Ohh.. The Farmer and the Bee Man Should be Friends
Ray Lackey, 1260 Walnut Ave. Bohemia NY 11716-2176 HOME - Back to Sweet Pines Apiary home page or look for us at www.tianca.com. Major losses of the feral honeybees from the predatory mites have increased the dependence of fruit and vegetable growers upon domestic honeybees; and beekeepers can find rare summer pasture in fruit and vegetable fields; but this relationship is barely amicable in many areas. Long Island beekeepers have also lost bees to pesticide kills. It is not just in dedicated agriculture areas. In the day of Integrated Pest Management (IPM), honeybee kills from pesticides should not exist but beekeepers have claimed record pesticide kills in 1997. This would indicate that better education and cooperation are necessary between these two groups.
Modern machinery for agriculture has led to the eradication of nesting sites for wild pollinators of all types. Block monoculture of crops has caused a feast-or-famine situation where pollinators have excess sources of nectar or pollen for a short time but then starve during other periods so that reproductive cycles are not completed at sufficient success rates to continue the species in that region. These two factors are causing the decline of the wild pollinators in areas of intense agriculture. The backyard gardener and small farmer in mixed-use areas are not so badly affected from loss of habitat because of the variety of plants in the area. Pesticide use, however, in suburban, mixed-use, and agriculture areas are further decimating the wild and domestic pollinator populations.
Two types of pesticides are in general use today that are harmful to pollinators. These pesticides carry warnings on their labels under the "environmental hazards" area. It is illegal to apply these pesticides in violation of these warnings. If these regulations were followed, there would be no major pesticide kills of wild or domestic pollinators. The evidence is that these regulations are not being followed. The reasons for not following these regulations include inconvenience, cost, lack of understanding of the regulations, and lack of understanding of the impact. It is believed that if the impact were understood, the others would be overcome.
Non-residual material: Example - Malathion (TM) is an insecticide used for quick knock-down of insects. Its label directions for bees says: "This product is highly toxic to bees exposed to direct treatment on blooming crops and weeds. Do not apply it or allow it to drift to blooming crops or weeds if bees are visiting the treatment area." The directions do not mention residues.
Residual material: Example - Sevin is an insecticide used on several vegetables and fruits. Its label directions for bees says: "This product is highly toxic to bees exposed to direct treatment or residues on blooming crops and weeds. Do not apply this product or allow it to drift to blooming crops or weeds if bees are visiting the treatment area."
In each case, it is the responsibility of the applicator to protect all bees through proper application. It is not restricted to "domestic" bees and it covers the area, not the crop. Thus, if clover is blooming on the orchard floor, it is illegal to use a non-residue spray when bees are working the clover. The same situation occurs when residential tree sprayers fail to consider blooming shrubs in yards where trees are being sprayed. Since bees are early risers, this would mean that the spraying would best be done in late evening or at night, not always convenient. It would be illegal to apply a residue type pesticide in these situations. Residue-type pesticides are often preferred because they reduce the cost of protecting the crop by reducing the number of applications. Residue pesticides have the added disadvantage that they are carried back to the brood nest and continue to kill successive generations of bees.
Proper use of pesticides thus requires observation beyond the crop itself. One of the best ways to determine if bees are working at the time is to maintain a hive in the area to check before pesticide use. If they have quit for the day or it is too cold for them to work, it is safe to spray. An alternative is to walk the field and its borders, examining crop and weeds, to determine bee activity. Even clean corn fields can have bee activity, seeking the pollen from the tassels as a protein source, thus posing a hazard if a residue-type pesticide is used.
Irresponsible use of pesticides can destroy pollinators nesting over a mile away. When this happens, the hive is at a minimum greatly weakened and stressed by losing the field bees for a week or more. Residue-type pesticides also cause loss of successive generations. Hives weakened by pesticides often will not recover sufficiently before winter to survive. Beekeepers facing the continual depopulation of their hives stop keeping bees in the area, further depleting the pollination forces. This is one reason bees are moved in for pollination and then out after bloom, in spite of the inconvenience and cost.
Beekeepers can generally do nothing to prevent pesticide kills. It is impossible to monitor spraying within a two mile radius of the hive. The low profit margin on honeybees also restricts the amount of monitoring of individual hives, thus delaying discovery of a pesticide kill until it is almost impossible to determine when it occurred, the pesticide used, and the source.
Losses to predatory mites, drought, floods, and pesticide kills, all effect the beekeeper and pollination fees, which have doubled in northwestern USA in the last three years. It is estimated that it costs $80 to maintain a single colony for pollination which is an alternative use to honey production. The farmer and the bee man should be friends. If they aren't, neither one will be in business for long.
(Ray Lackey has been keeping honeybees for over 15 years on Long Island. He has served as President of the Long Island Beekeepers Association. He often speaks at nature centers, parks, schools, scout troops, and adult meetings on honeybees and pollination. He has earned a Master Beekeeper certification, through Ohio State University, from Eastern Apiculture Society, the principle beekeeping organization in Northeastern USA and eastern Canada.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imidacloprid_effects_on_bee_population
Imidacloprid effects on bee population
Phone: (631)567-1936 email:lackeyray@tianca.com
Bees Vanish, and Scientists Race for Reasons
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO, THE NEW YORK TIMES
BELTSVILLE, Md., April 23 What is happening to the bees?
More than a quarter of the country's 2.4 million bee colonies have been lost -- tens of billions of bees, according to an estimate from the Apiary Inspectors of America, a national group that tracks beekeeping. So far, no one can say what is causing the bees to become disoriented and fail to return to their hives.
As with any great mystery, a number of theories have been posed, and many seem to researchers to be more science fiction than science. People have blamed genetically modified crops, cellular phone towers and high-voltage transmission lines for the disappearances. Or was it a secret plot by Russia or Osama bin Laden to bring down American agriculture? Or, as some blogs have asserted, the rapture of the bees, in which God recalled them to heaven? Researchers have heard it all.
The volume of theories "is totally mind-boggling," said Diana Cox-Foster, an entomologist at Pennsylvania State University. With Jeffrey S. Pettis, an entomologist from the United States Department of Agriculture, Dr. Cox-Foster is leading a team of researchers who are trying to find answers to explain "colony collapse disorder," the name given for the disappearing bee syndrome.
"Clearly there is an urgency to solve this," Dr. Cox-Foster said. "We are trying to move as quickly as we can."
Dr. Cox-Foster and fellow scientists who are here at a two-day meeting to discuss early findings and future plans with government officials have been focusing on the most likely suspects: a virus, a fungus or a pesticide.
About 60 researchers from North America sifted the possibilities at the meeting today. Some expressed concern about the speed at which adult bees are disappearing from their hives; some colonies have collapsed in as little as two days. Others noted that countries in Europe, as well as Guatemala and parts of Brazil, are also struggling for answers.
"There are losses around the world that may or not be linked," Dr. Pettis said.
The investigation is now entering a critical phase. The researchers have collected samples in several states and have begun doing bee autopsies and genetic analysis.
So far, known enemies of the bee world, like the varroa mite, on their own at least, do not appear to be responsible for the unusually high losses.
Genetic testing at Columbia University has revealed the presence of multiple microorganisms in bees from hives or colonies that are in decline, suggesting that something is weakening their immune system. The researchers have found some fungi in the affected bees that are found in humans whose immune systems have been suppressed by the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or cancer.
"That is extremely unusual," Dr. Cox-Foster said.
View pictures of beekeepers and bees and learn more about these important insects.
- Meanwhile, samples were sent to an Agriculture Department laboratory in North Carolina this month to screen for 117 chemicals. Particular suspicion falls on a pesticide that France banned out of concern that it may have been decimating bee colonies. Concern has also mounted among public officials.
"There are so many of our crops that require pollinators," said Representative Dennis Cardoza, a California Democrat whose district includes that state's central agricultural valley, and who presided last month at a Congressional hearing on the bee issue. "We need an urgent call to arms to try to ascertain what is really going on here with the bees, and bring as much science as we possibly can to bear on the problem."
So far, colony collapse disorder has been found in 27 states, according to Bee Alert Technology Inc., a company monitoring the problem. A recent survey of 13 states by the Apiary Inspectors of America showed that 26 percent of beekeepers had lost half of their bee colonies between September and March.
Honeybees are arguably the insects that are most important to the human food chain. They are the principal pollinators of hundreds of fruits, vegetables, flowers and nuts. The number of bee colonies has been declining since the 1940s, even as the crops that rely on them, such as California almonds, have grown. In October, at about the time that beekeepers were experiencing huge bee losses, a study by the National Academy of Sciences questioned whether American agriculture was relying too heavily on one type of pollinator, the honeybee.
Bee colonies have been under stress in recent years as more beekeepers have resorted to crisscrossing the country with 18-wheel trucks full of bees in search of pollination work. These bees may suffer from a diet that includes artificial supplements, concoctions akin to energy drinks and power bars. In several states, suburban sprawl has limited the bees' natural forage areas.
So far, the researchers have discounted the possibility that poor diet alone could be responsible for the widespread losses. They have also set aside for now the possibility that the cause could be bees feeding from a commonly used genetically modified crop, Bt corn, because the symptoms typically associated with toxins, such as blood poisoning, are not showing up in the affected bees. But researchers emphasized today that feeding supplements produced from genetically modified crops, such as high-fructose corn syrup, need to be studied.
The scientists say that definitive answers for the colony collapses could be months away. But recent advances in biology and genetic sequencing are speeding the search.
Computers can decipher information from DNA and match pieces of genetic code with particular organisms. Luckily, a project to sequence some 11,000 genes of the honeybee was completed late last year at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, giving scientists a huge head start on identifying any unknown pathogens in the bee tissue.
"Otherwise, we would be looking for the needle in the haystack," Dr. Cox-Foster said.
Large bee losses are not unheard of. They have been reported at several points in the past century. But researchers think they are dealing with something new -- or at least with something previously unidentified.
"There could be a number of factors that are weakening the bees or speeding up things that shorten their lives," said Dr. W. Steve Sheppard, a professor of entomology at Washington State University. "The answer may already be with us."
Scientists first learned of the bee disappearances in November, when David Hackenberg, a Pennsylvania beekeeper, told Dr. Cox-Foster that more than 50 percent of his bee colonies had collapsed in Florida, where he had taken them for the winter.
Dr. Cox-Foster, a 20-year veteran of studying bees, soon teamed with Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the Pennsylvania apiary inspector, to look into the losses.
In December, she approached W. Ian Lipkin, director of the Greene Infectious Disease Laboratory at Columbia University, about doing genetic sequencing of tissue from bees in the colonies that experienced losses. The laboratory uses a recently developed technique for reading and amplifying short sequences of DNA that has revolutionized the science. Dr. Lipkin, who typically works on human diseases, agreed to do the analysis, despite not knowing who would ultimately pay for it. His laboratory is known for its work in finding the West Nile disease in the United States.
Dr. Cox-Foster ultimately sent samples of bee tissue to researchers at Columbia, to the Agriculture Department laboratory in Maryland, and to Gene Robinson, an entomologist at the University of Illinois. Fortuitously, she had frozen bee samples from healthy colonies dating to 2004 to use for comparison.
After receiving the first bee samples from Dr. Cox-Foster on March 6, Dr. Lipkin's team amplified the genetic material and started sequencing to separate virus, fungus and parasite DNA from bee DNA.
"This is like 'C.S.I.' for agriculture," Dr. Lipkin said. "It is painstaking, gumshoe detective work."
Dr. Lipkin sent his first set of results to Dr. Cox-Foster, showing that several unknown microorganisms were present in the bees from collapsing colonies. Meanwhile, Mr. vanEngelsdorp and researchers at the Agriculture Department lab here began an autopsy of bees from collapsing colonies in California, Florida, Georgia and Pennsylvania to search for any known bee pathogens.
At the University of Illinois, using knowledge gained from the sequencing of the bee genome, Dr. Robinson's team will try to find which genes in the collapsing colonies are particularly active, perhaps indicating stress from exposure to a toxin or pathogen.
The national research team also quietly began a parallel study in January, financed in part by the National Honey Board, to further determine if something pathogenic could be causing colonies to collapse.
Mr. Hackenberg, the beekeeper, agreed to take his empty bee boxes and other equipment to Food Technology Service, a company in Mulberry, Fla., that uses gamma rays to kill bacteria on medical equipment and some fruits. In early results, the irradiated bee boxes seem to have shown a return to health for colonies repopulated with Australian bees.
"This supports the idea that there is a pathogen there," Dr. Cox-Foster said. "It would be hard to explain the irradiation getting rid of a chemical."
Still, some environmental substances remain suspicious.
Chris Mullin, a Pennsylvania State University professor and insect toxicologist, recently sent a set of samples to a federal laboratory in Raleigh, N.C., that will screen for 117 chemicals. Of greatest interest are the "systemic" chemicals that are able to pass through a plant's circulatory system and move to the new leaves or the flowers, where they would come in contact with bees.
One such group of compounds is called neonicotinoids, commonly used pesticides that are used to treat corn and other seeds against pests. One of the neonicotinoids, imidacloprid, is commonly used in Europe and the United States to treat seeds, to protect residential foundations against termites and to help keep golf courses and home lawns green.
In the late 1990s, French beekeepers reported large losses of their bees and complained about the use of imidacloprid, sold under the brand name Gaucho. The chemical, while not killing the bees outright, was causing them to be disoriented and stay away from their hives, leading them to die of exposure to the cold, French researchers later found. The beekeepers labeled the syndrome "mad bee disease."
The French government banned the pesticide in 1999 for use on sunflowers, and later for corn, despite protests by the German chemical giant Bayer, which has said its internal research showed the pesticide was not toxic to bees. Subsequent studies by independent French researchers have disagreed with Bayer. Alison Chalmers, an eco-toxicologist for Bayer CropScience, said at the meeting today that bee colonies had not recovered in France as beekeepers had expected. "These chemicals are not being used anymore," she said of imidacloprid, "so they certainly were not the only cause."
Among the pesticides being tested in the American bee investigation, the neonicotinoids group "is the number-one suspect," Dr. Mullin said. He hoped results of the toxicology screening will be ready within a month.
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