Bee die-off perplexes scientists

[justdrew]

so how will we adjust to a post-wireless world?

It seems to me it's clearly past time to end the wireless obsession.

[hanshan]

so how will we adjust to a post-wireless world?

It seems to me it's clearly past time to end the wireless obsession.

End? just got there...


& the pa *tay's ova

drat


...

[brainpanhandler]

I snapped this picture of the second of only two honey bees I have seen all summer.

[MacCruiskeen]

so how will we adjust to a post-wireless world?

It seems to me it's clearly past time to end the wireless obsession.

Every time I see someone using a wireless mouse I think: "Why? Where's the sense in it? Where's the added value? Are you gonna point-and-click that thing from the other side of the room, or what?"

[Simulist]

True. What's more: what's the real point of any of the planet-destroying nonsense that makes up the vast majority of our collective efforts in this "civilized" technological dystopia?

Mindless, purposeless destruction.

[Searcher08]

I have a big honeybee hive IN MY HOUSE.
W00t!
Living about three feet from my... Wireless Router.
Both are performing well.

[Pele'sDaughter]

I snapped this picture of the second of only two honey bees I have seen all summer.

That's two more than I saw this year.

[smoking since 1879]

Apologies if this has been posted before, I did a search and found nothing.

Why Saving The Bees Might Be Simpler Than We Think
http://greenanswers.com/news/269066/why-saving-bees-might-be-simpler-we-think

You may already be familiar with the disappearance of our world’s honey bees, Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and the grave dilemma it presents: one third of our food, including nearly all our fruits and vegetables, relies on bees for pollination somewhere along the chain of production.  Scientists have been unable to pinpoint a single cause of the declining bee population, which has been dying off at annual rates of around 30%.  Autopsied bees have shown a variety of diseases and health complications, but one Argentine beekeeper may just have a way of saving the bees from all of these problems.

Oscar Perone has been a beekeeper in his home country since 1964.  Concerned about the bees’ well being, he wanted to design a beekeeping system that would benefit the bees above anyone else.  Since bees have survived at least 35 million years without any help from humans, Perone turned to the wild to study how colonies functioned in nature.  From his observations he realized conventional apiculture which has been used for almost two centuries interferes with techniques the bees have perfected over eons of evolution.  While Perone doesn’t believe that apicultural practices are directly causing CCD, he argues that they lower a colony’s immunity to illness and toxins. 

In the wild a beehive consists of a large nest (usually located inside a giant tree) with pollen stored on the sides and honey stored above.  The honey serves as food and insulation from the cold.  In Langstroth hives - standard industrial hives - Perone claims the panels are not high enough to build the big healthy nest bees need to stay healthy.  The nest is further stressed when beekeepers use smoke to drive the bees deeper in the hive so that honey can be taken. Furthermore most beekeepers harvest all the honey, leaving nothing for the colony, which is instead fed white sugar and other processed chemicals lacking the nutrients found in the bees’ natural alimentation.  Additionally commercial hives are covered with plastic ponchos in the winter with the intention of keeping the bees warm and dry, but this causes excess humidity and a lack of ventilation within the colony, breeding ideal conditions for disease and pathogens.

Another big weakness Perone identifies in conventional apiculture is the use of synthetic stamped wax.  In nature bees construct their hive out of a waxy material they themselves excrete as a waste product.  The cells honeybees make are smaller than the cells of the synthetic wax.  Stamped wax with enlarged cells was first fabricated in 1893, with the idea that bees would grow bigger over time and produce more honey.  Commercial bees did enlarge but the change in cell size also gave the Varroa destructor better access within the hive.  Since the 1960s (1990s in the U.S.) this mite has been entering honeycombs, reproducing, and transmitting debilitating diseases to bees.    

Perone’s hives though have never had any trouble with Varroa destructors or CCD.  Since 2004 he’s been using his own system, “Permapiculture” (“Permanent” + “apiculture”) He never uses commercial “nuc colonies” but instead attracts wild swarms to his hives, which are made to simulate a natural beehive. 

In his latest design Perone stacks square wooden frames to a combined height of 57 centimeters.  The uppermost frame has wooden bars nailed across it with spaces in-between.  The bees use these bars to begin constructing their panels.  No manmade panels, wire, or synthetic stamped wax is used.  This 57 centimeter tall space is exclusively for the bees’ nest and honey reserves. “In order to maintain health, a hive needs three things,” Perone explains.  “Lots of space, lots of honey, and lots of peace.  The beekeeper must never disturb this part of the hive.”

Over the bees’ portion of the hive are three smaller frames interlaced with wooden bars.  These frames are for the beekeeper.  Believe it or not after the bees have filled their section of the hive with honey they will continue to fill these upper frames.  When Perone harvests he only moves the roof and these three upper frames and bars, leaving the bees in peace.  Mr. Perone’s hives yield on average 120 kilograms of honey: 100 kilograms are harvested from the beekeepers’ section and 20 kilograms are left in the bees’ section for their nourishment, insulation, and protection.  An average Langstroth hive yields between 20 to 60 kilograms of honey per year. 

Perone is currently sharing his work with scientists at the University Austral of Chile, in hope that they will research and possibly validate his ideas.  Until then he has the testimonies of numerous professional beekeepers throughout Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Columbia, and Mexico, all of whom have made the switch to PermApiculture within the past eight years.  Every one of them has the thriving hives needed to demonstrate that Perone’s method may be able to save the bees.   

[Pele'sDaughter]

Thank you for posting that hopeful article. I really needed that positive note right now.

[smoking since 1879]

You're welcome
I always fancied keeping bees, might give this a go... need some kind of garden first though I suppose...

[Pele'sDaughter]

I tried to pm you with this, but it wouldn't send.

Someone I've met at another forum is a new beekeeper. Here's the thread about her experiences, although you may not be able to see it without a membership. I'll tell you, she sent me some of her honey, and it was divine. If only I could've sampled the mead she made.

http://keithlaney.net/SMF/index.php?topic=9197.0

I posted your article in the thread, too.

[Ben D]

“Zombie” Fly Parasite Killing Honeybees

]By Katherine Harmon | January 3, 2012 | 13


A parasitic fly landing on a honeybee. Courtesy of Christopher Quock

A heap of dead bees was supposed to become food for a newly captured praying mantis. Instead, the pile ended up revealing a previously unrecognized suspect in colony collapse disorder—a mysterious condition that for several years has been causing declines in U.S. honeybee populations, which are needed to pollinate many important crops. This new potential culprit is a bizarre—and potentially devastating—parasitic fly that has been taking over the bodies of honeybees (Apis mellifera) in Northern California.

John Hafernik, a biology professor at San Francisco State University, had collected some belly-up bees from the ground underneath lights around the University’s biology building. “But being an absent-minded professor,” he noted in a prepared statement, “I left them in a vial on my desk and forgot about them.” He soon got a shock. “The next time I looked at the vial, there were all these fly pupae surrounding the bees,” he said. A fly (Apocephalus borealis) had inserted its eggs into the bees, using their bodies as a home for its developing larvae. And the invaders had somehow led the bees from their hives to their deaths. A detailed description of the newly documented relationship was published online Tuesday in PLoS ONE.

The team performed a genetic analysis of the fly and found that it is the same species that has previously been documented to parasitize bumblebee as well as paper wasp populations. That this parasite hasn’t previously been reported as a honeybee killer came as a surprise, given that “honeybees are among the best-studied insects of the world,” Hafernik said. “We would expect that if this has been a long-term parasite of honeybees, we would have noticed.”

The team found evidence of the fly in 77 percent of the hives they sampled in the Bay Area of California, as well as in some hives in the state’s agricultural Central Valley and in South Dakota. Previous research has found evidence that mites, a virus, a fungus, or a combination of these factors might be responsible for the widespread colony collapse. (Read more about colony collapse disorder in our feature “Solving the Mystery of the Vanishing Bees.”) And with the discovery that this parasitic fly has been quietly killing bees in at least three areas, it might join the list of possible forces behind colony collapse disorder.

The parasitic fly lays eggs in a bee’s abdomen. Several days later, the parasitized bee bumbles out of the hives—often at night—on a solo mission to nowhere. These bees often fly toward light and wind up unable to control their own bodies. After a bee dies, as many as 13 fly larvae crawl out from the bee’s neck. The bees’ behavior seems similar to that of ants that are parasitized—and then decapitated from within—by other fly larvae from the Apocephalus genus.

“When we observed the bees for some time—the ones that were alive—we found that they walked in circles, often with no sense of direction,” Andrew Core, a graduate student who works with Hafernik and a co-author on the new paper, said in a prepared statement, describing them as behaving “something like a zombie.” (Read about other parasites that turn their hosts into zombies in the article “Zombie Creatures.”)

Bees from affected hives—and the parasitizing flies and their larvae—curiously also contained genetic traces of Nosema ceranae, another parasite, as well as a virus that leads to deformed wings—which had already been implicated in colony collapse disorder. This double infection suggests that the flies might even be spreading these additional hive-weakening factors.

The research team plans to track bees with radio tags and video cameras to see whether infected bees are leaving the hive willingly or getting kicked out in the middle of the night—and where the flies are finding the bees in which they lay their eggs. “We assume it’s while the bees are out foraging because we don’t see the flies hanging around the bee hives,” Hafernik said. “But it’s still a bit of a black hole in terms of where it’s actually happening.” Most of the parasitized bees found so far have been foraging worker bees, but even if other groups of bees within a hive are not becoming infected, a decline in the number of foragers in a hive could have a large impact on a hive as a whole. Models of colony dynamics suggest that “significant loss of foragers could cause rapid population decline and colony collapse,” the researchers noted in their paper.

Hafernik and his colleagues hope that the simple way they made their discovery “will enable professional and amateur beekeepers to collect vital samples of bees that leave the hive at night”—with a light trap, for instance—and keep them around for a week or so to observe for any signs of emerging larvae. Pinpointing the extent of this strange bee behavior could be key to stemming colony collapse disorder by possibly allowing keepers to isolate affected populations. If the parasitic fly is just starting to infect honeybee populations, this could be an important move, especially given the newly prevalent mobile commercial hives, which mean that honeybees—and their ailments–are on the move in much greater numbers than ever before.

[hanshan]

...

http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/01/purdue-study-implicates-bayer-pesticide-bee-die-offs


Are Pesticides Behind Massive Bee Die-Offs?

New research links colony collapse disorder to bees' exposure to a class of pesticides used on millions of acres of farmland.

By Tom Philpott | Tue Jan. 10, 2012 12:05 PM PST

For the German chemical giant Bayer, neonicotinoid pesticides—synthetic derivatives of nicotine that attack insects' nervous systems—are big business. In 2010, the company reeled in [1] 789 million euros (more than $1 billion) in revenue from its flagship neonic products imidacloprid and clothianidin. The company's latest quarterly report shows that its "seed treatment" segment—the one that includes neonics—is booming. In the quarter that ended on September 30, [2] sales for the company's seed treatments jumped 28 percent compared to the same period the previous year.

Such results no doubt bring cheer to Bayer's shareholders. But for honeybees—whose population has come under severe pressure from a mysterious condition called colony collapse disorder—the news is decidedly less welcome. A year ago on Grist, I told the story [3] of how this class of pesticides had gained approval from the EPA in a twisted process based on deeply flawed (by the EPA's own account) Bayer-funded science. A little later, I reported [4] that research by the USDA's top bee scientist, Jeff Pettis, suggests that even tiny exposure to neonics can seriously harm honeybees.

Now a study [5] from Purdue University researchers casts further suspicion on Bayer's money-minting concoctions. To understand the new paper—published in the peer-reviewed journal Plos One—it's important to know how seed treatments work, which is like this: The pesticides are applied directly to seeds before planting, and then get absorbed by the plant's vascular system. They are "expressed" in the pollen and nectar, where they attack the nervous systems of insects. Bayer targeted its treatments at the most prolific US crop—corn—and since 2003, corn farmers have been blanketing millions of acres of farmland with neonic-treated seeds.

No one disputes that neonics are highly toxic to bees. But Bayer insists—and so far, the EPA concurs—that little if any neonic-laced pollen actually makes it into beehives, and that exposure to tiny amounts has no discernible effect on hive health. Bayer also claims that bees don't forage much on corn pollen.

The Purdue study calls all of this into question. The researchers looked at beehives near corn fields and found that bees are "exposed to these compounds [neonics] and several other agricultural pesticides in several ways throughout the foraging period." Contradicting Bayer's claim that bees don't forage much in cornfields, they found that "maize pollen was frequently collected by foraging honey bees while it was available: maize pollen comprised over 50% of the pollen collected by bees, by volume, in 10 of 20 samples." They detected "extremely high" levels of Bayer's clothianidin in the fumes that rise up when farmers plant corn seed in the spring. They found it in the soil of fields planted with treated seed—and also in adjacent fields that hadn't been recently planted. And they found it in dandelion weeds growing near cornfields—suggesting that the weeds might be taking it up from the soil.

Most alarmingly of all, they found it in dead bees "collected near hive entrances during the spring sampling period," as well as in "pollen collected by bees and stored in the hive."

Now, neonic pesticides likely have two separate effects on bees: an acute one during spring corn planting, when huge clouds of neonic-infested dust rises up, at doses that kill bees that come into contact with it. Those population losses weaken hives but don't typically destroy them. And then there's a gradual effect—what scientists call "chronic"—when bees bring in pollen contaminated at low levels by neonicotinoids. Research by the USDA's Pettis [4] suggests that even microscopic levels of exposure to neonics compromises bees' immune systems, leaving hives vulnerable to other pathogens and prone to collapse.

The EPA has thus far relied on Bayer-funded research to maintain its registration of clothianidin —even after a leaked document [6] in late 2010 showed that its own staff scientists found Bayer's research to be shoddy. The agency ignored the ensuing controversy and once again let farmers plant seed treated with Bayer's concoction. The Purdue researchers report that "virtually all" of the vast US corn crop is now planted with seed treated with Bayer's dodgy pesticide, and the technology is rapidly spreading to the other most prodigious US crops: soybeans, cotton, and wheat. Now, ahead of the 2012 growing season, we have peer-reviewed, USDA-funded research that bluntly challenges Bayer's claims and implicates it in colony collapse disorder. Will the EPA look the other way while tens of millions of acres are poisoned for the nation's besieged honey bees?

Frankly, quite probably so. Bees can't organize political campaigns, of course, and the beekeeper lobby doesn't wield much influence in the grand scheme of things—though Pesticide Action Network is working hard to amplify their voice. [7]Bayer, meanwhile, is a paid-up member of Croplife America, [8] a powerful agribusiness interest group that the Obama administration won't likely want to tangle with heading into an election. Bad news for bees—and bad news for the ecosystem of which they're such a vital part: ours.

Source URL: http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/201 ... e-die-offs
Links:
[1] http://www.bayercropscience.com/bcsweb/ ... ctsFigures
[2] https://motherjones.com/files/qb_2011_3_e.pdf
[3] http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010- ... pesticide-
[4] http://www.grist.org/article/2011-01-21 ... de-harmful
[5] http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Ad ... logy%29#s3
[6] http://www.panna.org/sites/default/file ... anidin.pdf
[7] http://www.panna.org/current-campaigns/bees
[8] http://www.croplife america.org/about/association-members

...

[elpuma]

Researchers: Honeybee deaths linked to seed insecticide exposure

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Honeybee populations have been in serious decline for years, and Purdue University scientists may have identified one of the factors that cause bee deaths around agricultural fields.

Analyses of bees found dead in and around hives from several apiaries over two years in Indiana showed the presence of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are commonly used to coat corn and soybean seeds before planting. The research showed that those insecticides were present at high concentrations in waste talc that is exhausted from farm machinery during planting.

The insecticides clothianidin and thiamethoxam were also consistently found at low levels in soil - up to two years after treated seed was planted - on nearby dandelion flowers and in corn pollen gathered by the bees, according to the findings released in the journal PLoS One this month.

"We know that these insecticides are highly toxic to bees; we found them in each sample of dead and dying bees," said Christian Krupke, associate professor of entomology and a co-author of the findings.

The United States is losing about one-third of its honeybee hives each year, according to Greg Hunt, a Purdue professor of behavioral genetics, honeybee specialist and co-author of the findings. Hunt said no one factor is to blame, though scientists believe that others such as mites and insecticides are all working against the bees, which are important for pollinating food crops and wild plants.

"It’s like death by a thousand cuts for these bees," Hunt said.

Krupke and Hunt received reports that bee deaths in 2010 and 2011 were occurring at planting time in hives near agricultural fields. Toxicological screenings performed by Brian Eitzer, a co-author of the study from the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, for an array of pesticides showed that the neonicotinoids used to treat corn and soybean seed were present in each sample of affected bees. Krupke said other bees at those hives exhibited tremors, uncoordinated movement and convulsions, all signs of insecticide poisoning.

Seeds of most annual crops are coated in neonicotinoid insecticides for protection after planting. All corn seed and about half of all soybean seed is treated. The coatings are sticky, and in order to keep seeds flowing freely in the vacuum systems used in planters, they are mixed with talc. Excess talc used in the process is released during planting and routine planter cleaning procedures.

"Given the rates of corn planting and talc usage, we are blowing large amounts of contaminated talc into the environment. The dust is quite light and appears to be quite mobile," Krupke said.

Krupke said the corn pollen that bees were bringing back to hives later in the year tested positive for neonicotinoids at levels roughly below 100 parts per billion.

"That's enough to kill bees if sufficient amounts are consumed, but it is not acutely toxic," he said.

On the other hand, the exhausted talc showed extremely high levels of the insecticides - up to about 700,000 times the lethal contact dose for a bee.

"Whatever was on the seed was being exhausted into the environment," Krupke said. "This material is so concentrated that even small amounts landing on flowering plants around a field can kill foragers or be transported to the hive in contaminated pollen. This might be why we found these insecticides in pollen that the bees had collected and brought back to their hives."

Krupke suggested that efforts could be made to limit or eliminate talc emissions during planting.

"That's the first target for corrective action," he said. "It stands out as being an enormous source of potential environmental contamination, not just for honeybees, but for any insects living in or near these fields. The fact that these compounds can persist for months or years means that plants growing in these soils can take up these compounds in leaf tissue or pollen."

Although corn and soybean production does not require insect pollinators, that is not the case for most plants that provide food. Krupke said protecting bees benefits agriculture since most fruit, nut and vegetable crop plants depend upon honeybees for pollination. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates the value of honeybees to commercial agriculture at $15 billion to $20 billion annually.

Hunt said he would continue to study the sublethal effects of neonicotinoids. He said for bees that do not die from the insecticide there could be other effects, such as loss of homing ability or less resistance to disease or mites.

"I think we need to stop and try to understand the risks associated with these insecticides," Hunt said.

The North American Pollinator Protection Campaign and the USDA's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative funded the research.

http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2012/120111KrupkeBees.html

[ninakat]

Another article, referencing the Purdue study. Embedded links at original.

Honeybee problem nearing a ‘critical point’
13 Jan 2012
by Claire Thompson, Grist

Anyone who's been stung by a bee knows they can inflict an outsized pain for such tiny insects. It makes a strange kind of sense, then, that their demise would create an outsized problem for the food system by placing the more than 70 crops they pollinate -- from almonds to apples to blueberries -- in peril.

Although news about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has died down, commercial beekeepers have seen average population losses of about 30 percent each year since 2006, said Paul Towers, of the Pesticide Action Network. Towers was one of the organizers of a conference that brought together beekeepers and environmental groups this week to tackle the challenges facing the beekeeping industry and the agricultural economy by proxy.

"We are inching our way toward a critical tipping point," said Steve Ellis, secretary of the National Honey Bee Advisory Board (NHBAB) and a beekeeper for 35 years. Last year he had so many abnormal bee die-offs that he'll qualify for disaster relief from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

In addition to continued reports of CCD -- a still somewhat mysterious phenomenon in which entire bee colonies literally disappear, alien-abduction style, leaving not even their dead bodies behind -- bee populations are suffering poor health in general, and experiencing shorter life spans and diminished vitality. And while parasites, pathogens, and habitat loss can deal blows to bee health, research increasingly points to pesticides as the primary culprit.

"In the industry we believe pesticides play an important role in what's going on," said Dave Hackenberg, co-chair of the NHBAB and a beekeeper in Pennsylvania.

Of particular concern is a group of pesticides, chemically similar to nicotine, called neonicotinoids (neonics for short), and one in particular called clothianidin. Instead of being sprayed, neonics are used to treat seeds, so that they're absorbed by the plant's vascular system, and then end up attacking the central nervous systems of bees that come to collect pollen. Virtually all of today's genetically engineered Bt corn is treated with neonics. The chemical industry alleges that bees don't like to collect corn pollen, but new research shows that not only do bees indeed forage in corn, but they also have multiple other routes of exposure to neonics.

The Purdue University study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, found high levels of clothianidin in planter exhaust spewed during the spring sowing of treated maize seed. It also found neonics in the soil of unplanted fields nearby those planted with Bt corn, on dandelions growing near those fields, in dead bees found near hive entrances, and in pollen stored in the hives.

Evidence already pointed to the presence of neonic-contaminated pollen as a factor in CCD. As Hackenberg explained, "The insects start taking [the pesticide] home, and it contaminates everywhere the insect came from." These new revelations about the pervasiveness of neonics in bees' habitats only strengthen the case against using the insecticides.

The irony, of course, is that farmers use these chemicals to protect their crops from destructive insects, but in so doing, they harm other insects essential to their crops' production -- a catch-22 that Hackenberg said speaks to the fact that "we have become a nation driven by the chemical industry." In addition to beekeeping, he owns two farms, and even when crop analysts recommend spraying pesticides on his crops to kill an aphid population, for example, he knows that "if I spray, I'm going to kill all the beneficial insects." But most farmers, lacking Hackenberg's awareness of bee populations, follow the advice of the crop adviser -- who, these days, is likely to be paid by the chemical industry, rather than by a state university or another independent entity.

Beekeepers have already teamed up with groups representing the almond and blueberry industries -- both of which depend on honey bee pollination -- to tackle the need for education among farmers. "A lot of [farm groups] are recognizing that we need more resources devoted to pollinator protection," Ellis said. "We need that same level of commitment on a national basis, from our USDA and EPA and the agricultural chemical industry."

Unfortunately, it was the EPA itself that green-lit clothianidin and other neonics for commercial use, despite its own scientists' clear warnings about the chemicals' effects on bees and other pollinators. That doesn't bode well for the chances of getting neonics off the market now, even in light of the Purdue study's findings.

"The agency has, in most cases, sided with pesticide manufacturers and worked to fast-track the approval of new products, and failed in cases when there's clear evidence of harm to take those products off the market," Towers said.

Since this is an election year -- a time when no one wants to make Big Ag (and its money) mad -- beekeepers may have to suffer another season of losses before there's any hope of action on the EPA's part. But when one out of every three bites of food on Americans' plates results directly from honey bee pollination, there's no question that the fate of these insects will determine our own as eaters.

Ellis, for his part, thinks that figuring out a way to solve the bee crisis could be a catalyst for larger reform within our agriculture system. "If we can protect that pollinator base, it's going to have ripple effects ... for wildlife, for human health," he said. "It will bring up subjects that need to be looked at, of groundwater and surface water -- all the connected subjects associated [with] chemical use and agriculture."

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.