Companies Get Sweet on Bees

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
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

Isabella Rosselini: the Drone Bees

Isabella Rosselini: The Queen Bee

Isabella Rosselini's bee film

Isabella Rossellini: the Bee movie star

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

Pope's bees brave summer heat to produce organic wildflower honey

Thursday, September 20, 2012 By Catholic News S... By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service Add Comment ShareThis 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

Neonicotinoid Seed Treatments and Honey Bee Health

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.