Organic Landscape Design

 

Bayer Pollen Kills Honey Bees

By Donald P. Studinski

 

It’s getting personal

 

 

October 10 2011, my biggest and strongest colony, the one that had produced the majority of my honey harvest in 2011, suddenly died in a Golden, Colorado, suburban neighborhood far from any commercial agriculture. This colony was probably 100,000 bees at the height of summer, just a few weeks earlier. It was three deeps and four supers full of bees (picture shows just 3 supers 5/31). I'm a hobbyist beekeeper, who had five colonies just before this loss. When I inspected the hive, what I found was shocking to say the least. The bees looked good 10/2 with plenty of front door activity. But 10/10, there were maybe enough bees to make a tennis ball sized cluster, about 500 bees, maybe less. There was shotgun brood pattern(see pictures). New bees were still emerging, or at least trying to, but dying in the act due to the cold. Sixty or seventy pounds of good honey remained left behind, full frames and frames with just corners of honey. Plenty of bee bread spread throughout, but an unusual amount dead center where I might have expected to find brood. There were many queen cups (see pictures), so, the girls knew they were in trouble and provided a place where a new queen could have been raised, but none had become "cells" and none looked anything like a new queen had emerged. (right click on images to view)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a pattern 35-year veteran beekeeper, Tom Theobald, has been seeing for years in the Denver, Colorado metropolitan area. Tom told me, “This sounds like it may be the break in the brood cycle I discovered in 2007, which I theorize is coming from stored corn pollen containing neonicotinoids. The queen stops laying viable brood about the 3rd week in September and the brood that is fed the pollen may die also. When the summer bees die there is a rapid decline in the population.”

 

What is CCD?

 

Although there are a variety of definitions for the term Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)(2)(21)(22), the symptoms described here generally apply. A large population of adult bees just suddenly disappears. Food stores, the queen and young bees are left behind, but the population is inadequate for them to warm themselves and the remaining brood; so, the colony is doomed.

 

Some authorities attributed the problem to biotic factors such as varroa mites and insect diseases (i.e., pathogens including Nosema apis and Israel acute paralysis virus). Other theories include environmental change-related stresses: malnutrition, pesticides, migratory beekeeping, cell phone radiation and genetically modified (GM) crops with pest control characteristics. One study found a co-infection of invertebrate iridescent virus type 6 (IIV-6) and the fungus Nosema ceranae in all CCD colonies sampled. Many believe that CCD may be due to a combination of many factors.(2)

 

"Of the 61 variables quantified (including adult bee physiology, pathogen loads, and pesticide levels), no single factor was found with enough consistency to suggest one causal agent. Bees in CCD colonies had higher pathogen loads and were co-infected with more pathogens than control populations, suggesting either greater pathogen exposure or reduced defenses in CCD bees."(3) However, in a 10-month study of healthy honey bees by University of California, San Francisco scientists identified four new viruses that infect bees, while revealing that each of the viruses or bacteria previously linked to colony collapse is present in healthy hives as well.(15)

 

Jeff Anderson, Owner of California Minnesota Honey Farms, states in his 6/24/2011 letter to the editor:

One year my hives appear to die from nosema, the next a virus, the following, varroa mites. The one constant was that nearly all hive losses can be blamed on compromised immune system. Pathogens, which bees were previously able to survive, are now easily vectored and quickly tip the scales into colony demise. Is it a strange coincidence that the new “softer” agricultural chemicals target the very P450 enzymes that insects―in fact, all animals including humans―use to process and jettison toxins from their systems? While fall of 2006 is given as the start of CCD, it is important to note that many bee operations were experiencing very high losses as early as the fall of 2004. It wasn’t until Penn State was invited to investigate in the fall of 2006 that these losses were recognized and termed CCD. CCD is used to describe colony mortality for which the cause is unknown.(16)

 

Although CCD is getting attention in recent years, it may not be only a recent phenomenon. Limited occurrences resembling CCD have been documented as early as 1869.(4)

 

It’s also important to realize that CCD is a world-wide issue. CCD has been seen in Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Taiwan, five Canadian provinces and countries in South and Central America as well as Asia.(2)

 

The bees are disappearing

 

Honeybees have clearly been in decline for many years now. Specifically, the losses in the USA over recent winters include 34% total colony loss in the winter of 2009/2010; 29% in 2008/2009; 36% in 2007/2008; and 32% in 2006/2007.(14) And the USDA’s preliminary survey results indicate that 30% of managed honey bee colonies were lost during the 2010/2011 winter.(23) Marla Spivak, Distinguished McKnight Professor of Apiculture and Social Insects, Department of Entomology, University of Minnesota, presented an interesting chart at the Denver Bee club meeting in June, 2011, “Decline in U.S. Honey Bee Colonies 1945 - 2005“(see chart, used with permission). This shows the steady decline of bee colonies since 1945. We should keep in mind that it was exactly that time frame when defense companies had to find a new market for their war-related chemicals, many of which found their way into our agriculture industry. Spivak further notes that since 2006, 30% to 40% of all honey bee colonies die annually. Beekeepers struggle to replace about 80% of this loss using the split process.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Covering the Earth with pesticides

 

Jose Villa, USDA, Agricultural Research Service in Baton Rouge, LA, says: The pictures of colonies with CCD with a handful of live adult workers, a queen, and very large areas of immature bees fit a pesticide poisoning more than anything else.(6) Which brings us back to the neonicotinoids we mentioned all the way back in paragraph two.

 

This is the putrid story of how big business gets chemicals approved for use without adequate review and successfully spreads those chemicals around the world at great profit. Before we begin, you need to know that there are many neonicotinoids and we will only be focused on two: clothianidin & imidacloprid. Further, those two have MANY trade names not listed here which you may encounter in the market place.

 

While imidacloprid, registered in 1992, is the best-known insecticide in this class, there have been a number of new neonicotinoids introduced since then, including clothianidin. Their use has increased dramatically over the past few years and they are now the most widely used group of insecticides in the U.S. Their many uses include: seed treatments for corn, cotton, canola and sunflowers; foliar sprays of fruit, vegetable, nut and coffee crops; granular, and liquid drench applications in turf, ornamentals, fruit crops and in forests; and in California the number one use of imidacloprid is for the control of structural pests.(18)

 

“I became concerned about clothianidin as the possible cause of the break in the fall brood cycle I was seeing in my bees,” said Tom Theobald. “The EPA has approved clothianidin without adequate field study of its effects on honey bees.”(10)

 

Protecting what environment?

 

In the United States, Bayer’s clothianidin was given a conditional registration by the EPA in 2003(24) under the condition that a field study be conducted by December of that same year and strong label language accompany the product including: “expression of clothianidin in nectar and pollen suggests the possibility of chronic toxic risk to honey bee larva and the eventual stability of the hive.” Sadly, with the complaisance of the EPA, Bayer would not complete the study until August 1, 2006 and the EPA chose not to review the study until November 16, 2007. By this time, clothianidin had been used for five full growing seasons. Check these dates against the losses mentioned above. Worse still, the EPAs original review, used to unconditionally register clothianidin in April, 2010, stated: “This study is scientifically sound and satisfies the guideline requirements.” But was it actually sound? The EPA changed their position and decided the study did not satisfy the guideline on November 2, 2010, reducing the study’s status to supplemental.

 

The logical person in me wants to immediately conclude that because, as of November, 2010, clothianidin has not met the requirements for registration, the EPA would revoke said registration. But that would be wrong. In fact, full registration status remains, even today, 1/30/2012.

 

“Clothianidin may be a double whammy for bees, hitting us on the front end and the back, at seeding time and, if my hypothesis is correct, in the fall by way of systemically contaminated pollen leading to a break in the fall brood cycle,” said Tom Theobald.(7) Anne Averill found that bees subjected to a sub-lethal dose of 5ng (nano-gram) imidacloprid experienced impaired ability to navigate back home, and that smaller bees were affected more than larger bees.(11) While researchers at Purdue think that the nurse bees which take the incoming pollen from the foragers in order to produce royal jelly to feed larva are among the bees dying from clothianidin.(8) Without the careful observations of beekeepers, much of this story would remain unknown today. It's not the EPA who's performing and publishing these studies. Nor is it Bayer, the product seller.

 

The effects of imidacloprid are consistent with the theory that CCD may be caused by multiple pathogens interacting. In this study, scientists found that imidacloprid exposure increases nosema.

Nosema infections increased significantly in the bees from pesticide-treated hives when compared to bees from control hives demonstrating an indirect effect of pesticides on pathogen growth in honey bees. We clearly demonstrate an increase in pathogen growth within individual bees reared in colonies exposed to one of the most widely used pesticides worldwide, imidacloprid, at below levels considered harmful to bees. The finding that individual bees with undetectable levels of the target pesticide, after being reared in a sub-lethal pesticide environment within the colony, had higher Nosema is significant.(20)

 

Legacy in the Ground

 

Clothianidin accumulates in soils with repeated applications. According to the EPA, “42 to 59% of the applied remained in the soil approximately 3 to 4 years following the first of the two applications, and residues were primarily undegraded clothianidin.” And, “information from standard tests and field studies, as well as incident reports involving other neonicotinoids insecticides (e.g., imidacloprid) also suggest the potential for long term toxic risk to honey bees and other beneficial insects.”(9)

 

If it takes years for these pesticides to biodegrade in the soil, then it may already be too late for beekeepers to avoid further loses.

"Clothianidin is of the neonicotinoid family of pesticides. They are designed as systemics, to be taken up by a plant’s vascular system and expressed through pollen, nectar and guttation droplets from which bees then forage and drink. Scientists are concerned about the combined and cumulative effects of the multiple pesticides bees are exposed to in these ways. Neonicotinoids are of particular concern because they have cumulative, sublethal effects on insect pollinators that correspond to CCD symptoms – namely, neurobehavioral and immune system disruptions. ... With a soil half-life of many years in heavy soils, and more than a year in the lightest of soils, commercial beekeepers are concerned that even an immediate ban of clothianidin won’t save their livelihoods or hives in time."(12)

 

Drifting in the air

 

And if long term residual effects were not enough, Krupke, Hunt, Eitzer, Andino, and Given published this additional study in January, 2012, showing that the talc dust exhausted from planting machinery is highly toxic on contact and drifts the pesticides to surrounding fields.

Our results demonstrate that bees are exposed to these compounds and several other agricultural pesticides in several ways throughout the foraging period. During spring, extremely high levels of clothianidin and thiamethoxam were found in planter exhaust material produced during the planting of treated maize seed. We also found neonicotinoids in the soil of each field we sampled, including unplanted fields. Plants visited by foraging bees (dandelions) growing near these fields were found to contain neonicotinoids as well. This indicates deposition of neonicotinoids on the flowers, uptake by the root system, or both. Dead bees collected near hive entrances during the spring sampling period were found to contain clothianidin as well, although whether exposure was oral (consuming pollen) or by contact (soil/planter dust) is unclear. We also detected the insecticide clothianidin in pollen collected by bees and stored in the hive. When maize plants in our field reached anthesis, maize pollen from treated seed was found to contain clothianidin and other pesticides; and honey bees in our study readily collected maize pollen. These findings clarify some of the mechanisms by which honey bees may be exposed to agricultural pesticides throughout the growing season. ... The half-lives of these compounds in aerobic soil conditions can vary widely, but are best measured in months (148–1,155 days for clothianidin) ... Maize planting reached unprecedented levels in the US in 2010 (35.7 million hectares, and is expected to increase. Virtually all of the maize seed planted in North America (the lone exception being organic production = 0.2% of total acreage) is coated with neonicotinoid insecticides. ... soybeans (31.3 million ha), wheat (24.7 million ha), and cotton (4.4 million ha, all figures 2010 planting) ... Sampling of the waste talc from planting activities revealed that extremely high concentrations of clothianidin were found in talc exposed to treated seed ... maize pollen comprised over 50% of the pollen collected by bees, by volume, in 10 of 20 samples. ... the amount of clothianidin on a single maize seed at the rate of 0.5 mg/kernel contains enough active ingredient to kill over 80,000 honey bees.(17)

 

Contributing Unknowingly

 

But wait, it gets even better! Next we have this text, so beautifully written by Tom Philpott, I want to quote it at length. This is how my suburban bees are being killed.

Walk into the garden section of any Home Depot or Lowe's, and you're likely to find a product called Bayer 2-1 Systemic Rose and Flower Care, which offers broad-spectrum pest control (i.e., it kills a wide range of insects) and synthetic fertilizer in one convenient product. Take a close look at the label, and you'll find that its one active pesticide ingredient is imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid. "Apply granules to soil around base of plant, sprinkling evenly in the area under branches," the instructions state. How does the product work? Bayer provides a helpful explanation right on the label:

This product is absorbed by roots and moves through the entire plant. Even new growth is fed and protected against insects for up to 8 weeks. Rain or watering cannot wash off this internal protection!

The company laces several other consumer products with imidacloprid, too, including its 3-in-1 Shrub Plant Starter, its Complete Insect Killer for Soil and Turf, and its Fruit, Citrus and Vegetable Insect Control. Bayer can turn your entire lawn and garden into a toxic zone for bees!

Even home gardeners who don't use these products may be subjecting bees and other desirable insects to Bayer's poison. That's because commercial greenhouses and nurseries commonly treat potting soil with it, particularly on ornamental plants and the plants continue "expressing" imidacloprid for weeks after leaving the store.

While the sheer scale of corn production probably makes it the most common way bees are exposed to imidacloprid and other neonics, garden, landscape, and nursery uses can't be discounted as a factor in declining bee health. In fact, according to Vera Krischik, an entomologist at the University of Minnesota, imidacloprid expresses itself in soil-treated plants like garden flowers at a much higher dose than it does for seed-treated plants like corn. In her research, she found that imidacloprid in nectar from seed-treated plants tend to hover at less than 1 part per billion, while soil-treated plants produced nectar that contains as much as 40 parts per billion.(19)

 

Could there be even more? This article doesn't even touch on the interaction between pesticides and other agricultural chemicals. One recent study found that the toxicity of a pesticide in combination with a fungicide increased by 1000X.(27)

 

Pollinators Needed

 

Honey bees are critical to agriculture. How critical? According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we depend on honey bees to pollinate 130 different crops, representing more than $15 billion in crop value each year and roughly one-third of the human diet.(15) UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner says: “The fact is that of the 100 crop species that provide 90% of the world's food, over 70 are pollinated by bees."(13)

 

Do you think they could not disappear? Take a look at Sichuan province in China where humans pollinate pear trees by hand because over-zealous use of pesticides decimated the bee population of the region.(25)

 

Let us perform a thought experiment using the actual losses indicated above. Pretend that 100 represents all the bee colonies we have. Assume that beekeepers are able to replace 80% of all the losses each year through the split process, as Spivak suggested. Here's how the numbers come out:

(2006/2007) 100 - 32% = 68; 32 * 0.8 = 25.6; 68+25.6 = 93.6

(2007/2008) 93.6- 36% = 59.9; 33.7 * 0.8 = 27; 59.9+27 = 86.9

(2008/2009) 86.9- 29% = 61.7; 25.2 * 0.8 = 20.2; 61,7+20.2 = 81.9

(2009/2010) 81.9- 34% = 54.1; 27.8 * 0.8 = 22.3; 54.1+22.3 = 76.4

(2010/2011) 76.4- 30% = 53.5; 22.9 * 0.8 = 18.3; 53.5+18.3 = 71.8

This suggests that we have already lost about 30% of our bee colonies in the last 5 years even with replacing 80% of the losses each year.

 

Replacing 30% of the nation’s bees annually is not considered sustainable over the long-term. But there is hope. Commercial beekeeper Clint Walker III says, "I've been chemical-free for nearly two years. We've stayed out of agricultural fields to cut out their exposure to chemicals, and my bees are finally starting to behave like bees again."(26) However, if the solution for keeping the bees alive is to keep them away from the crops, then where does that leave our food supply? How is that different from losing the bees? Answer: It's different in that we can stop using the pesticides on the crops and, after a few decades, the earth will recover, but if we kill the bees, then they are gone.

 

Don Studinski is a hobby beekeeper keeping bees in the Denver metropolitan area. Don can be reached at dstudin@yahoo.com.

 

references:

1. http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/br/ccd/ccdprogressreport2010.pdf, USDA Colony Collapse Disorder Progress Report, CCD Steering Committee, June 2010, viewed 1/14/2012

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder Wikipedia article: Colony collapse disorder, viewed 1/14/2012

3. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0006481, PlosOne article: Colony Collapse Disorder: A Descriptive Study, viewed 1/14/2012

4. http://www.beeculture.com/content/ColonyCollapseDisorderPDFs/7%20Colony%..., Colony Collapse Disorder: Have We SeenThis Before? By Robyn M. Underwood and Dennis vanEngelsdorp, The Pennsylvania State University, Department of Entomology, viewed 1/17/2012

5. http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2009/2009-07-29-094.asp, Scientists Untangle Multiple Causes of Bee Colony Disorder, PULLMAN, Washington, July 29, 2009, viewed 1/17/2012

6. 30 July 2009, Jose Villa, Baton Rouge, LA. Personal communication from Jo Haugland, High Land Beekeeping Club. Received 8/1 from Eric Smith.

7. Personal correspondence from Tom Theobald, Friday, May 14, 2010 2:31 PM

8. Pesticide Kill at Purdue Bee Lab?, May, 2010, Greg Hunt and Christian Krupke, Department of Entomology, received 5/14/10 from Theobald

9. http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/cleared_reviews/csr_PC-044309_..., EFED Registration Chapter for Clothianidin for use on Potatoes and Grapes as a spray treatment and as a Seed Treatment for Sorghum and Cotton, September 28, 2005, viewed 1/25/2012

10. Fence Post articles, 6/1/2010 and 6/7/2010, by Tom Theobald, received via personal correspondence Tuesday, June 1, 2010 4:16 PM & Monday, June 7, 2010 6:11 AM

11. Managed Pollinator CAP, Nest Location in Bumble Bees, Effect of Landscapes And Insecticitdes, Anne Averill, Bee Culture, December 2011

12. http://www.panna.org/blog/beekeepers-call-immediate-ban-ccd-linked-pesti..., Ground Truth article, Beekeepers call for immediate ban on CCD-linked pesticide, Thu, 2010-12-09 14:09, viewed 1/18/2012

13. Bee Culture, Catch the Buzz, Thursday, March 10, 2011 9:31 PM

14. Bee Culture, Catch the Buzz. Monday, May 23, 2011 8:09 AM

15. Bee Culture, Catch the Buzz. Tuesday, June 7, 2011 3:07 PM

16. Letter to the Editor of The Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2011, by Jeff Anderson, Owner of California Minnesota Honey Farms, Eagle Bend Minnesota, received via personal correspondence from Tom Theobald, Thursday, July 28, 2011 4:10 AM

17. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0029268?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+plosone%2FPlantBiology+(PLoS+ONE+Alerts%3A+Plant+Biology), Multiple Routes of Pesticide Exposure for Honey Bees Living Near Agricultural Fields by Christian H. Krupke, Greg J. Hunt, Brian D. Eitzer, Gladys Andino, Krispn Given, viewed 1/20/12

18. http://celdf.org/downloads/Chemical%20Trespass%20and%20HONEY_BEES.pdf, PROTECTING HONEY BEES FROM PESTICIDES, viewed 01/20/2012

19. http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/01/bee-killing-pesticides-not-j..., Is Your Garden Pesticide Killing Bees?, by Tom Philpott, viewed 01/20/2012

20. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22246149, Pesticide exposure in honey bees results in increased levels of the gut pathogen Nosema, Jeffery S. Pettis & Dennis vanEngelsdorp & Josephine Johnson & Galen Dively, 13 January 2012, viewed 1/25/2012

21. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/colony+collapse+disorder, colony collapse disorder, viewed 01/20/2012

22. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1348211/colony-collapse-disorder-CCD, colony collapse disorder (CCD), viewed 01/20/2012

23. http://www.extension.org/pages/58013/honey-bee-winter-loss-survey, Honey Bee Winter Loss Survey, May 25, 2011, viewed 1/21/2012

24. http://digital.beeculture.com/DigitalAnywhere/viewer.aspx?id=10&pageId=68, Do we have a Pesticide Blowout? By Tom Theobald, Bee Culture, July, 2010

25. http://bigpictureagriculture.blogspot.com/2012/01/honeybee-decline-story... by Kay McDonald 1/5/2012; viewed 1/24/2012

26. http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/01/21/3677470/beekeepers-abuzz-over-threats.html by Bill Hanna, viewed 1/30/2012

27. Managed Pollinator CAP, Miticide & Fungicide Interactions, Reed Johnson, Bee Culture, October, 2011

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