tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40871610354041825622024-03-13T08:20:42.403-07:00Love the Honey Bees!LOVE THE HONEY BEES
This blog is dedicated to providing information about the honey bee. We celebrate the honey bee through "An Evening in Honor of the Sacred Honey Bee" with traditional Bulgarian bee rituals, songs, music, poetry and dance.
Our second "Evening..." was held August 15, 2009 at Pt. Reyes Dance Palace, in celebration of the first National Honey Bee Awareness Day. Pictured are Gradina Balkan Music Ensemble: http://www.traditionalfun.org/gradina_about.html"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.comBlogger228125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-9950173828503391232013-08-17T08:13:00.001-07:002013-08-17T08:13:10.086-07:00Great Bee Count in Marin and across the nation Saturday<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
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By Mark Prado<br />
Marin Independent Journal<br />
Posted: 08/16/2013 03:58:12 PM PDT<br />
http://www.marinij.com/marinnews/ci_23879626/great-bee-count-marin-and-across-nation-saturday?_requestid=17860<br />
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The sixth annual Great Bee Count will occur Saturday, the brainchild of a Corte Madera professor aimed at tracking the world's important pollinators.<br />
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Anyone can participate, in fact the more the merrier, said Gretchen LeBuhn, who teaches ecology and conservation biology at San Francisco State University.<br />
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"The count happens all over the world, but is strongest in Canada and the United States," the Corte Madera resident said.<br />
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LeBuhn is building data on bees — and for the first time this year other pollinators, such as hummingbirds, butterflies and moths — which work their magic on flowers, almonds, apples and alfalfa, among other flora. Observers are asked to take a few minutes to note what<br />
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they see and upload the information to www.greatsunflower.org.<br />
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The project has been gathering information since 2008 and now boasts the largest single body of data about bee pollination in North America. While people can make their observations and send in data any time, Saturday has been named the day of the national count.<br />
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"We want to see what is happening in our wildlands and open space," LeBuhn said. "Our goal is build a data set for more than just bees that people can use."<br />
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Saturday's count occurs in the wake of an announcement this week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that it has developed new labels that prohibit use of some neonicotinoid pesticide products where bees and other pollinators are present.<br />
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Neonicotinoid are a class of chemicals that act on the central nervous system of insects. Beekeepers and environmental organizations say they are toxic to bees and could be a significant factor in colony collapse disorder, in which all the adult honeybees in a colony suddenly disappear or die. This year, some beekeepers lost up to 50 percent of their colonies.<br />
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"The proper use of pesticides is critical for the protection of honey bees, and the crops that depend on them for pollination," said Kathleen Johnson, EPA's enforcement division director for the Pacific Southwest said in a statement.<br />
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The new labels will have a bee advisory box and icon with information on routes of exposure and spray drift precautions. The EPA will work with pesticide manufacturers to change labels so that they will meet federal rules.<br />
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The new label rules affect products containing the neonicotinoids imidacloprid, dinotefuran, clothianidin and thiamethoxam.<br />
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Contact Mark Prado via email at mprado@marinij.com<br />
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.<br />
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"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-66298131792710236762013-08-15T22:24:00.000-07:002013-08-15T22:24:54.736-07:00Join Friends of the Earth in calling on Michelle Obama to protect the bees<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mzaOkzlsqrs/Ug23mVfWxCI/AAAAAAAAG9E/-aYEFrkzx3s/s1600/61235_10151500861252026_644134304_n.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mzaOkzlsqrs/Ug23mVfWxCI/AAAAAAAAG9E/-aYEFrkzx3s/s400/61235_10151500861252026_644134304_n.png" /></a></div>: http://bit.ly/130GKHh<br />
The first lady has long been a supporter of organic gardening, and even bough a bee hive into White House garden, and now we're calling on her to stand up for the bees by opposing bee-killing pesticides."Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-15329649560362638012013-08-15T22:20:00.000-07:002013-08-15T22:20:13.339-07:00Call on the CEOs of Home Depot and Lowe's to stop selling plants poisoned with bee-killing pesticides. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
</div>Friends of the Earth U.S.<br />
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Call on the CEOs of Home Depot and Lowe's to stop selling plants poisoned with bee-killing pesticides. http://bit.ly/16c41Er<br />
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Our new first-of-its-kind report found that more than half of the “bee friendly” home garden plants sold at stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s contained bee-killing pesticides called neonicotinoids. Please take action, and like and share this image to stand up not only for the bees, but our entire food system.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LGHbyMZR_-E/Ug22fKOabAI/AAAAAAAAG84/48kt0EAqQ00/s1600/1146199_10151527473887026_985123967_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LGHbyMZR_-E/Ug22fKOabAI/AAAAAAAAG84/48kt0EAqQ00/s400/1146199_10151527473887026_985123967_o.jpg" /></a></div>"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-19920526762127653832013-08-08T12:45:00.001-07:002013-08-08T12:45:08.963-07:00Latest issue of TIME Magazine, August 19, 2013<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jHF9kst9zNM/UgP04fjOMqI/AAAAAAAAG78/Etf1uxyEAhA/s1600/1101130819_400.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jHF9kst9zNM/UgP04fjOMqI/AAAAAAAAG78/Etf1uxyEAhA/s400/1101130819_400.jpg" /></a><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
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The Plight of the Honeybee<br />
Mass deaths in bee colonies may mean disaster for farmers--and your favorite foods<br />
By Bryan Walsh Monday, Aug. 19, 2013<br />
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You can thank the Apis mellifera, better known as the Western honeybee, for 1 in every 3 mouthfuls you'll eat today. Honeybees — which pollinate crops like apples, blueberries and cucumbers — are the "glue that holds our agricultural system together," as the journalist Hannah Nordhaus put it in her 2011 book The Beekeeper's Lament. But that glue is failing. Bee hives are dying off or disappearing thanks to a still-unsolved malady called colony collapse disorder (CCD), so much so that commercial beekeepers are being pushed out of the business.<br />
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So what's killing the honeybees? Pesticides — including a new class called neonicotinoids — seem to be harming bees even at what should be safe levels. Biological threats like the Varroa mite are killing off colonies directly and spreading deadly diseases. As our farms become monocultures of commodity crops like wheat and corn — plants that provide little pollen for foraging bees — honeybees are literally starving to death. If we don't do something, there may not be enough honeybees to meet the pollination demands for valuable crops. But more than that, in a world where up to 100,000 species go extinct each year, the vanishing honeybee could be the herald of a permanently diminished planet...<br />
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Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2149141,00.html#ixzz2bPOkBbwQ<br />
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"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-57929696787339829352013-08-08T12:41:00.000-07:002013-08-08T12:41:52.018-07:00A Different Kind of Beekeeping Takes Flight By DOUGLAS M. MAIN<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
</div>Much of the honey eaten in the United States and Europe comes from the European honeybee. But Apis mellifera and the handful of other species in the honeybee family aren’t the only ones that make this sugary treat. A much larger and more diverse group called stingless bees also produce honey — and they’re creating a stir among beekeepers and researchers worldwide as pollinators and as a newfound source of food and medicinal products.<br />
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Made up of more than 600 species, each of which makes its own version of honey, this tribe of bees lives throughout the world’s tropics. Like honeybees, they are social and form colonies with a queen and workers, many of which collect nectar from various flowers before bringing it back home to churn painstakingly into honey. Their foraging transfers pollen from one bloom to another, a service that many plants — and agriculture as we know it — could not survive without.<br />
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But stingless bees are pickier than their European counterparts about what flowers they visit, making them important for keeping certain tropical forests healthy.<br />
Honey from a native stingless bee species cultivated in Bolivia's Amboró National Park.Patricia VitHoney from a species cultivated in Bolivia’s Amboró National Park.<br />
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Their honey, too, is different, containing more water — you would probably drink it as opposed to eating it with a spoon, said David Roubik, a bee expert with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.<br />
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It’s also more difficult to get: a typical colony may only produce a couple of liters of honey per year, compared with 50 or more for honeybees. Their nests consist of many small “honey pots” instead of the honeybee’s regular combs. And as their name implies, they lack stingers and are generally less aggressive than honeybees, making them easier to raise; they’re kept as “pets” in many places and can often be tended to by children.<br />
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Because there are so many different species of stingless, or meloponine, bees, they produce a wide variety of honey. Its taste has been variously described as sweeter, more bitter or sharper than the honeybee’s product, often with a delightful floral aftertaste, said Stephen Buchmann, a native bee researcher at the University of Arizona. Dr. Buchmann, who has sampled hundreds of varieties, said the best-tasting honey comes from the royal lady bee, a stingless species that the Maya people of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula have cultivated for 2,000 years.<br />
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Stingless bee honey also has a variety of medicinal uses. Numerous reports attest to its antibiotic properties, no surprise to native people worldwide who use it to treat eye infections and wounds. A study to be published by the Journal of Experimental Pharmacology by the researcher Peter Kwapong found that this honey is slightly more effective than a store-bought antibiotic at treating eye infections in guinea pigs. And other studies have hinted that it might help deter cancer.<br />
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Aside from the Maya, though, few groups have worked out sophisticated methods for cultivating colonies of these bees in manmade structures, partly because of the insect’s tiny size, small colonies and many varieties. Most often, people merely harvest the honey from nests in forest trees and move on, Dr. Roubik said.<br />
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But that’s beginning to change. In Brazil, for example, the raising of these bees for their honey, called meliponiculture, is widespread. (The word comes from Meliponini, the taxonomic term for stingless bees.) In some areas, it’s even more common than the cultivation of honeybees known as apiculture.<br />
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Patricia Vit, a researcher at the University of the Andes in Venezeula, for example, took humorous issue with frequent references to the stingless bee’s product as the “other honey.” “In the forest, the ‘other honey’ is that of Apis mellifera,” or the European honeybee, she wrote in an e-mail.<br />
From left to right, "uruçú" and "tiúba" honey from Brazil, Mexican "negrita" and Bolivian "suro negro." Patricia VitFrom left to right, “uruçú” and “tiúba” honey from Brazil, Mexican “negrita” and Bolivian “suro negro.” <br />
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Indeed, many prominent meliponiculturists in Brazil and elsewhere have long waiting lists for purchasing their honey, said Breno Freitas, a researcher at the Federal University of Ceará in Brazil. This honey often sells for 10 times the price of honeybee honey.<br />
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Dr. Kwapong, an entomologist at Ghana’s University of Cape Coast, first learned about — and fell in love with — stingless bees at a conference in Brazil. When he returned to Ghana, he founded the International Stingless Bee Center, dedicated to studying and spreading meliponiculture of native bees throughout West Africa. Dr. Kwapong has helped train more than 200 people from around the region in the delicate trade.<br />
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The practice is also receiving growing recognition and study at institutions throughout Central and South America, Australia and elsewhere. In Japan, stingless bees are being cultivated to pollinate greenhouses, a feat at which they excel. Since they can’t survive in temperate areas, they cannot escape and interfere with local insect populations, a problem that has dogged the use of bumblebees for the same purpose.<br />
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Still, little is known about how to raise the vast majority of stingless bee species. That’s frustrating for would-be meliponine beekeepers; many give up on the idea because they cannot get the information they need, Dr. Freitas said.<br />
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Sam Droege, a biologist with the United States Geological Survey, said in a phone interview that the newfound interest in meliponiculture may be a harbinger of a revolution in animal husbandry. “In the sweep of history, we don’t often see new groups or classes of domesticated animals arising,” he said.<br />
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Of course, meliponiculture is nothing new for certain groups, most notably the Maya, who recorded their age-old craft in the glyphs in ruins throughout the Yucatán and in the Madrid Codex, one of the few surviving collections of Mayan hieroglyphics.<br />
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Yet the Mayan beekeeping tradition is in serious danger of dying out. Populations of the bee have declined with deforestation, and beekeepers are less frequently passing on the tradition to younger generations as they move to cities, Dr. Buchmann said. To counter this trend, he has taught a series of classes throughout the peninsula to encourage beekeeping and has published a meliponiculture manual in Mayan and Spanish.<br />
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While Dr. Buchmann is worried for the future in the Yucatán, he’s encouraged by the spread of meliponiculture elsewhere. But he doesn’t consider the bees a domesticated animal. “We just give them a place to live, and let them be,” he said.<br />
Honey pots on the Paraguaná peninsula in Venezuela.Patricia VitHoney pots on the Paraguaná peninsula in Venezuela.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zTd3AFGJp78/UgP0M6lmzXI/AAAAAAAAG7k/G4lVKeMaVaU/s1600/bee4-blog480.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zTd3AFGJp78/UgP0M6lmzXI/AAAAAAAAG7k/G4lVKeMaVaU/s320/bee4-blog480.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tjlzRxZjvMg/UgP0X3A_ZXI/AAAAAAAAG7s/hFTS7fMgZNw/s1600/bee22-articleInline.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tjlzRxZjvMg/UgP0X3A_ZXI/AAAAAAAAG7s/hFTS7fMgZNw/s320/bee22-articleInline.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tqdj_qxLANc/UgP0ZhN1U6I/AAAAAAAAG70/Qoz079iyKRM/s1600/bee1-blog480.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tqdj_qxLANc/UgP0ZhN1U6I/AAAAAAAAG70/Qoz079iyKRM/s320/bee1-blog480.jpg" /></a></div>"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-3420407068567702802013-06-27T22:49:00.000-07:002013-06-27T22:50:50.191-07:00 How a Harvard scientist, a sixth-generation bee whisperer, and a retired entrepreneur joined forces to rescue an embattled insect and save the American food supply.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
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By Scott Helman<br />
| Globe Staff <br />
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June 23, 2013<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yXEXE472XUA/Uc0j4P-slYI/AAAAAAAAG6k/DxJlacsH1Lc/s460/kreiter_bees6_mag.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yXEXE472XUA/Uc0j4P-slYI/AAAAAAAAG6k/DxJlacsH1Lc/s460/kreiter_bees6_mag.jpg" /></a><br />
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CHENSHENG LU hardly cuts the profile of a provocateur. He dresses business casual and wears silver-rimmed glasses. He lives in Wellesley. He gardens. He has two children, one in high school, another in college. He occupies a tidy office in the Landmark Center, as an associate professor in the Harvard School of Public Health’s Department of Environmental Health. And yet the mention of Lu’s name in certain quarters elicits palpable discomfort: Oh, him.<br />
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Lu, who is 49 and goes by Alex, grew up a city kid in Taipei, the youngest of three siblings. He rode his bike to the baseball field, sometimes to the comic-book store. He knew little about agriculture, little about nature. Then he came to the United States for graduate school, first to Rutgers University and then to the University of Washington, where he got his PhD in environmental health. In the Pacific Northwest, Lu found his calling: tracking pesticide exposure in food, homes, and workplaces. The prevalence of these chemicals, he grew convinced, was a critical and understudied aspect of public health.<br />
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For nearly all this time, Ken Warchol was in Northbridge, teaching social studies to middle school and high school students, playing a 19th-century industrialist in historical reenactments, and coaching track and cross-country. On the side, Warchol, who is 63, tended to his lifelong passion of beekeeping, operating his own hives, helping other bee enthusiasts around Worcester County, and examining apiaries as a state inspector. “My whole life,” he says, “I’ve been with bees.”<br />
Related<br />
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Graphic: All in a year’s work<br />
25,000 bumble bees killed in Oregon parking lot<br />
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A sixth-generation beekeeper, Warchol traces the family tradition to Poland in the 1840s. His father brought the practice and tools with him to the United States after World War II. Several years later, Warchol, as a young boy, got his first hive from his father, who made him a wager: Whoever had more honey at collection time won dinner at the Bungalow, a restaurant down the road. Warchol can still remember the particulars of his victory. He had 84 pounds of honey to his dad’s 76, and he got steak at the Bungalow. Only recently, as his mother was dying, did she spill the secret. His father had given him the strongest hive so he could win.<br />
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Dick Callahan grew up nearby in Worcester and earned a PhD in entomology from the University of Massachusetts, inspired by Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring, which chronicled the damage wrought by pesticides and sparked the modern environmental movement. After four years in the Air Force, he embarked on a career as a scientist and entrepreneur, running environmental surveys in the ocean, cofounding and taking public a pharmaceutical firm, and then helping others start their own companies. “I’m a real capitalist,” the retired 72-year-old says.<br />
Alex Lu, Dick Callahan, and Ken Warchol open a hive in Northbridge, where they are studying the effects of pesticide exposure on honeybees.<br />
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Suzanne Kreiter/Globe staff<br />
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Alex Lu, Dick Callahan, and Ken Warchol open a hive in Northbridge, where they are studying the effects of pesticide exposure on honeybees.<br />
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About 15 years ago, Callahan was wandering around a Worcester flower show at what is now the DCU Center. He came upon a beekeeping exhibit and thought, I’ve always been interested in that. Soon after, he enrolled in a school run by the Worcester County Beekeepers Association. One of the instructors was Ken Warchol. They became friends and worked together on a government study of an eradication program for Asian long-horned beetles. Callahan went on to start several beehives of his own at his home in Holden and on a nearby farm.<br />
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The tale of how Lu, Warchol, and Callahan began collaborating is one chapter of a much larger story, a story of billions of vanishing honeybees and what their plight means for our dinner tables and health. It’s a story of science and mystery, of politics and big business, of California almonds and Maine blueberries, of threatened livelihoods and jeopardized crops. It’s a story about the high stakes and strong passions of environmental research. It’s a story about chemicals, and what we know and don’t know about their imprint.<br />
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This part of the story begins simply enough. In the fall of 2009, Lu and his son drove out to Keown Orchards in Sutton to watch Warchol give a presentation to beekeepers on preparing hives for the winter. Afterward, he introduced himself to Warchol as a Harvard scientist, asking Warchol to consider partnering with him on a research project.<br />
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Warchol’s first reaction was, the Harvard University? “I got a 1,300 on my college boards,” Warchol recalls telling him in an early conversation. “I wasn’t even close to getting into Harvard.” Lu reassured the beekeeper. He wasn’t looking for a student. What he needed was a teacher.<br />
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IN LATE 2006, beekeepers across the United States began reporting an ominous discovery: their honeybees were disappearing at unprecedented rates. Beekeepers, many of whom tended thousands of hives, were accustomed to losing 10 percent to 20 percent of their colonies each year. Normally, in diseased hives, piles of dead bees pooled at the bottom. This was different.<br />
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David Hackenberg, a commercial beekeeper in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, sounded the alarm on 60 Minutes in 2007, explaining that he had lost a staggering two-thirds of his bees. Other beekeepers fared worse, losing up to 90 percent of their hives. Researchers termed the phenomenon “colony collapse disorder.” In affected apiaries, bees were inexplicably abandoning their colonies, often leaving behind food and young. The bees weren’t just lying there dead. They were gone. “It was like a ghost town,” Hackenberg told 60 Minutes.<br />
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The phenomenon became an epidemic, wrecking colonies of small independent beekeepers and large commercial operations alike. Beekeepers who responded to an annual US Department of Agriculture-funded survey reported losing, on average, more than a third of their hives every year from 2006 to 2013, though not all losses have been attributed to colony collapse. Beekeepers in the Northeast have been among those hardest hit.<br />
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As the toll mounted, beekeepers, scientists, federal regulators, the media, and environmentalists groped for answers, blaming, at various points, climate change, poor nutrition, fungus, cell-tower radiation, mites, viruses, and even a purported scheme hatched by Russian spooks. The latest consensus among regulators and some scientists is that a combination of factors, including parasites, pesticide use, and increasingly homogenized American agriculture, is what’s decimating the honeybee population. A US government report published in May concluded that “a complex set of stressors and pathogens is associated with CCD, and researchers are increasingly using multi-factorial approaches to studying causes of colony losses.”<br />
Alex Lu, Ken Warchol, and Dick Callahan’s bees.<br />
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Suzanne Kreiter/Globe staff<br />
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Lu, Warchol, and Callahan’s bees.<br />
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The urgency of solving the puzzle is undeniable. Honeybees are critical to the food supply. About one-third of what we put in our mouths benefits directly or indirectly from honeybee pollination, according to the USDA. Without bees, harvests dwindle and food prices rise.<br />
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Every year, commercial beekeepers truck hundreds of thousands of hives from state to state to pollinate a multitude of crops, from tree nuts in California to cranberries in Massachusetts. Many make a good part of their living through pollination contracts with growers. In recent years, the US honeybee supply has diminished to the point where growers have had to import pollinators.<br />
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In his previous research, Alex Lu had focused on human exposure to pesticides, making his name with a study in the Seattle area, first published in 2005, showing that switching children to a largely organic diet could quickly and dramatically reduce the amounts of pesticide residues in their bodies. He knew no more about honeybees than the average consumer.<br />
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What he did know, however, was pesticides — their complexity, their ubiquity, and their potency. Seeing David Hackenberg’s story on 60 Minutes aroused his suspicions. Like Hackenberg himself, Lu had a hunch that pesticides, above all, were to blame for the vanishing bees. He wasn’t the first to see a connection, but he was determined to prove one.<br />
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THERE’S A CERTAIN GENIUS to pesticides known as systemics. Unlike traditional pest-killing chemicals, which are usually sprayed on crops, lawns, and trees, systemic pesticides render a plant toxic to bugs from the inside out. Seeds are treated with pesticide before they’re sowed (or sometimes the soil is pre-treated). When the plant grows, the poison essentially grows with it, spreading to all parts of the tissue and killing any snacking corn borers, rootworms, aphids, or stink bugs.<br />
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The big systemic pesticides these days are called neonicotinoids, which are derived from nicotine and target insects’ nervous systems. They have exploded in popularity over the past decade, thanks to a perception that they are both safer and more effective than the pesticides they replaced. The vast majority of corn planted in the United States today is pre-treated with neonicotinoids, the seeds colored like candy. So are other major crops such as soybeans and canola.<br />
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The wind, not bees, pollinates corn, but bees can collect corn pollen. And neonicotinoid-laced pollen blows onto nearby flowers and crops, exposing honeybees to the poison. Neonicotinoids are also used on plants that bees do pollinate, including cucumbers and watermelons. Unlike older pesticides, neonicotinoids can linger in the soil for months or even years.<br />
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The more Lu learned about colony collapse, the more convinced he became that the epidemic’s timing was no coincidence, coming as neonicotinoid use surged in American agriculture. With a $25,000 grant from Harvard, he began designing an experiment to test his hypothesis, aiming to replicate the honeybee disappearances that beekeepers were experiencing. It was clear neonicotinoids were acutely toxic to bees, just as they were to crop-eating insects, but what about at lower levels, over a prolonged period of time?<br />
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Lu, Warchol, and Callahan sketched out a plan. In the spring of 2010, they would set up 20 hives at four locations, two in Uxbridge and two in Northbridge. They would feed all the hives high fructose corn syrup, mimicking a common commercial beekeeping practice. (Beekeepers typically supplement their colonies’ food supply with syrup or sugar.) In four of the five hives at each site, the syrup would contain imidacloprid, a commonly used neonicotinoid. The fifth hive, the control in the experiment, would be fed syrup not dosed with pesticide.<br />
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They began with a population of roughly 220,000 bees that grew into 1.4 million or so. On July 1, 2010, they started the pesticide regimen, beginning with very low doses, to make sure they didn’t kill the bees right away. They upped the amounts after four weeks to levels that Lu says were on the conservative end of what bees encounter in the real world — through syrup made from corn treated with neonicotinoids or nectar and pollen collected from contaminated flowers and crops. The four pesticide-laced hives at every site were given different concentrations of imidacloprid.<br />
Part of the hive in Northbridge.<br />
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Suzanne Kreiter/Globe staff<br />
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Part of the hive in Northbridge.<br />
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Winter came, and they saw nothing. The hives seemed fine. “We were starting to get discouraged,” Warchol says. “Dick and I were talking, saying, ‘Wow, there’s really nothing going on.’ ” Lu had the same reaction. “At that time,” he says, “I thought my hypothesis was wrong.”<br />
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Then everything started to change. Around the beginning of 2011, a beekeeper whose yard they were using as a testing site reported seeing a mass of bees suddenly fleeing one of the hives. It was suicide — to endure the winter, honeybees typically cluster together inside their hive for warmth, surviving on food that a beekeeper has provided to sustain them. Some of the bees had dropped dead on the surrounding snow. The rest had disappeared.<br />
<br />
Over the next several weeks, Lu, Warchol, and Callahan lost 15 of the 16 hives they had fed imidacloprid. It resembled colony collapse disorder, with abandoned hives bearing plenty of food. “It was an exciting moment in a sense, even though the bees were dying,” Warchol says. For Lu, it all clicked. “It’s not Mother Nature,” he says. “It’s us.” They lost one of their control hives to disease, but it looked very different from the hives the bees had fled, with dead bees littering the colony.<br />
<br />
When Lu, Warchol, and Callahan sought to publish their results, they encountered resistance. Some journals wouldn’t take the manuscript. Peer reviewers raised objections. They finally published in 2012 in an Italian journal called the Bulletin of Insectology. They also wrote a letter alerting the US Environmental Protection Agency to their work, just as two European research teams announced similar findings.<br />
<br />
Critics challenged their science, the design of their experiment, and their conclusions. One California beekeeper was especially strident, going to great lengths to try to discredit their study. A leading bee researcher called it “an embarrassment.”<br />
<br />
Others, like May Berenbaum, head of the Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, offer more measured criticism. Berenbaum questions Lu’s sample size, saying sweeping conclusions are impossible from 20 hives. She also cites a separate study that found no evidence of neonicotinoids in commercially available high fructose corn syrup, which she says undermines the premise of bees being exposed to pesticides through the food provided by beekeepers. (Lu dismisses these objections, saying 20 hives was plenty, statistically speaking, and that no historical record exists on neonicotinoid levels in corn syrup.)<br />
<br />
A self-described “tree-hugger,” Berenbaum is highly critical of systemic pesticides. She just hasn’t seen enough evidence to support banning them. If and when it reaches that point, she says, “I’d be the first one in line” pushing to restrict their use. “It’s a seductively easy fix,” she says, noting that many other chemical residues have been found in dead bees. “But like many seductively easy fixes, it is, I think, not likely to fix everything, or maybe even fix enough.”<br />
<br />
For Lu, the push-back to their study — and the fact that no one, to his knowledge, sought to replicate it — emboldened him to go back into the field. “He’s a very passionate guy,” Callahan says. “There’s no question about it.”<br />
<br />
So Lu, Warchol, and Callahan established new testing hives at three sites in 2012. They varied their methods somewhat, in part by testing bees’ exposure to both imidacloprid and another neonicotinoid called clothianidin. The results, they say, only reinforced their conclusion that pesticides are likely a major culprit behind colony collapse.<br />
<br />
As last winter approached, the number of bees in all their test hives steadily dropped, which is normal for that time of year. But while the control hives started to rebound in January, the pesticide-treated hives did not. Lu is now finalizing the study in hopes of publishing the results in a journal soon. One factor he is investigating is whether neonicotinoids do more harm to honeybees in colder temperatures.<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
YOU COULD SPEND A LIFETIME reading studies and counter-studies on pesticides and their effects on plant, insect, and animal life. Suffice it to say that debate rages over the chemicals we rely on and their true costs and benefits. But Europe, where honeybees have also suffered, has seen enough to act.<br />
<br />
In May, despite opposition from the United Kingdom and some other member countries, the European Commission adopted a ban on the use of three neonicotinoids on crops that attract bees and other pollinators. The ban, based on a risk assessment by European scientists, takes effect December 1 and will be reevaluated after two years at the latest. (A few European Union countries had already imposed their own such restrictions, and there’s some evidence bee health has improved.) It’s a step Lu and other critics of neonicotinoids say the United States should be taking. “The EU’s ban is a slap in our face,” he says.<br />
<br />
Europe and the United States, though, have different approaches to environmental regulation. Where Europe is willing to take products off the shelf until they can be proved safe, the United States often allows industry to sell products until they’ve been proved harmful, a process that can take years.<br />
Bees in Northbridge.<br />
<br />
Suzanne Kreiter/Globe staff<br />
<br />
Bees in Northbridge.<br />
<br />
The EPA, in particular, has come under heavy criticism for allowing pesticide manufacturers to start selling new products after limited safety testing and then leaving it up to the companies themselves to provide further data down the road. “It’s a formula that is designed to fail, and it’s doing just that,” says Steve Ellis, a longtime commercial beekeeper in Barrett, Minnesota, who says he lost 65 percent of his hives in the 2012-2013 winter. “And the bee industry is failing because of it.” Ellis belongs to a group of beekeepers and environmental organizations that filed a lawsuit against the EPA in March alleging the agency has been negligent in pesticide regulation.<br />
<br />
Chas Mraz, a third-generation beekeeper in Middlebury, Vermont, also thinks systemic pesticides might be to blame for bee losses, which he has experienced himself, but he’s pessimistic anything will be done about it. “It’s just like nobody gives a damn about the beekeepers or a lot of other small enterprises in this country,” he says.<br />
<br />
The USDA and the EPA have been working jointly on honeybee health, trying to balance the importance of pest control to agriculture with the risks to pollinators. Kim Kaplan, a spokeswoman for the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, says pesticides are critical to food production and that crop yields would be substantially lower without them. “We have a lot of people to feed,” she says. “So who goes without?”<br />
<br />
The government, Kaplan says, can’t hastily take neonicotinoids off the shelf unless the science is clear, an argument echoed by EPA officials. Kaplan insists the government is looking hard at pesticides, including the scenario that chronic exposure is a catalyst that makes bees more susceptible to other problems.<br />
<br />
What does the government make of Lu’s work on pesticides and honeybees? When I ask Kaplan about it, one of the first things she says is “Have you read some of the critiques of his studies?” In 2012, after he released the results of his first study, Lu says, he was disinvited from a meeting of the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Panel. It was the kind of gathering he had participated in many times, and his research was certainly germane — much of the meeting, the agenda suggests, dwelled on bees’ exposure to pesticides. But Lu says he was told his work was too controversial. (The EPA denies that Lu was disinvited, saying there were simply more candidates than available slots at the meeting.)<br />
<br />
The pesticide industry, meanwhile, downplays any risks posed by neonicotinoids, seeking to shift attention to other potential causes of dwindling bee colonies. Industry representatives make their case in detailed responses to news articles, through millions of dollars of lobbying in Washington, D.C., at government conferences, and on social media. Bayer, one of the biggest manufacturers, maintains a golden-hued Web page and Twitter account under the name Bayer Bee Care, where it promotes alternative explanations for why honeybees are disappearing.<br />
<br />
Ray McAllister, senior director for regulatory policy for CropLife America, a pesticide industry association with more than 90 member companies, says his organization is committed to improving honeybee health. Like other industry representatives, he questions the pesticide levels Lu used in his study, saying they were significantly higher than those bees would find in the natural environment. “It’s just difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions from the study,” he says.<br />
<br />
But what of the European ban? McAllister calls the decision politically motivated and the product of faulty science. What if, I ask him, honeybees in Europe bounce back after the two-year hiatus? “I will be very surprised,” he says.<br />
<br />
Lu has come to expect this kind of response, seeing parallels to how Big Tobacco tried for years to deflect growing evidence of the health risks posed by smoking. The more pesticide companies can muddy the picture of what’s happening to honeybees, Lu says, the better their business does. “This is just like a gold mine.”<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
Suzanne Kreiter/Globe staff<br />
<br />
MORE THAN ANYTHING, HE REMEMBERS THE QUIET. It was the spring of 2011. Lu had driven out to Worcester County to see one of the apiary sites. Other hives were buzzing. But not the ones exposed to pesticide. “Those four hives were dead silent,” he says. The take-away, to him, was clear: “This,” he thought, “is the replication of Silent Spring.” It was, as Rachel Carson had written about the absence of birds decades before, a “spring without voices.”<br />
<br />
Lu has studied pesticide exposure in Seattle-area children, in migrant farm workers in Washington state, and in Boston Housing Authority tenants. He and his family try to buy organic food. They also grow fruits and vegetables themselves in eight raised beds. He describes honeybees as “a wonderful gift that God gave to us.” But he is hardly the radical anti-pesticide activist his critics may assume.<br />
<br />
He calls pesticides “a tool that we cannot afford to lose,” given their importance to food production. He believes there’s a responsible way to use pesticides, but that we’re nowhere near that. “I think it can be done,” he says.<br />
<br />
Callahan thinks farmers should approach pesticides the way sensible people approach antibiotics: “You take it when you need it. You want to take it carefully. You want to know what you’re doing. And you sure as hell would like to know the side effects.”<br />
<br />
I heard a few people raise the idea of the honeybee as canary. Bees aside, what do we know about the consequences of our own chronic exposure to chemicals like neonicotinoids? “Very little,” Lu says. He sees promise in an emerging research field called metabolomics, which seeks to connect the dots between the body’s short-term responses and reactions to things like chemical exposures and the subsequent development of disease.<br />
<br />
Even if Lu turns out to be right about neonicotinoids, still outstanding is the question of what chronic exposure actually does to bees physiologically. Does it impair their navigational and orientation capabilities, as some research suggests, prompting them to fly away? Does it indeed make them more susceptible to cold temperatures? Does the buildup of pesticide residues enhance bees’ vulnerability to mites and pathogens? All of the above?<br />
<br />
In a sense, Lu and the scientists, regulators, and companies skeptical of his work don’t seem all that far apart. It may well be that several accomplices share responsibility for colony collapse. It’s just that Lu is ready to pick neonicotinoids out of the lineup, and not everyone is.<br />
<br />
If there’s any upside to this crisis, it’s widespread sympathy for honeybees, sparking new interest in beekeeping in urban areas such as Boston and New York, in the suburbs, and beyond. Some 320 beginners signed up for the Worcester County Beekeepers Association’s Bee School in March, which Warchol says is the largest such class ever seen anywhere in Massachusetts. Chas Mraz says the same thing’s happening in Vermont.<br />
<br />
For veterans like Warchol, the allure of beekeeping has never worn off — of tending to a flourishing hive, of harvesting its honey, of bearing witness to the intricate age-old ecosystem, with all the individuals working for the good of the whole. “I still love it,” Warchol says over a handsome breakfast at an Uxbridge diner. “I go out there on a sunny afternoon. It’s such a glorifying feeling to see this little micro-world — how they work together — and you learn so much from it. They all know their jobs. They do it well. They just know what to do to make a successful beehive.”<br />
<br />
Scott Helman is a Globe Magazine staff writer. E-mail him at shelman@globe.com and follow him on Twitter @swhelman.<br />
http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2013/06/22/the-harvard-scientist-linking-pesticides-honeybee-colony-collapse-disorder/nXvIA5I6IcxFRxEOc8tpFI/story.html"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-25940109825307457202013-06-25T18:48:00.003-07:002013-06-25T18:48:49.968-07:00collecting honey in Africa, BBC (4 min film)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
</div><iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/p06p65vU4-4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-12633350173899481172013-05-08T10:15:00.000-07:002013-05-08T10:17:27.914-07:00Bee Deaths May Have Reached A Crisis Point For Crops<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
</div>Listen to the online report: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/05/07/181990532/bee-deaths-may-have-reached-a-crisis-point-for-crops<br />
<br />
by DAN CHARLES NPR<br />
May 07, 2013 6:03 PM<br />
<br />
According to a of America's beekeepers, almost a third of the country's honeybee colonies did not make it through the winter.<br />
<br />
That's been the case, in fact, almost every year since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began this annual survey, six years ago.<br />
<br />
Over the past six years, on average, 30 percent of all the honeybee colonies in the U.S. died off over the winter. The worst year was five years ago. Last year was the best: Just 22 percent of the colonies died.<br />
<br />
"Last year gave us some hope," says , research leader of the Agriculture Department's Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Md.<br />
<br />
But this year, the death rate was up again: 31 percent.<br />
<br />
Six years ago, beekeepers were talking a lot about "colony collapse disorder" — colonies that seemed pretty healthy, but suddenly collapsed. The bees appeared to have flown away, abandoning their hives.<br />
<br />
Beekeepers aren't seeing that so much anymore, Pettis says. They're mostly seeing colonies that just dwindle. As the crowd of bees gets smaller, it gets weaker.<br />
<br />
"They can't generate heat very well in the spring to rear brood. They can't generate heat to fly," he says.<br />
<br />
Farmers who grow crops like almonds, blueberries and apples rely on commercial beekeepers to make sure their crops get pollinated.<br />
<br />
But the number of honeybees has now dwindled to the point where there may not be enough to pollinate those crops.<br />
<br />
Pettis says that this year, farmers came closer than ever to a true pollination crisis. The only thing that saved part of the almond crop in California was some lovely weather at pollination time.<br />
<br />
"We got incredibly good flight weather," Pettis says. "So even those small colonies that can't fly very well in cool weather, they were able to fly because of good weather."<br />
A bee collects nectar from a fruit tree in West Bath, Maine. The number of honeybees has now dwindled to the point where there may not be enough to pollinate some major U.S. crops.<br />
<br />
A bee collects nectar from a fruit tree in West Bath, Maine. The number of honeybees has now dwindled to the point where there may not be enough to pollinate some major U.S. crops.<br />
Pat Wellenbach/AP<br />
<br />
Pettis says beekeepers can afford to lose only about 15 percent of their colonies each year. More than that, and the business won't be viable for long. Some commercial beekeepers are still in business, he says, just because they love it.<br />
<br />
"It's just something that gets in your blood, so you don't want to give up. [You say,] 'OK, it's 30 percent this year; I'll do better next year.' We're very much optimists," he says.<br />
<br />
Beekeepers have a of reasons for why so many colonies are dying. There's a nasty parasite called the , which they can't get rid of. There are also bee-killing pesticides. And there are just fewer places in the country where a bee can find plenty of flowering plants that provide nectar and pollen.<br />
<br />
That was especially true this past year. The same drought that left Midwestern corn fields parched and wilting also dried up wildflowers and starved the bees.<br />
<br />
That was a natural disaster. But , who chairs the Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that most of the changes in the landscape are the result of people's decisions about what to do with their land.<br />
<br />
"I just wish there were more incentives for people — not just farmers — to plant a more diversified landscape that provides nutritional resources for all kinds of pollinators," she says. "Plant more flowers! And be a little more tolerant of the weeds in the garden."<br />
<br />
More controversial is the role of pesticides. Some beekeepers and environmentalists are calling for tighter restrictions on the use of one particular class of . Europe is about to ban some uses of these pesticides. But U.S. farmers and pesticide companies are opposed to any such move here, and the Environmental Protection Agency says it's not yet convinced that this would help bees very much.<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xjvHc2cREBY/UYqIInPuF4I/AAAAAAAAG2w/FRElwqOb3dU/s1600/ap577392238371-1-_custom-f1801ffa378747565fb906c1706b6cb23121f406-s40.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xjvHc2cREBY/UYqIInPuF4I/AAAAAAAAG2w/FRElwqOb3dU/s320/ap577392238371-1-_custom-f1801ffa378747565fb906c1706b6cb23121f406-s40.jpg" /></a>"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-73913553643877142412013-04-22T10:52:00.001-07:002013-04-22T10:52:33.956-07:00Dance of the Honey Bee, narrated by Bill McKibben<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>
<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/64370008?byline=0&portrait=0&api=1" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-27688184876776203852013-04-11T06:09:00.000-07:002013-04-11T06:13:19.859-07:00Spring Work in a Heather Skep Apiary <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/upbONroWPic" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-5678646099844539442013-03-29T10:19:00.001-07:002013-03-29T10:19:31.395-07:00Mystery Malady Kills More Bees, Heightening Worry on Farms<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/science/earth/soaring-bee-deaths-in-2012-sound-alarm-on-malady.html?smid=pl-share"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-42260214377378967132013-03-05T12:02:00.000-08:002013-04-22T11:10:50.699-07:00Bees Healing Bees...this is wonderful new information!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div>http://healingbees.org/7.html<br />
http://healingbees.org/<br />
<br />
The Beehive Effect: Ancient Rites - Quantum Principles Available in paperback or PDF for download. <br />
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While mainstream scientists and beekeepers study the “collapse” of the bee colony by seeking pharmaceutical remedies to cure it, on a mountainside in Colorado, something else is happening. Intriguing.<br />
<br />
Since 2009, Valerie Solheim has used Energy Transfer Tools with her beehives to recreate and support the field effect once generated by healthy bee colonies. Not only has she observed more abundant production, but she and others have also experienced personally the healing effects of the energy that radiate from healthy hives.<br />
Valerie has a PhD in Psychology with an emphasis in Jungian Depth Psychology. As a student of C.G. Jung, she has naturally become attuned to her inner guidance. It was this guidance that directed her to become a beekeeper and to maintain the health of her hives through the use of subtle energies rather than medications and artificial feeding. What started as the establishment of an energy field for the well-being of her hives has led to insights into the spiritual gifts of honeybees—sacred gifts cultivated and revered by ancient societies.<br />
Valerie invites you to join in her journey into the hive, a journey of awakening. Enter into the humming universe of the honeybee and be transported to a world outside your awareness. Valerie probes science and finds quantum biology and physics ready to reveal energy fields rich with information. She introduces you to her hives as a beekeeper and brings the “girls” alive with fact and fable. Join Valerie in rediscovering The Beehive Effect: Ancient Rites - Quantum Principles.<br />
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Dr. Hunt’s research indicates that different frequencies work on different levels in the body: tissue, neurological, brain and field. Based on the testimonials, it appears that the duration and pitch of the frequencies are affecting different levels in the body. Again, Focus and Intent are major factors in the depth one receives from the experience.<br />
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The Bee CD's are very powerful. It is possible that the CD can initially create a feeling of discomfort. It may activate headaches, stomach upset, dizziness, edginess or an inability to focus. This is due to energetic blocks in the listener’s body-mind field.<br />
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This uncomfortable response is felt almost immediately. In this situation, listen to the CD in short segments, building up slowly until the symptoms are no longer experienced. After that the length of time the CD is played can be individually determined.<br />
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The Harmonizer™, when placed on top of the CD recording of the Bees, significantly enhances the healing process on all levels.<br />
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Listening to the bee recordings is not intended to be diagnostic or global. Healing is incidental. <a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SmzSAynmpt0/UTZPY7wAW9I/AAAAAAAAG0w/MJZ9xfJhne8/s1600/_wsb_215x284_book+cover+for+web+border.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SmzSAynmpt0/UTZPY7wAW9I/AAAAAAAAG0w/MJZ9xfJhne8/s320/_wsb_215x284_book+cover+for+web+border.jpg" /></a>"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-5506394772035503292013-02-16T08:09:00.001-08:002013-02-16T08:09:46.607-08:00"Honeyland" 1935 film!<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Rxo2PCsVKEE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-72837811160400739322012-11-09T14:46:00.000-08:002013-04-22T11:15:02.903-07:00Companies Get Sweet on Bees <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5KFjTDvh8Pc/UJ2HscAkSbI/AAAAAAAAGtw/OJbKrGW-Ypo/s1600/SF-AB839_BEES3_G_20121107142552.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="267" width="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5KFjTDvh8Pc/UJ2HscAkSbI/AAAAAAAAGtw/OJbKrGW-Ypo/s400/SF-AB839_BEES3_G_20121107142552.jpg" /></a></div>Beekeeper Spencer Marshall of Marshall's Farm harvests honey from the Fairmont rooftop hives in San Francisco. The hotel's bar serves pints of ale infused with honey from the apiary. The buzz at Intel Corp.'s Folsom campus isn't about its latest computer chip. Intel installed five beehives, home to about 200,000 bees, at its offices in June. Now the Santa Clara-based company has a beekeeping club with several certified beekeepers, offers classes for employees and serves honey made from its bees in the employee cafeteria, says an Intel spokesman. The chip maker is among a growing set of businesses in and around the Bay Area that are adding beehives in their backyards and on their rooftops—part of efforts to cultivate honey, but also to help with pollination and promote a greener image. "It's really starting to become an integrated way of life in San Francisco and the Bay Area," says Robert Mackimmie, founder of City Bees, a beehive management and advocacy group in San Francisco. Mr. Mackimmie helped install eight hives on the roof of Bi-Rite Market in San Francisco last year, and the grocery store sells the honey it produces in eight-ounce jars for $11.99. "It's a bit more than you'd pay at a bigger chain, but imagine that that's honey that's made literally 10 feet above your head," he says. The Bay Area is particularly friendly to bees because the temperature rarely dips below freezing, and so native plants provide consistent food and activity for the pollinating critters, say beekeepers such as Mr. Mackimmie. Google Inc. GOOG +1.65% has four hives at its Mountain View headquarters, and the bees have helped the company grow a multitude of flowers and other flora. The company serves the fruits of the bees' labor in its well-stocked cafeteria and teaches beekeeping classes for brave engineers and programmers, says a Google spokeswoman. Bill Tomaszewski, general counsel for San Francisco-based online wine purveyor Wine.com Inc. and co-owner of Marin Bee Co., provided beehive supplies for Google and Intel, as well as the San Francisco Chronicle for its rooftop apiary. The former police officer says he is eking out a modest profit from his beekeeping services, which include selling three-pound packages of bees at $105 each and honey-based skin-care products. "A lot of these companies are trying to get a little green and bees are a good way to do it," Mr. Tomaszewski says, cautioning that beekeeping isn't for everyone. "This is hard work, you've got to make sure these bees are happy." He convinced the landlord of Wine.com's building at 114 Sansome St. in San Francisco to install hives on the 14th-floor roof two years ago. The building manager, Seagate Properties Inc. in San Rafael, distributes honey to its tenants a few times a year, says Seagate partner John Conely. While there are no known statistics on how many buildings and businesses have their own beehives, it is apparent the trend is growing, says Philip Gerrie, president of the San Francisco Beekeepers Association. He says many businesses were spurred to help fortify the bee population by previous reports of a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder, in which worker bees fail to return to their hives, leaving the colony to fend for itself. San Francisco also has a permissive attitude to beekeeping, says Mr. Gerrie. "Generally, as long as the neighbors don't complain, it's OK," he says. The city of San Francisco's real-estate department is looking to put two beehives on its 8th-floor rooftop at 1 South Van Ness Ave. by the spring of next year, says District General Manager Lesley Giovannelli. She says the hives would be looked after and donated by nonprofit San Francisco Bee-Cause, so there would be minimal cost to taxpayers. "We may sell jars of the honey at the Alemany Farmers' Market," Ms. Giovannelli adds. Blue Bottle Coffee Co. maintains 10 hives on the roof of its Oakland headquarters. "Our customers don't even know they're up there," says coffee-bar manager Sarah Guldenbrein. "We're looking to develop a pastry with the honey, but it's mostly to help create a positive footprint in the neighborhood." Other food purveyors are getting in on the act. Mediterranean-influ<br />
enced restaurant Nopa, in the San Francisco neighborhood of the same name, has served a honey-balsamic vinaigrette, almond butter and scones using honey cultivated from hives on its roof, says Stephen Satterfield, a manager. And visitors to the Fairmont's bar on Nob Hill can sample poured pints of Almanac Beer Co.'s ale infused with honey from the hotel's rooftop apiary. The hotel plans to start selling four-packs of honey beer for $20 this month, says spokeswoman Melissa Farrar. Beside the rare bee sting—experts say the bugs only attack when provoked—there is at least one other peril in keeping colonies in densely populated areas, says Mr. Mackimmie of City Bees. "Tens of thousands of bees in one place can leave a lot of bee poop behind on cars," he says, noting it looks like tiny yellowish dots. "It washes off, but it's a nuisance." Write to Greg Bensinger at greg.bensinger@wsj.com "Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-3491233110144662092012-10-02T23:33:00.001-07:002012-10-02T23:33:27.733-07:00Isabella Rosselini: the Drone Bees<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-83614582512110210602012-10-02T23:32:00.001-07:002012-10-02T23:32:18.438-07:00Isabella Rosselini: The Queen Bee<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-36093817530762904102012-10-02T23:29:00.001-07:002012-10-02T23:29:44.756-07:00Isabella Rosselini's bee film<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-24140905104859808892012-10-02T23:26:00.001-07:002012-10-02T23:26:45.960-07:00Isabella Rossellini: the Bee movie star<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Sunday 30 September 2012
With its populations in crisis and scientists baffled, the humble honey bee has a new, unlikely champion: Isabella Rossellini. The actor and model tells Tim Lewis why she has swapped life as the most glamorous woman in Hollywood for quirky conservation films and paper beards
Isabella Rossellini – actor, muse, style icon – sits on the ground, legs splayed. She's not in a good way: she has a pair of black eyes, her yellow and black tunic is rumpled, her antennae are bent all out of shape. Most alarmingly, her penis has snapped off and blood is seeping from her midriff.
An old man, who looks very much like Rossellini but with a lush beard made from shredded newspaper, leans forward, concerned. "What happened to you? You are severely wounded," he points out.
"I had sex," she replies matter-of-factly.
"What kind of sex?"
he asks.
"Regular bee sex."
If you have been following Rossellini's career lately, this is a routine, unexceptional exchange; if you haven't, it might come as a shock. The daughter of director Roberto Rossellini and actor Ingrid Bergman, she started out as a model – most visibly as the face of Lancôme for many years. She then became an enigmatic screen beauty with a quirky edge, unforgettably in David Lynch's Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart. More recently Rossellini has made eye-catching guest-turns on Friends and as Jack Donaghy's estranged wife on 30 Rock.
Who knew, however, that the roles she was really born to play were animals and bugs: a sinister praying mantis, a voracious bed bug, a kinky dolphin? In 2008, when she was in her mid-50s, Rossellini unveiled a bizarre, provocative and often hilarious set of short films called Green Porno, made for Robert Redford's Sundance Channel. They are a scientific, X-rated look at the sexual proclivities of various creatures, told with a homespun, PG-13 aesthetic of handcrafted costumes and origami backgrounds. Rossellini wrote the scripts, performed and directed the action. She won awards, too, including a Webby – an Oscar of the online world. She followed it up with two companion series on mating rituals called Seduce Me.
Rossellini's new films focus on honey bees. Made with the cosmetics company Burt's Bees, the three two-minute vignettes detail different aspects of life in a colony. They show an imagined conversation between Burt Shavitz, veteran beekeeper and eccentric founder of Burt's Bees, played by Rossellini in drag, with the three types of bee in the hive: the queen, the workers and a drone. As with Green Porno and Seduce Me, they are crammed with odd facts and salacious details about sex (the drone suicidally leaves its penis inside the queen in a bid to guarantee paternity, the tragic injury alluded to earlier).
Accuracy has always been important to Rossellini – she took biology classes at New York University to research her films – but her latest work has a more explicit environmental message than before. Colony collapse disorder (CCD) has seen bee populations plummet by around 30% a year over the past decade, with the effects particularly heavily felt in the United States and Europe. A solution is desperately sought, and there are fearful predictions of what might happen. Not that Rossellini is getting all serious on us just yet. "I ask a lot of questions before I start, but I hope none of the depth remains in the films," she says. "I want them to be comical."
It's half an hour before the premiere of the films and we are sitting on a rooftop in downtown Manhattan, the sunset dipping behind the skyscrapers, drinking elderflower, honey and vodka cocktails (better, and stronger, than they sound). All of the drinks and canapés have been created to show off ingredients that would be in peril if bees ceased to exist. Extinction would mean no honey, obviously, but also none of the plants that worker bees are responsible for pollinating: apples, strawberries, almonds, cocoa and coffee, among something like 70 crops. That's one in every third bite – and most of the fun ones – in the developed world.
Rossellini is dressed down in a black trouser suit, but she is still a striking presence, with a natural, unfussy elegance. On the way to the event I stopped at a newsagent and noticed her smiling face on the June issue of Italian Vogue, photographed by Steven Meisel. It is her 24th Vogue cover and this time she's the face of the magazine's new global Health Initiative, encouraging a healthier approach to body image. It's a satisfying compliment for a woman who has just turned 60, but this world is not a big part of Rossellini's life now.
"I'd like this to become my principal activity: to make films about animals," she says. "Of course it's always interesting to model, but it depends who you are working with. I will continue to make acting, too, but I'm old – I'm getting tired of it. And at 60 you don't get many big roles – you have supporting roles most of the time – so there is time to evolve and do other things. That's how my films came about. I had more time, so I thought: 'OK, I'll go back to school; I'll study what I'm interested in.' So I'd like to follow what has been my hobby."
Rossellini points out that hers is hardly a high-fashion existence any more. She lives on a farm in Long Island, an hour or so outside New York, where she is surrounded by a menagerie of creatures. She keeps chickens and has a couple of pigs, and trains labradors and golden retrievers from birth for the Guide Dog Foundation. She is also a member of the local farming co-operative and is responsible for tending the beehives.
"I grew up in Italy and our country is a country of great agriculture and food produce," she explains. "It wasn't like I was urban and only knew about high-heeled shoes and purses and never knew where my eggs came from. When I grew up we always had our chickens and we ate our eggs and we ate our chickens. The family always had a pig and we would kill it at Christmas and eat it for three or four months afterwards. The only part I've lost is eating the one I know. That is New York. Many years in New York has made me urban, and I won't eat my chicken because I met him personally!"
Bees, in this sense, are perfect. "They have been domesticated to produce more honey, but still they are wild," she says. "So we can use them without killing them."
At the premiere, the shorts are well-received by the bee campaigners and aficionados, as are the chocolate-dipped strawberries that follow them. "The films anthropomorphise the situation a bit, they exaggerate a little, they use some artistic license but what they do is they get you curious," says Laurie Adams, executive director of the Pollinator Partnership, an influential bug-friendly charity. "And it allows people to see that they can play a role in helping to protect them."
"Isabella's really accurate with what goes on with bees," agrees Dr Christina Grozinger, an associate professor of entomology at Penn State University and one of America's foremost bee experts. "The films actually touch on a lot of points that scientists have been confused about for years. Like the fact that the queen mates up to 16 times; we are probably all surprised by how promiscuous she is. But recently it's become clear that colonies that are more genetically diverse are more resistant to diseases and they are also more productive."
No one, though, is becoming too carried away and the fact that bees keep disappearing – often overnight, without trace, like an alien abduction – creates a sombre undercurrent to the evening. Colony Collapse Disorder has been linked to parasites, pathogens and pesticides; one recent study was particularly suspicious of a pesticide called neonicotinoids, or neonics, which are widely used to grow genetically engineered corn and seem to make bees become disorientated. Grozinger and others, meanwhile, believe the strongest link is with habitat loss. The situation is further confused by the fact that the cases of CCD significantly decreased last winter, and yet still the overall numbers of bees lost remained around 30%. "We can say that bees that are in environments that have lots of plants seem to be doing better," says Grozinger. "Everyone hopes there's a silver bullet, but essentially it's like cancer, there's multiple causes. Each individual colony that dies may be dying from something entirely different. So at this point it's thought that it's multiple factors probably acting in synergy."
The situation in the UK is worryingly similar. There are around 30,000 beekeepers here and the honey bee is particularly valuable as a pollinator because it is smaller than our bumble bees, so can access more plants, and also travels more widely, up to three miles from the hive. Honey bees also put in a longer shift than other pollinators, starting in February and only clocking off in November. It's estimated that one colony, which will typically contain around 30,000 bees, can pollinate up to 300 million flowers in one day. As numbers dwindle, their absence is sure to have an impact on the environment around us.
"Within the next 20 years we will either see beekeeping surviving as an activity or we won't and the numbers will drop to 10,000 beekeepers in favoured parts of the country," says Robin Dartington, who runs the bee sanctuary Buzz Works in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. "We will certainly notice the effect environmentally. There are a number of trees that flower early and go on to produce berries that feed birds. Trees that require early pollination will fade and the countryside will shift to favouring plants that flower later, when there are other pollinators around. It's not to be taken for granted."
We can't necessarily rely on scientists to bail us out, either. Dartington has noticed a drop-off in research in recent years and now much of the funding is being left to interested parties, such as the almond and blueberry industries in the States and Burt's Bees, which uses bee and plant extracts in almost all of their products.
Rossellini hopes her films will help bring the subject to a wider audience and, once they have stopped tittering, they will do something to help the bees in the their area, starting with buying honey from local beekeepers. She has tried to do her bit, too: for her 60th birthday in June, she asked all the guests at her party to buy her bulbs, which she will plant in her garden next year for her bees to forage. "It will be great, because in spring I will see all my friends coming up," she says.
Momentarily she turns serious. "If you learn about nature you become fascinated by it and it's natural you want to protect it. If you know they do suffer, they do disappear, they do get killed, you start to take a responsibility. But I'm optimistic for the bees: I think people want to care for bees because of the honey. People like dessert."
To see the films, visit burtsbees.co.uk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-60853289879080479002012-09-30T14:58:00.003-07:002012-09-30T14:58:42.692-07:00Pope's bees brave summer heat to produce organic wildflower honey <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Thursday, September 20, 2012
By Catholic News S...
By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service
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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The pope's bees had a bittersweet year producing a lower-than-expected yield due to intense summer heat.
The bees live on a 50-acre farm at the papal summer villa in Castel Gandolfo, a small town in the hills southeast of Rome.
Despite their hard work, the one-half million bees only managed to pull in 176 pounds of wildflower honey -- produced from nectar from surrounding gardens, fruit trees and other blossoming trees like chestnut. Temperatures and rainfall can affect both nectar production and restrict honeybees from foraging.
The honey crop was produced by eight beehives, which were donated to Pope Benedict XVI last year by members of Coldiretti, an Italian trade group that promotes agricultural education and lobbies to protect agricultural land and promote farm-friendly policies.
Italian farmers belonging to the organization also gave the pope his own vineyard of native red and white grape varieties, Coldiretti said in a press release Sept. 20. The donation was part of the group's "locavore" initiative to help produce a papal wine while producing zero carbon emissions next year.
The group planted 1,200 square yards of grape vines this year "in a striking corner" of the papal gardens "under a statue of Christ giving his blessing," it said.
They also donated the necessary equipment for processing the grapes and new oak and chestnut casks for the wine to age properly in the small papal wine cellar.
The vineyard was given to Pope Benedict as a way of commemorating his first words to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square on the day of his election April 19, 2005, when he called himself "a simple, humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord."
The papal farm is home to an olive grove, fruit trees and greenhouses used to raise flowers and plants which often are used to decorate the papal apartments and meeting rooms.
Each day, 25 cows produce more than 150 gallons of milk, and more than 200 eggs are collected from some 300 hens. In addition, about 60 chickens are raised for meat.
What the pope and his aides do not use is sold to Vatican employees and retirees at their discount supermarket.
Copyright (c) 2012 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-9183970739166114242012-09-17T08:13:00.000-07:002012-09-17T08:13:55.701-07:00Neonicotinoid Seed Treatments and Honey Bee Health<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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by Greg Hunt and Christian Krupke, Purdue University
CAP Updates: 28
Jointly published in the American Bee Journal and in Bee Culture, September 2012.
In the last 10-15 years, the EPA has gradually eliminated many uses of several “older” classes of pesticides. These include the widely used organophosphates, a staple of many agricultural systems. This left farmers and chemical companies looking for alternatives. A new class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, or neonics for short, were initially developed in the 1970’s. The chemical structure of these is derived from nicotine (also an insecticide, keeps tobacco plants safe from caterpillars) and they are relatively non-toxic to most vertebrates. Most are water-soluble and break down slowly in the environment, so they can be taken up by the plant and provide protection from insects as the plant grows and develops. During the late 1990’s this class of pesticides became widely used (primarily as imidacloprid, trade names include Gaucho, Provado, Merit). Beginning in the early 2000’s, two other neonics began to see wide use to treat corn and other field crop seeds. These compounds are clothianidin (trade name Poncho) and thiamethoxam (trade name Cruiser), the latter rapidly breaks down into clothianidin in living organisms. Currently, virtually every corn seed that is planted in the Midwest is treated with one of these two compounds, along with a cocktail of fungicides. In addition, most soybean seeds are also treated with neonics (usually thiamethoxam). Clothianidin is one of the most toxic substances we know of for honey bees. The lethal oral dose to give a 50% chance of death (the LD50) among an exposed group of adult honeybees is about 3 nanograms per bee. That’s 3 billionths of a gram, a tiny fraction of the weight of the bee (1/10 of a gram). Of course, toxicity by itself is not informative without exposure data. How often do honey bees encounter these pesticides? Where does this issue rank among the challenges facing honey bee health? These are some of the questions that the beekeeping and agricultural communities are trying to answer. Here we describe the current situation as we see it, and the status of our own investigations into health threats from neonicotinoids. These studies were funded by the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign and the Bee Health Coordinated Agricultural Project (CAP).
Some beekeepers saw this issue coming before we did. In the spring of 2010 we became aware of it when we saw dead bees in front of most of the Purdue bee hives during the week that corn was being planted nearby. Conditions were hot (85°F), dry and windy and clouds of dust were kicked up by the planters – a common sight throughout the Midwest in early spring. We tested bees that were dying in front of hives near agricultural fields and also healthy hives. The dead bees had clothianidin and several other seed treatment chemicals in or on their bodies. Most of the bees that were dying were actually the nurse bees that may have consumed pollen that was being collected from dandelions and other flowering plants in the area. We saw the characteristic color of dandelion pollen on most of the foragers. Pollen collected by returning foragers and pollen sampled from the cells of those hives had about 10 times the level of clothianidin and thiamethoxam as compared to that detected in the dead bees. In 2011, we conducted further studies and found that the talc that is put into seed hoppers to keep seeds flowing properly during planting contained an extremely high concentration of clothianidin and thiamethoxam (about 1 to 1.5%). A gram of talc containing 1.0% clothianidin could theoretically kill a million bees if they ingested it and could threaten about half as many bees if the dust contacted them (Laurino et al. 2011; Tremolada et al. 2010). Later in the season, pollen collected by bees when corn was shedding pollen in the area had up to 88 parts per billion (ppb) of clothianidin in it. These results suggest that there are many potential routes for exposure, but does not identify the key factor. We hypothesize that corn being planted nearby acts as a source of talc which may have contaminated flowers that bees were foraging on. Corn pollen from plants grown from treated seed had much less clothianidin, about 4 parts per billion. This is not enough to kill bees outright, but about 45% of the pollen our bees were collecting at that time was corn pollen. We do not know what effect this level of pesticide has on nurse bees that consume the pollen, or on the larvae they are feeding it to. Clothianidin is fairly stable in the soil with a documented half-life (the amount of time until half of the material is broken down in soil) of up to three years (EPA - 2003). After testing soil from various fields, we found that levels were just as high (about 9 ppb) in a field that had not had treated seed of any kind planted in it for the previous two growing seasons. Our overall conclusion was that the greatest danger occurs at planting time (due to the waste talc from planters), but that bees are exposed to sublethal levels of pesticide throughout the growing season. Our research paper is published online and is freely available (http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0029268).
Figure 1. Bees can be exposed to neonicotinoids at low concentrations from corn pollen and windblown soil that lands on other flowers. They are exposed to much higher concentrations from contaminated talc that escapes from seed hoppers for a short period around planting time (photo courtesy of Purdue entomology extension).
We have also communicated with beekeepers on how they can report beekills to state agencies and the EPA (beekill@epa.gov). This report has generated some discussion and of course, and more questions. It is not a “smoking gun” that points to neonicotinoids as the cause of CCD. What the work does show is that there is significant room for improvement in how we plant field crops in North America. Although problems with bee kills and clothianidin had been seen in Germany in 2008, there are many differences in planting practices, land use, and equipment that mean the European experience does not readily translate to questions here. For example, the virtually ubiquitous pneumatic planters that use forced air to plant seeds (and exhaust used talc in the process), are not widely used in the E.U., nor is talc widely used as a seed lubricant. It is also important to note that the acreages (both in total and individual fields) here in North America dwarf European production. At some 95 million acres planted this year, corn alone accounts for almost a quarter of the harvested acres in the United States. It is the largest use of US agricultural land and virtually every seed is coated with neonicotinoid insecticides. The United States accounts for over 40% of worldwide production, over 20 times more than the highest ranking country in the E.U. (France, ranking 7th worldwide).
What does all this mean? Is this a tempest in a teapot, or will our agricultural practices spell the end of honey bees in North America? It is tempting in the era of “thumbs up/thumbs down” and instant judgements to label every scientific finding as one or the other – but of course the truth lies in the middle. Only more data will reveal the extent of the problem and possible solutions. For example, this spring we have observed more dead and twitching bees in front of colonies during the corn planting here in Indiana. The Indiana Office of the State Chemist worked on a handful of incident reports and all of the dead bee samples tested positive for clothianidin and other seed treatment chemicals. Similar reports have been coming from Ohio, Minnesota and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. In Ontario, more than 100 samples from this year’s spring bee kills are being analyzed and regulation of neonicotinoids is being re-evaluated because of threats to pollinators (http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/cps-spc/pubs/pest/_decisions/rev2012-02/index-eng...). It is certainly true as Randy Oliver recently pointed out that many people are still successfully keeping bees in the corn belt (Oliver 2012). If growing treated seed led directly to drastic reductions in honey bee health, we would not need research (or researchers!) at all. The results would be apparent to beekeepers and field crop producers alike. This story is like the layers of an onion, that unfortunately require time to peel. There is no question that other potential causes of these bee kills should be considered as well. However, when we see kills that are synchronized with each other and with corn planting over a wide area, and the pesticide is found in dead bees near agricultural fields, the weight of the evidence points in just one direction.
Some of the problems associated with planting can likely be solved with some effort to change planting practices. The neonics are effective pesticides that are relatively non-toxic for many life forms (most notably humans), but (of course) are highly toxic to insects. Like all pesticides, they should be used judiciously – where there is a demonstrated need. This is a principle of pest management that has largely gone by the wayside in some large acreage cropping systems. The bee story is one indication that perhaps it is time to re-evaluate whether it is necessary to use up to 1.25 milligrams of neonicotinoids on virtually every single corn kernel that is planted in the country. Planting corn is the largest use of arable land in the US, and each corn seed theoretically has enough pesticide to kill well over 100,000 bees.
The EPA is currently in the process of re-evaluating the registration of clothianidin. This includes convening a scientific advisory panel to weigh the published information, data packages from the registrants of these chemicals, and input from stakeholders. This is the time to make your voice heard. The public docket can be found online under the docket number EPA–HQ–OPP–2011– 0865. Remember that in these cases, the most useful input is factual, science-based, and presents an argument that is not based on emotion, feelings or perceptions but data.
Let’s try to put the seed treatment issue into perspective with what is going on with our bees. We are all still hearing the words “colony collapse disorder” and it is synonymous in the media with the major bee health problem. Yet it is not clear how common these symptoms (rapid dwindling of colony population, leaving untended brood and food stores, but no dead bees) occurred in the past or are happening now. Symptoms of CCD were noticed during 2006 and 2007, perhaps less often since then. Since that time, there has been a comprehensive tallying of the nation’s winter bee kills, and there is a general belief that losses have increased - we are averaging about 30% winter die-offs each year. But prior to that time, losses were recorded from regional surveys that exceeded 30% after the spread of parasitic mites (occurring about 1990). For example, a survey of beekeepers in Indiana during the winter of 1995-1996 showed that about 57% of the state’s bee colonies died, and that not treating for Varroa resulted in much higher losses (Hunt 1998). In Pennsylvania, 53% of all bee colonies died that year, and losses were much higher for colonies not treated for Varroa [Finley et al. 1996]. Recent surveys and studies around the world still put Varroa at the top of the list among factors causing winter losses (Guzman-Novoa et al. 2010; Le Conte et al. 2010; Peterson et al. 2010; Ratnieks and Carrick 2010). What is clear is that bees in many areas of the world (including areas far from neonicotinoid treated seed use) are in trouble. However, since we perform agriculture on a massive scale in this country, it makes sense to consider the factors that are stressing our bees in and near the modern agricultural setting. Neonicotinoids are a key player and a good place to start. Their effects are beginning to be better characterized, but they don’t occur in a vacuum - we need to also consider interactions with other stressors of honey bees (mites, other pesticides, viruses and poor nutrition).
Where do these compounds and other pesticides rank as players in the CCD debate? Again, there is no definitive answer – but for a bee, it probably depends on where you live! Another CAP-funded study that surveyed levels of pesticides in colony wax, pollen and bees found that levels of neonicotinoids, when present, were usually low in wax and pollen and they were absent in bees. The study did not report any detections for clothianidin but it is important to note that the survey also did not include many samples from the corn belt (Mullin et al. 2010). Another study showed that bees reared in comb from commercial beekeeping operations that had relatively high levels of pesticides (including neonics) took longer to develop into adults and had their adult life span reduced by four days (Wu et al. 2011). These two studies highlight the complexity of teasing out how hive contamination with pesticides may have sublethal effects on bees. The real conundrum is that to design informative experiments we usually have to work with one compound at a time to uncover mechanisms – whereas the bees in the field are exposed to many compounds (and other stressors) simultaneously!
What we can say at this point, is that the use of neonicotinoid seed treatments over hundreds of millions of acres annually, coupled with their extremely high toxicity to honey bees, and their persistence in plants (including nectar and pollen that bees eat) combine to create an environment where it is very difficult for bees to avoid exposure to these highly toxic chemicals. That in itself makes this topic worthy of further investigation. Another thought that gives us pause is that if we are seeing bee kills in honey bees that have a colony to rely on, what is happening to the many species of native bees in North America that have to go it alone?
References
Dainat B, Evans JD, Chen YP, Gauthier L, Neumann P (2012) Predictive markers of honey bee colony collapse. PLoS ONE 7(2): e32151. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0032151.
EPA (United States Environmental Protection Agency). 2003 Pesticide Fact Sheet: Clothianidin. Available at: http://www.epa.gov/opprd001//factsheets/clothianidin.pdf.
Finley J, Camazine S, Frazier M (1996) The epidemic of honey bee colony losses during the 1995-1996 season. Am Bee J 136: 805-808.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Statistics Division (2009). "Maize, rice and wheat : area harvested, production quantity, yield". http://faostat.fao.org/site/567/DesktopDefault.aspx?PageID=567.
Guzmán-Novoa E, Eccles L, Calvete Y, McGowan J, Kelly PG, et al. (2010) Varroa destructor is the main culprit for the death and reduced populations of overwintered honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies in Ontario, Canada. Apidologie 41: 443-450.
Hunt GJ (1998) The war against Varroa: How are we doing? Am Bee J 138: 372-374.
Krupke CH, Hunt GJ, Eitzer BD, Andino G, Given K. 2012. Multiple routes of pesticide exposure for honey bees living near agricultural fields. PLoS ONE 7(1):e29268. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029268.
Laurino D, Porporato M, Patetta A, Manino A (2011) Toxicity of neonicotinoid insecticides to honey bees: laboratory tests. Bull Insectology 64:107-113.
Le Conte Y, Ellis M, Ritter W (2010) Varroa mites and honey bee health: can Varroa explain part of the colony losses? Apidologie DOI: 10.1051/apido/2010017.
Mullin CA, Frazier M, Frazier JL, Ashcraft S, Simonds R, vanEngelsdorp D, Pettis JS (2010) High levels of miticides and agrochemicals in North American apiaries: Implications for honey bee health. PLoS ONE 5(3): e9754. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009754.
Oliver R (2012) The extinction of the honey bee? Am. Bee J. 152(7):697-704.
Peterson M, Gray A, Teale A (2010) Colony losses in Scotland in 2004-2006 from a sample survey. J. Apic. Res. 48: 145-146.
Ratnieks FLW, Carreck NL (2010) Clarity on bee colony collapse? Science 327: 152-153.
Tapparo A, Marton D, Giorio C, Zanella A, Solda L, Marzaro M, Vivan L, Girolami V (2012) Assessment of the environmental exposure of honeybees to particulate matter containing neonicotinoid insecticides coming from corn coated seeds. Environ. Sci. Technol. 46: 2592-2599.
Tremolada P, Mazzoleni M, Saliu F, Colombo M, Vighi M (2010) Field trial for evaluating the effects on honeybees of corn sown using Cruiser and Celest xl treated seeds. Bull Environ Contam Toxicol 85:229-234.
Wu JY, Anelli CM, Sheppard W (2010) Sub-lethal effects of pesticide residues in brood comb on worker honey bee (Apis mellifera) development and longevity. PLoS ONE 6(2): e14720. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0014720.
"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-17290446613003479492012-08-30T12:18:00.002-07:002012-08-30T12:18:39.885-07:00Monsanto Loses to Beekeepers of Yucatan Peninsula<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Beekeepers have succeeded in preventing, through two suspensions obtained in amparo (specialized protection), the seeding of transgenic soy for 253,500 hectares in Campeche, Quintana Roo, Yucatan, Tamaulipas, San Luis Potosi, Veracruz, and Chiapas.
59 organizations of beekeepers, environmentalists, and NGO´s have maintained that the amparos (or protections) granted by the second district court of Campeche, are setting a precedent to continue demanding the definitive suspension of permits that have been issued by SAGARPA to Monsanto.
The organizations added in their press release communication that they will not cease in their fight for production that is free of transgenic interference. They have been encouraged greatly by the recent Felipe Carrillo Puerto council, which approved the initiative to declare its territory a “GMO-free zone”.
The Felipe Carrillo Puerto council ruling signifies that the judges of Chiapas, Quintana Roo, and Yucatan have resolved in favor of the organizations that presented the initiative.
The producers interested in the seeding of transgenic soybeans “are at risk when investing in such cultivation, as there is now a strong opposition and legal and political struggle that this country be declared a GMO-free zone” stated the press communication.
During a reunion at SAGARPA, Simon Treviño Alcantara, director general of the Fomento a la Agricultura, assured that this year there will be no planting of transgenic soybean. He insisted that this seeding would affect close to 25 thousand families that survive in the agricultural sector.
Alcantara mentioned that European businesses have suspended the purchase of honey from Yucatan and Quintana Roo until they have evidence that the product is free of transgenic organisms.
Environmental groups, women, and community development organizations in Chiapas reiterated their rejection of transgenic planting of 30,000 hectares in the municipalities of Acacoyagua, Acapetahua, Cacahotan, Escuintla, Frontera Hidalgo, Huehuetan, Huixtla, Mazatan, Metapa, Suchiapa, Suchiate, Tapachula, Tuxtla Chico, Tuxtla Gutierrez, Tuzantan, Villa Comaltitilan, and Villaflores, as most of these areas are near protected natural zones.
The environmental groups argued that Monsanto sells to farmers who plant the transgenic soybean a required herbicide, Roundup Ready, whose formula contains glyphosate, a chemical that when dissolved in water damages plants, animals, and people.
Beekeepers blame, Juan Elvira Quesada, Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT), in evading its responsibility in the approval of GM seed, this organization has the ability to issue an opinion to the SAGARPA binding so the institution can issue a final and negative decision to plant GM crops."Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-70684348151822667182012-08-18T10:38:00.001-07:002012-08-18T10:38:45.951-07:00NATIONAL HONEY BEE DAY! TODAY AUGUST 18thhttp://www.nationalhoneybeeday.com/2012nhbdparticipants.html
National Honey Bee Day 2012: August 18th.
Make plans now to participate!
The 2012 Theme:
"Sustainable Agriculture
Starts with Honey Bees!"
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We Welcome You To The
National Honey Bee Day Website.
The primary goals of the National Honey Bee Day Program include:
1) Promotion and advancement of beekeeping.
2) Educate the public about honey bees and beekeeping.
3) Make the public aware of environmental concerns as they effect honey bees.
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Important Message to Beekeepers,
Bee Groups, and the Public:
While great strides have been made in recent years in
getting ordinances passed allowing beekeepeing once
again in many parts of the country, there are also ongoing
efforts in some locations trying to ban or severly restrict beekeeping elsewhere. Building support within your own
community is as important as ever in the bee industry.
Invite key local politicians such as the mayor, township supervisors, zoning board members, and state politicians
to your National Honey Bee Day event. Build bridges, and
connect with others who could possibly help in the future.
The bee industry, and your local bee community, can benefit greatly from connecting with others and getting more
educated in beekeeping.
Get Involved. Be proactive...not reactive!
Help Support National Honey Bee Day. Consider purchasing wildflower seeds for the 2012 season to help the honey bees, native pollinators, and the environment.
Click here for more details.
The National Honey Bee Day program started with a simple concept. Bring together beekeepers, bee associations, as well as other interested groups to connect with the communities to advance beekeeping. By working together and harnessing the efforts that so many already accomplish, and using a united effort one day a year, the rewards and message is magnified many times over. We encourage bee associations, individuals, and other groups to get involved. The program is free and open to all.
Sponsor and Contributors
The National Honey Bee Day program operates and is funded by the generosity of our sponsors and contributors. Please check out our sponsors page, and patronize the businesses that are helping to make this program a success all across the country.
Latest addition to the website:
What NOT to do if you find honey bees. See the video link on the News and Events page. click here. Please help save the honey bees.
SEEKING LOGO ARTWORK!
PennApic and the National Honey Bee Day program is seeking submissions for logo artwork and graphics to be used for marketing and promotional use. We would like to support an inspiring graphic artist or individual who would like to add to their portfolio by helping out a nonprofit association while getting national exposure. We would like something that is unique, easily recognizable, and used exclusively by PennApic and the NHBD program. If this interests you, please contact me by clicking here. Thank you.
The honey bee industry needs your help and support. Some of the pages listed on this website are intended to educate the public on issues, and steps we can take to help the honey bee. National Honey Bee Day may be one day per year, but the care of the environment to which the bees reside, takes a year long commitment. We encourage all to become good stewards of the environment through practical and commonsense approaches.
All authorized programs and fund raising efforts are listed on this site. If you have questions about a particular program or questionable fund raising, please notify us as soon as possible. Thank you.
Ridgecrest Ca., had thier first NHBD event in 2011, which was packed with excited folks eager to learn more about honeybees. Thank you for the efforts of Dave Jester for making this happen.
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We are hard at work planning the next National Honey
Bee Day program scheduled for August 18, 2012
Beekeepers: Please visit the 2012 participants page. If you do
not see your bee association listed, please contact your
association officers. If you have no association in your
area, we encourage individuals to get involved. If you or
your association wants to host a National Honey Bee Day
program, click here.
Friends of Honey Bees: If you are not a beekeeper, please
support the closest bee association or participating National
Honey Bee Day program. We encourage you to support local
agriculture markets, and enjoy local honey varietals. Please
consider making a donation to the overall NHBD program. Your contributions will support programs by allowing us to provide
educational material to schools, environmental centers, and
programs across the country.
This website has information on getting started in bees,
how homeowners can help the bees, and information useful
for giving a bee talk to a classroom or group of visitors.
Please feel free to use any of the information. It is posted
for your use and benefit.
The National Honey Bee Day program operates and is administered under the nonprofit
listing and status of Pennsylvania Apiculture Inc., adhering to all laws and guidelines
of a 501c and filed in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
The National Honey Bee Day program is always striving to build upon the existing
program and expand our outreach while moving forward. We value feedback and
constructive comments. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any suggestions
or questions.
Counter
Since 9-24-10
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"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-49411820395837666562012-06-07T22:56:00.002-07:002012-06-07T22:56:26.814-07:00A video by Eric Tourneret, the bee photographer - Bees in the World. Human stories of bees from around the earth. http://vimeo.com/36861847<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/36861847?autoplay=1" width="398" height="224" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>"Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-64346893290401022832012-06-06T21:59:00.003-07:002012-06-06T21:59:36.967-07:00French Ag Minister to ban Syngenta’s bee-killing pesticide, Cruiser<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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06Jun2012
By geobear7
By Phil Chandler
Friends of the Bees
The French Minister of Agriculture has announced his intention to ban Syngenta’s pesticide ‘Cruiser’ from the French market in a few weeks time; ‘Cruiser’ is largely used on oilseed rape and contains the neonicotinoid ‘Thiamethoxam’, which recent studies in ‘Science’ have revealed to be harmful to bees ability to forage and navigate.
Other studies have revealed that this pesticide affects bumblebees and other pollinators in a similar harmful manner.
Thiamethoxam was used on over 736,000 acres of crops in the UK in 2010.
Here are the most recent figures for Thiamethoxam in the UK (2010) – as you will see, the usage increased TENFOLD from 2009 to 2010. It stood at 298,000 hectares – or 736,000 acres in 2010. We do not know what the usage was for 2011 but presumably if the rate of increase is sustained it could well be over a million hectares now?
THIAMETHOXAM USAGE IN THE UK
Year Region Crop Group Active Substance Total Area Treated (ha) Total Weight Applied (kg)
2010 Great Britain All Crops Thiamethoxam 298,007 9,105
2009 Great Britain All Crops Thiamethoxam 22,567 938
2008 Great Britain All Crops Thiamethoxam 21,909 940
2007 Great Britain All Crops Thiamethoxam 1,333 5.6
2006 Great Britain All Crops Thiamethoxam 1,213 5.4
2005 Great Britain All Crops Thiamethoxam 1,213 5.4
Given that the French are about to ban this dangerous neonicotinoid, how long before DEFRA and the other regulators here in the UK follow suit?
How long before the British Bee Keepers Association calls for a ban? Or will they do their usual trick of leaping to the defense of the pesticide industry?
From Reuters:
The decision was based on a report from French health and safety agency ANSES, which went along with recent scientific findings suggesting that a sub-lethal dose of thiamethoxam, a molecule contained in Cruiser, made bees more likely to lose their way and die….
The French ban on the pesticide will take effect before the start of the next rapeseed sowing campaign in late summer, a farm ministry official said, stressing that it would not affect versions of Cruiser used for other crops such as maize (corn)….
In a separate opinion published on Friday, the European Food Safety Authority said doses of neonicotinoids tested in the bee research were above the highest residue levels actually recorded in plant nectar, adding that more studies were needed to evaluate exposure in different field situations.
Dave Goulson of Stirling University in Scotland, who led another recent study on risks to bees from neonicotinoids, said there was growing evidence that these chemicals may play a role.
“It would be massively oversimplifying to say that these chemicals are the only cause of bee decline, although it is clear they are a part of the problem,” he told Reuters."Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4087161035404182562.post-8554641487865694602012-06-04T22:44:00.003-07:002012-06-04T22:45:02.987-07:00After damning research, France proposes banning pesticide linked to bee collapse<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Jeremy Hance
mongabay.com
June 04, 2012
Following research linking neonicotinoid pesticides to the decline in bee populations, France has announced it plans to ban Cruiser OSR, an insecticide produced by Sygenta. Recent studies, including one in France, have shown that neonicotinoid pesticides likely hurt bees' ability to navigate, potentially devastating hives. France has said it will give Sygenta two weeks to prove the pesticide is not linked to the bee decline, known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
France's decision comes after its National Agency for Food, Safety, and the Environment (ANSES) confirmed the findings of two recent studies published in Science. The two studies found that neonicotinoid pesticides, although not immediately lethal, likely hurt bee colonies over a period of time.
In the French study, researchers glued tiny microchips to free-ranging honeybees and then administered small doses of thiamethoxam, a primary ingredient in Sygenta's Cruiser OSR to some of the bees. Bees exposed to the pesticide were two to three times more likely not to return from foraging trips, allowing researchers to hypothesize that the pesticide impairs the bee's ability to navigate its surroundings successfully.
Because neonicotinoid pesticides work by impacting insects' central nervous systems, they have long been a target for researchers trying to understand Colony Collapse Disorder, but the difficulty has been proving that pesticides harm hives even though they don't kill bees outright.
However, Sygenta denies that their pesticides have played any role whatsoever in the bee collapse.
"All Syngenta’s crop protection products are thoroughly tested to ensure that there are no unwanted effects on beneficial insects such as bees or excessive residues in food or risks to human health," the company says on its website.
The French government disagrees and has stated it would also raise the question of a ban on the pesticide for the entire European Union (UN).
Evidence of harm piling up
Despite Sygenta's statements, studies continue to appear that find a link between neonicotinoid pesticides and Colony Collapse Disorder. Recently, researchers in the U.S. fed tiny doses of neonicotinoid pesticide-laced high-fructose corn syrup, which is commonly used to feed bees, to 16 hives in the field and left four hives untreated. For months all the hives remained healthy, but after around six months over 90 percent (15 out of 16) of the hives fed with the pesticidal corn syrup had collapsed, while the four control hives remained healthy.
"There is no question that neonicotinoids put a huge stress on the survival of honey bees in the environment," lead author Chensheng (Alex) Lu, an associate professor at the HSPH, told mongabay.com.
Meanwhile another U.S. study published last month in the Journal of Experimental Biology, found that bees hit by neonicotinoid pesticides underwent behavioral changes. Exposed bees only fed on very sweet nectar, ultimately limiting their feeding choices. In addition the bees ability to communicate was injured.
Foraging bees communicate via 'waggle dances' whereby they show the hive where to find food sources. But says lead author Daren Eiri, "Remarkably, bees that fed on the pesticide reduced the number of their waggle dances between fourfold and tenfold. And in some cases, the affected bees stopped dancing completely."
Scientists first started recording alarming declines in bees in North America in 2006. Shortly thereafter similar declines occurred throughout Europe, and have also been noted in Taiwan. While periodic colony collapses have been recorded since the 19th Century, the current crisis has proven much worst than past ones with some producers losing 90 percent of their hives. A number of theories for the collapse have been posited, including disease, parasitic mites, habitat loss, and, of course, pesticides. Many researchers have suggested a combination of these factors.
CITATIONS:
Chensheng Lu, Kenneth M. Warchol, Richard A. Callahan. In situ replication of honey bee colony collapse disorder. Bulletin of Insectology. 2012.
D. M. Eiri, J. C. Nieh. A nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonist affects honey bee sucrose responsiveness and decreases waggle dancing. Journal of Experimental Biology, 2012; 215 (12): 2022 DOI: 10.1242/jeb.068718.
M. Henry; O. Rollin; J. Aptel; S. Tchamitchian; M. Beguin; F. Requier; O. Rollin; A. Decourtye. A Common Pesticide Decreases Foraging Success and Survival in Honey Bees. Science. 2012.
P.R. Whitehorn; S. O’Connor; D. Goulson; F.L. Wackers. Neonicotinoid Pesticide Reduces Bumble Bee Colony Growth and Queen Production. Science. 2012.
Related articles
Researchers recreate bee collapse with pesticide-laced corn syrup
(04/05/2012) Scientists with the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have re-created the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder in several honeybee hives simply by giving them small doses of a popular pesticide, imidacloprid. Bee populations have been dying mysteriously throughout North America and Europe since 2006, but the cause behind the decline, known as Colony Collapse Disorder, has eluded scientists. However, coming on the heels of two studies published last week in Science that linked bee declines to neonicotinoid pesticides, of which imidacloprid is one, the new study adds more evidence that the major player behind Colony Collapse Disorder is not disease, or mites, but pesticides that began to be widely used in the 1990s.
Smoking gun for bee collapse? popular pesticides
(03/29/2012) Commonly used pesticides may be a primary driver of the collapsing bee populations, finds two new studies in Science. The studies, one focused on honeybees and the other on bumblebees, found that even small doses of these pesticides, which target insect's central nervous system, impact bee behavior and, ultimately, their survival. The studies may have far-reaching repercussions for the regulation of agricultural chemicals, known as neonicotinoid insecticides, that have been in use since the 1990s.
The value of the little guy, an interview with Tyler Prize-winning entomologist May Berenbaum
(04/06/2011) May Berenbaum knows a thing or two about insects: in recognition of her lifelong work on the interactions between insects and plants, she has had a character on The X-Files named after her, received the Public Understanding of Science and Technology Award for her work in making science accessible to the public, and this year has been awarded the prestigious Tyler Environmental Prize. "Winning the Tyler Prize is an incredible honor—most of my scientific heroes have been Tyler Prize winners and I’m exceedingly grateful to be considered worthy of being included among their ranks," Berenbaum told mongabay.com in an interview. "The Prize is also tremendously enabling—because the money is unrestricted I can use it to carry out projects that have been difficult to fund.""Bee" Uraniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01744423420976976073noreply@blogger.com0