scenario:

“Recently, the widespread distribution of pesticides detected in the hive has raised serious concerns about pesticide exposure on honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) health. A larval rearing method was adapted to assess the chronic oral toxicity to honey bee larvae of the four most common pesticides detected in pollen and wax - fluvalinate, coumaphos, chlorothalonil, and chloropyrifos - tested alone and in all combinations. All pesticides at hive-residue levels triggered a significant increase in larval mortality compared to untreated larvae by over two fold, with a strong increase after 3 days of exposure. Among these four pesticides, honey bee larvae were most sensitive to chlorothalonil compared to adults. Synergistic toxicity was observed in the binary mixture of chlorothalonil with fluvalinate at the concentrations of 34 mg/L and 3 mg/L, respectively; whereas, when diluted by 10 fold, the interaction switched to antagonism. Chlorothalonil at 34 mg/L was also found to synergize the miticide coumaphos at 8 mg/L. The addition of coumaphos significantly reduced the toxicity of the fluvalinate and chlorothalonil mixture, the only significant non-additive effect in all tested ternary mixtures. We also tested the common ‘inert’ ingredient N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone at seven concentrations, and documented its high toxicity to larval bees. We have shown that chronic dietary exposure to a fungicide, pesticide mixtures, and a formulation solvent have the potential to impact honey bee populations, and warrants further investigation. We suggest that pesticide mixtures in pollen be evaluated by adding their toxicities together, until complete data on interactions can be accumulated.”

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077547

This is a case of the left hand (Beekeepers) not knowing what the right hand (Farmers) is doing. The important takeaway is for both parties to be fully aware of what each other is using and when.

Tell you what ... since I do not remember Doctor X’s name and did not write down his email address, I’ll get that info this week and post it to you so you can take it up with him directly.

I dont know if it was a die off from the new pesticide use or a lull in bee keeping or maybe both and several other factors that triggered the panic of the Colony Collapse Disorder around 2005-07. It might have just been the squeaky wheel syndrome, but it got me interested.

Honey bees have been doing their thing for a very long time. The same way, tirelessly for thousands of years.
The honey industry is big $$ so some big bee farmers feed their bees HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup = CHEAP) to maximize profit. This honey tastes like crap.
Literally, shipping containers FULL of Not-Honey have been seized coming into the U.S. from China.
BAYER (aspirin co.) sells more neonicotinoid pesticides than anything else and are in it for the big $$.

The management of honey bees is very local, independent and sporadic as humans tend to be. If there were managed or feral hives within 2 or 3 miles, as the bee flys, to your childhood clover field, the bees will find it. One or two years of the farmer planting something that doesnt produce enough nectar for the bee survival could drive them away. Or the 6+ years of screaming heat and drought like we had here in Kansas will make it hard for a beekeeper to manage successfully. With this years moisture and plant growth, everyones hives around here are busting at the seams with honey and splitting their hives or capturing swarms and starting new ones. And just having one hive in a an area that has been bee free will produce more nectar producing plants than with out them due to the increased natural pollination of the bees. More bees + more nectar producing plants = more bees and more HONEY.

Starting my hives in my backyard is one of the most ‘real’ things I have done in a while. Its like a huge and serius ant farm ‘cept they make the best sweetener the world has ever known, and they fly and sting the $hit outta you if you are careless! I started with 2 empty wood boxes in the spring and I would estimate there are at least 30,000 or 40,000 bees tending to over 60-80 pounds of honey right now.

...and then there is stuff like THIS.