NRDC Member Alert!

Are you a member of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)?

If you're a beekeeper AND an NRDC member, NRDC is looking for your help in gathering information on pesticide use and its effects on bees.

NRDC members who keep bees and would like to assist this great organization in going to bat for bees are encouraged to contact Levi Jones at ljones (at) nrdc (dot) org.

Surprise, Surprise! Pesticides Toxic to Honeybees Found in Pollen

A new report from researchers at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station has found 37 different types of pesticides in the pollen collected by honeybees in several sites in Connecticut. The research took place in 2007 and is now available in summarized form as a PowerPoint document.

The researchers found the following in the pollen samples they collected from the bee hives:

• 15 different insecticides and acaricides (acaricides—a.k.a. "miticides" are used to treat Varroa mite)...
• 11 fungicides...
• 10 herbicides...
• 1 plant-growth regulator...

& (sing it with me!) a profoundly poisoned partridge in a pear tree.

The researchers state that "...insecticides highly toxic to honeybees are...found in pollen frequently or at high levels." As we used to say back in the 1970s, gag me with a spoon.

And while we're on the unpleasant and urgent topic of how we're screwing our precious honeybees with our overuse of pesticides and what-all, check out this undated document entitled, Protecting Honeybees from Pesticide Poisoning.

Worrisome News from Hawaii

The latest "Catch the Buzz" missive from Bee Culture brings the following depressing/distressing news to our in-box, via Honolulu Star Bulletin article by Rod Thompson:

HILO » The state Department of Agriculture is warning Big Island residents not to eat wild honey collected within five miles of Hilo Harbor during the next three weeks while it attempts to eradicate varroa mites.

The mites are tiny, spider-like parasites that infect honeybees.
Since the mites were first detected on the Big Island on Aug. 20, officials have made several unsuccessful attempts to eradicate them, said Lyle Wong, head of the state Plant Industry Division.

Following those failures, the department is now setting out 200 baiting stations with low concentrations of an insecticide called fipronil, he said.

Fipronil has been widely used since 1996 in many crop and noncrop applications, Wong said. To use it to kill infected bees, the Department of Agriculture had to declare a special 15-day "crisis exemption" from restrictions on fipronil by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Wong said.

If bees near the harbor are not killed, the parasitic mites could spread to the entire island and cause a crash in the wild bee population.

In New Zealand and parts of the United States, varroa mites have caused the disappearance of more than 90 percent of wild bees.

A great deal of agriculture depends on bees for pollination. If wild ones are gone, professional beekeepers can provide services with "managed hives," but that adds cost to agricultural production, Wong said.

Commercial beekeeping in Hawaii, which includes honey production and the raising of queen bees for sale around the world, is valued at $4 million per year.

Bee-Defenders Unite!

British bee-defender Phil Chandler has posted an excellent piece on The Barefoot Beekeeper about the bizarre situation whereby the British Bee Keepers Association (BBKA) is endorsing certain highly questionable pesticides as "bee-friendly."

BBKA's agreement to endorse pesticides of any kind is at best an acute case of strange bedfellows...at worst...it's perverse, highly suspect, bonkers, and criminal in the Karmic sense. Something's very wrong here, and I'm glad Chandler is speaking out.

Read Chandler's Ten Reasons Why the BBKA Should Not Take Bayer's Money

And see Chandler speak on the issue here:

Is the BBKA too close to Bayer? from Gord Campbell on Vimeo.

NRDC Takes EPA to Task

This lucky honeybee has a friend in NRDC.

Mounting evidence that pesticides are implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder certainly hasn't moved the EPA to action (not that EPA is doing much of anything these days). Under Bush&Co., the EPA has transmuted from Environmental Protection Agency to Enabling Polluters...Again (or might that be Entirely Pathetic Always? I'm sure there's no end to the unflattering acronyms we can apply in this instance; feel free to post a comment suggesting your own).

Fortunately for the bees, us, and the tattered remains of our ecosystem, the Natural Resources Defense Council (of which I am a proud card-carryin' member) is on the case and today issued the following press release announcing its new lawsuit against the EPA:

EPA Buzz Kill: Is the Agency Hiding Colony Collapse Disorder Information? NRDC Forced to Sue to Get Public Records on Bee Mystery

WASHINGTON, DC (August 18, 2008) – The Natural Resources Defense Council filed a lawsuit today to uncover critical information that the US government is withholding about the risks posed by pesticides to honey bees. NRDC legal experts and a leading bee researcher are convinced that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has evidence of connections between pesticides and the mysterious honey bee die-offs reported across the country. The phenomenon has come to be called “colony collapse disorder,” or CCD, and it is already proving to have disastrous consequences for American agriculture and the $15 billion worth of crops pollinated by bees every year.

EPA has failed to respond to NRDC’s Freedom of Information Act request for agency records concerning the toxicity of pesticides to bees, forcing the legal action.

“Recently approved pesticides have been implicated in massive bee die-offs and are the focus of increasing scientific scrutiny,” said NRDC Senior Attorney Aaron Colangelo. “EPA should be evaluating the risks to bees before approving new pesticides, but now refuses to tell the public what it knows. Pesticide restrictions might be at the heart of the solution to this growing crisis, so why hide the information they should be using to make those decisions?”

Get the full story here and please consider lending your support to NRDC's work.

A Bitter Pill from Bayer

A highly worthwhile article appeared in the L.A. Times on July 30th regarding the possible link between the "disappearing honeybees" (Colony Collapse Disorder) and Bayer pesticides. Here's a taste:

"It's likely that most people have never heard of Gaucho. And no, it's not a South American cowboy. I'm talking about a pesticide.

"There is increasing reason to believe that Gaucho and other members of a family of highly toxic chemicals -- neonicotinoids -- may be responsible for the deaths of billions of honeybees worldwide. Some scientists believe that these pesticides, which are applied to seeds, travel systemically through the plant and leave residues that contaminate the pollen, resulting in bee death or paralysis. The French refer to the effect as 'mad bee disease' and in 1999 were the first to ban the use of these chemicals, which are currently only marketed by Bayer (the aspirin people) under the trade names Gaucho and Poncho. Germany followed suit this year, and its agricultural research institute said it concluded that the poisoning of the bees was because of the rub-off of the pesticide clothianidin (that's Pancho) from corn seeds.

So why did the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2002 grant an 'emergency' exemption allowing increased use of Gaucho -- typically invoked during a major infestation -- when only a few beetles were found in blueberries? Why did the agency also grant a "conditional" registration for its close relative, Pancho, allowing the chemical on the market with only partial testing? And why is the agency, hiding behind a curtain of "trade secrets," still refusing to disclose whether the additional tests required of companies in such cases were conducted and, if so, with what results?

"Therein lies a tale. Most pesticides, we're told, are safe. So we add about 5 billion pounds a year of these deadly chemicals to our world, enough to encircle the planet if it were packaged in 100-pound sacks...."

Excerpted from Buzzzzzzzz kill by Al Meyerhoff, Los Angeles Times, July 30, 2008

Read the whole important thing right here.

Do Bayer Pesticides Harm Honeybees?