Posted on 11/27/2014 5:42:39 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Over 100 scientists worldwide, citing 800 studies, are demanding that the Obama administration follow Europe’s lead and put a moratorium on the use of a new-style pesticide blamed for the deaths of 30 percent of American honeybees every year.
In a letter to the EPA and Agriculture Department, the scientists said there is overwhelming evidence from 800 studies that the pesticide family called neonicotinoids are to blame for the substantial declines in honeybees, bumblebees and butterflies, all pollinators needed to help farmers produce billions of dollars worth of food every year.
“The 108 signers of this letter therefore urge you to take immediate action to protect bees and other pollinators, particularly from pesticides known to be harmful,” said the letter provided to Secrets.
Despite actions by the European Union and some U.S. cities and states to limit use of the “neonics,” the administration is taking a go-slow approach.
“We share concerns about the decrease in the honeybee population, without question,” EPA Director Gina McCarthy told Secrets during a recent media roundtable sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.
She seemed to blame the decade-long die-off of bees on development. “There are a number of factors that need to be considered, a lot of it could be attributable to habitat loss, and much of it might be,” she said.
McCarthy added that the EPA, under President Obama’s direction, is looking into the issue and holding listening sessions around the nation, but is not ready to act until the agency has thoroughly studied the science of the pesticides.
“There is no resolution off the table,” she said. But, she added, the agency won’t be “quick to judge.”
The scientists, from schools such as Harvard University and University of California, and as far away as Germany, however, said the issue has already been studied. They cited a June 2014 worldwide review of 800 studies by 29 independent researches that blamed the bee kills on neonics, which are typically treated on seeds and can stay in the ground for years.
They are blamed for disrupting the homing ability of bees heading back to the hive, a key issue on Colony Collapse Disorder.
During WW2 many beekeepers who had serious pollination service businesses were not allowed to enlist or be drafted. They had to stay home even if they wanted to go and fight the Germans or “The Japs” like their friends were. Guys who were stuck stateside were looked upon as being less manly.
Such as the almond crop in California is seriously diminished if the blossoms do not get pollinated at the right time by honeybees. BTW honeybees are not the only insect pollinators. There are others and some fruit trees get pollinated by them rather than honeybees
Thanks, I just know I’ve seen a lot fewer in my yard. I thought it was mites killing them off.
Thanks, I just know I’ve seen a lot fewer in my yard. I thought it was mites killing them off.
There are two kinds of bee folks you can call... those that will take money and those that won’t. The first kind are found in the phone book, are commercial bee people, perhaps exterminators.
The latter takes different digging to find them. Try a google of your county and “honeybee associations”. In my bee club, we have a designated swarm coordinator, who takes requests such as yours. Then, the coordinator goes down a beekeeper list of folks that WANT to start hives from bees like you have, first come first served.
Other tips to seek out folks that will take your bees for free - have you noticed any bee hives in the area? Knock on the nearest house and ask about the owner; contact them to see who they know, what club(s) they belong to.
Most states have bee inspectors. Probably found on the State web page for agriculture. MA has two inspectors (for the entire state!). I know mine, and he knows who to contact to collect swarms and errant colonies.
“She seemed to blame the decade-long die-off of bees on development. “There are a number of factors that need to be considered, a lot of it could be attributable to habitat loss, and much of it might be,” she said. “
The bees can’t get in the way of an alternate agenda.
“800 studies by 29 independent researches”
So, each “researcher” did 27 studies? Are these the same type of liberal “researchers” that claim globull warming is real?
“from schools such as Harvard University and University of California”
Neither “school” would get my attention enough to even read their garbage.
Smoke.
Light a good little weed-fire upwind from them and they'll leave.
It's all explained in the following brochure:
Good Green Government
[Direct Link]
800 studies by 29 researchers? Busy little bees, aren’t they?
Re: EPA head
HABITAT LOSS?!?! They’re DOMESTICATED BEES, IDIOT!!!
I saw 2 semi’s loaded with bee hives and covered with screen last week. Wrecking one of those would be lively.
Interesting article and the first that I’ve read contradicting all the beeocides reported in the media.
They should have sent their petition to Congress, not the President.
Re: your comment about being taken out of social conversations at a gathering. I’ve found mentioning it to be a great conversation stimulant. Happened today at Thanksgiving dinner. The host had bought quarts of honey for the guests. She handed it to me and asked me if it had been cut/diluted. Sadly, it had been. Turned out the guy across the table from me also had kept bees. He confirmed my assessment. It started quite a conversation.
Yes, my education has been considerably increased and expanded since I started keeping bees as well. I give lectures on the health benefits of hive products. It caused me to want to go to medical school but I’m too old for it.
Yes, I’ve dealt with Varroa as well but the hive beetle is a real mess to deal with, sadly.
Here is the odd part. I have had hives with Varoa mites thrive. I've had hives with Varoa die out in a hurry. There seems to be very little correlation to the health of the hive and Varoa. I've tried Apistan and menthol. I've tried the Crisco treatment. Nothing seems to do much. I've caught very healthy swarms which have a heavy mite load. None of it seems to make common sense sense to me.
I use home grown tobacco in my smoker and that seems to have gotten tracheal mites out of the way. It does not seem to effect the Varoa mites though.
One side benefit of the Crisco treatments is that it seems to make the hive beetles very unhappy. You may want to try that.
So you’re in favor of killing off the honey bees?
As a point of reference, beekeepers had been accustomed to losing about 15% of their bees over the winter. This is the "natural" (i.e. traditional) baseline. That loss rate has approximately doubled with colony collapse disorder. This is an expensive problem.
People have been studying colony collapse disorder for years without finding a smoking gun. I'm certainly no expert on the matter, but a casual glance at recent literature seems to still point to the Varroa mite as the leading culprit. The serious researchers (as opposed to the activist groups, which are in the scaremongering and fundraising business) are also looking at a wide range of contributing factors including diet, overwork, too much transportation of the colonies as the industry has consolidated, and other pathogens. Insecticides are also on the list as stressors. Insecticides are generally not applied at levels that are directly lethal to bees, and one can time spraying and pollination to minimize exposure, but there may be long term impacts on bee health. Obviously you can kill bees with enough of the right insecticide, but the idiot-activist procedure of basing conclusions on massive overdosing in the lab is not the test. The test is real world effects from real world levels of exposure under real world farming conditions. Here as elsewhere, the dose is the poison. Many pesticides are being studied, not just the neonicotinoids.
The EU is used as a stalking horse by the shoot-first, aim later crowd because the EU tends to regulate based on activist group hysteria, rationalized as the precautionary principle. Science does not have much to do with EU regulation. The fact is, the EU is highly protectionist, and an anti-science bias is a powerful barrier against competition, which is often driven by technological advances outside the EU's control. In this case, the EU has banned three of the neonicotinoid insecticides, the ones used on crops attractive to bees, so European farmers will be the ones holding the bag on this continent-wide stab in the dark at finding a solution by random experiment. (We are doing field trials too, but on a rationally scaled basis that provides for properly controlled experiments.) The EU ban was effective in December of last year, so the past growing season was presumably year one of the experiment. (Before the luddites start doing a happy dance, recognize that Europe will compensate for the loss of an effective class of chemicals by intensifying the use of other insecticides). I have not paid attention to the subject, but I am not aware of any early reports of improved colony health. That said, however, I do not expect the absence of positive findings to make the slightest difference to the activist campaign, which is about raising money, not protecting bees.
One must bear in mind that the scare campaign here is being led by people who are opposed to modern agriculture, period. They dislike "industrial agriculture," and "corporate agriculture," and big agribusiness, and international trade, and agricultural chemicals in general. They would be opposed to neonictinoids on principle, whether or not they have any effect on bees at all. They are offended at having to live in a world that has "molecules" and "chemicals," and would prefer 18th century agriculture, -- farming as it was practiced back before the typical grassroots activist thinks molecules and chemicals existed -- because it is "sustainable," famine being understood as Gaia's response to human overpopulation and therefore being accepted as a regulatory tool for sustaining natural biodiversity. This is the crowd that prefers that people in Africa and Asia starve, and millions of children go blind, rather than being contaminated with GM foods. If they can pose as Defenders of the Honeybee in their war against technical progress in agriculture, they are glad to do so, but no one should be naïve enough to think that bee health is the point of the exercise.
By the way, if pesticides do turn out to be a contributory factor (probably as one of many potential stressors, not a directly lethal agent), GMO's are part of the solution. GMO's build the insecticidal property into the plant which greatly reduces the need for spraying. This eliminates exposure for benign and beneficial insects. Organic farmers kill far more beneficial insects by spraying bt, which is approved for organic use, than conventional cotton, corn and soybean farmers do by planting bt crops.
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