Honeybees

On Tuesday 21 July Christian Schmidt, Germany’s Federal Minister of Agriculture, signed an urgency decree coming into immediate effect forbidding all trade, import and sowing of winterwheat seed-coated with the nicotinoids Clothianidin, Imidacloprid und Thiamethoxam. Minister Schmidt argumented the decision as necessary to prevent massive death of honey bees saying that “ with this decision honey bees will be protected from dust contaminated with insecticides. This serves the bees as an important part of nature as well as the farmers who are dependent on bees for the pollinisation of their plants.” The attached article by Klaus Wenzel, published in the Journal Entomologische Zeitschrift Heft 2-2015 in May, has been instrumental in bringing the German authorities to this decision.

The world’s population of creepy crawlies has fallen by nearly half – but that is bad news for us, experts warn. A study published in the journal Science, reveals that the number of slugs, spiders, worms and other invertebrates has fallen by 45 per cent over the past 35 years as the human population has doubled. Experts fear this will harm the planet as creepy crawlies play an important role in pollinating crops, pest control, decomposition and ensuring soil remains packed with nutrients, as well as water filtration. In the UK the number of beetles, butterflies, bees and wasps has fallen by up to 60 per cent. Experts warn that fewer insects would have a huge effect on crop production as up to 75 per are pollinated by insects, amounting to around 10 per cent of the world's food supply. And the cost of pest control without natural predators could be more than £2.6 billion pounds in the United States alone. Scientists fear a drop in the insect population could also spark a decline in birds, which prey on pests that damage crops, and amphibians, which help keep water supplies free from algae. Decreasing invertebrate numbers are also known to compromise food production due to reduced pollination, seed dispersal and insect predation.

More than 70% of pollen and honey samples collected from foraging bees in Massachusetts contain at least one neonicotinoid, a class of pesticide that has been implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), in which adult bees abandon their hives during winter, according to a new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study will be published online July 23, 2015 in the Journal of Environmental Chemistry. "Data from this study clearly demonstrated the ubiquity of neonicotinoids in pollen and honey samples that bees are exposed to during the seasons when they are actively foraging across Massachusetts. Levels of neonicotinoids that we found in this study fall into ranges that could lead to detrimental health effects in bees, including CCD," said Chensheng (Alex) Lu, associate professor of environmental exposure biology in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard Chan School and lead author of the study.

Der BUND begrüßt das neue Verbot der Neonikotinoide Clothianidin, Thiamethoxam und Imidacloprid zur Saatgutbeizung für Wintergetreide. Bundeslandwirtschaftsminister Christian Schmidt hatte per Eilverordnung ein „vollständiges Verbot der Einfuhr und des Inverkehrbringens“ dieser drei Pestizidwirkstoffe angeordnet. Der BUND-Pestizidexperte Tomas Brückmann sagte zu der Entscheidung: „Neonikotinoide tragen maßgeblich zum weltweiten Bienenvölkersterben bei. Das gesetzliche Verbot zur Beizung von Wintergetreide kann nur ein Schritt auf dem Weg dazu sein, alle Neonikotinoide vom Markt zu nehmen. Neonikotinoide stören das Immunsystem und das Lernvermögen der Bienen erheblich. EU-weit sind die drei jetzt per Eilverordnung eingeschränkten Neonikotinoide zwar seit Dezember 2013 für bienenrelevante Kulturen verboten. Experten kritisieren aber, dass auch die Verwendung in so genannten nicht bienenrelevanten Kulturen große Gefahren für Bienen und Umwelt verursacht. Weitere gefährliche Neonikotinoide sind außerdem noch ohne jegliche Einschränkung zugelassen. Landwirtschaftsminister Schmidt muss jetzt konsequent sein und das zuständige Bundesamt anweisen, die Zulassungen aller neonikotinoidhaltiger Produkte zurückzunehmen. Neonikotinoide sind Nervengifte, die Bienen und andere Lebewesen erheblich schädigen, sie müssen deshalb ausnahmslos verboten werden.“

Anthropogenic declines of animal pollinators and the associated effects on human nutrition are of growing concern. We quantified the nutritional and health outcomes associated with decreased intake of pollinator-dependent foods for populations around the world. We assembled a database of supplies of 224 types of food in 156 countries. We quantified nutrient composition and pollinator dependence of foods to estimate the size of possible reductions in micronutrient and food intakes for different national populations, while keeping calorie intake constant with replacement by staple foods. We estimated pollinator-decline-dependent changes in micronutrient-deficient populations using population-weighted estimated average requirements and the cutpoint method. We estimated disease burdens of non-communicable, communicable, and malnutrition-related diseases with the Global Burden of Disease 2010 comparative risk assessment framework. Assuming complete removal of pollinators, 71 million (95% uncertainty interval 41–262) people in low-income countries could become newly deficient in vitamin A, and an additional 2·2 billion (1·2–2·5) already consuming below the average requirement would have further declines in vitamin A supplies. Corresponding estimates for folate were 173 million (134–225) and 1·23 billion (1·12–1·33). A 100% decline in pollinator services could reduce global fruit supplies by 22·9% (19·5–26·1), vegetables by 16·3% (15·1–17·7), and nuts and seeds by 22·1% (17·7–26·4), with significant heterogeneity by country. In sum, these dietary changes could increase global deaths yearly from non-communicable and malnutrition-related diseases by 1·42 million (1·38–1·48) and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) by 27·0 million (25·8–29·1), an increase of 2·7% for deaths and 1·1% for DALYs. A 50% loss of pollination services would be associated with 700 000 additional annual deaths and 13·2 million DALYs. Declines in animal pollinators could cause significant global health burdens from both non-communicable diseases and micronutrient deficiencies.

Dans le texte proposé, deux éminents toxicologues, doublés d'excellents mathématiciens, Henk A. TENNEKES hollandais, et Francisco SANCHEZ-BAYO australien, ont mis en commun leur compétence pour démontrer que les "Tests Standards", aujourd'hui en usage dans le domaine des travaux préalables à l'homologation des substances chimiques -en particulier des pesticides-, ne sont pas en mesure de définir des "niveaux sûrs d'exposition", tant pour les êtres humains que pour la biodiversité. Cette incapacité relève tant des points de vue "conceptuel que statistique". S'appuyant sur les travaux, anciens certes, de Haber d'une part, et de Druckrey (pharmacologue) et Küpfmüller (mathématicien) d'autre part, mais pourtant toujours d'une évidente actualité, ils démontrent d'un côté les failles des Tests Standards, de l'autre ils démontrent qu'un test, fondé sur une base conceptuelle et une pratique différentes, le test "Time-To-Event" ou TTE, "Temps-pour-un-Evènement", permet au contraire de prévoir les effets probables, au cours du temps, des substances sur les espèces non-cibles. Ainsi s'effondre le postulat (idéologique car jamais démontré) de l'innocuité des "faibles doses". Sous certaines conditions, résultant de l'interaction entre la substance et les récepteurs de l'organisme, plus le temps d'exposition s'allonge plus la dose totale reçue diminue pour produire un même effet. La substance est ainsi plus toxique à faible dose qu’à forte dose, le temps jouant ainsi un rôle majeur dans l’expression de la toxicité. Ce démenti scientifique formel, infligé au postulat "d'un seuil d'innocuité" des faibles doses, ouvrira-t-il les yeux des différentes Agences gouvernementales ? Si l’on souhaite assurer la sécurité des humains et l’avenir de la biodiversité il y a urgence !

We have identified 30 papers from a literature search on PubMed and Google Scholar using the following combined key words of “pollinators”, “honeybee”, “bees”, “pesticides”, or “neonicotinoids”, as of September 30, 2014, and from a cross-reference check of a report made available by European Parliament in preparation to fulfill their regulatory mandate on the issue of protecting pollinators among their membership nations. Those paper are relevant to examine the effects of sub-lethal pesticide exposures on the health of honeybees (Apis mellifera), bumblebees (Bombus terrestris), and other bees. The weight-of-evidence of this review clearly demonstrated bees’ susceptibility to insecticides, in particular to neonicotinoids, and the synergistic effects to diseases that are commonly present in bee colonies. One important aspect of assessing and managing the risks posed by neonicotinoids to bees is the chronic effects induced by exposures at the sub-lethal levels. More than 90% of literature published after 2009 directly or indirectly demonstrated the adverse health effects associated with sub-lethal exposure to neonicotinoids,including abnormal foraging activities, impaired brood development, neurological or cognitive effects, and colony collapse disorder.

This article presents results of an analysis of honey bee losses over the winter of 2011-2012 in the Netherlands, from a sample of 86 colonies, located at 43 apiaries. The apiaries were selected using spatially stratified random sampling. Colony winter loss data were collected and related to various measures of colony strength recorded in summer, as well as data from laboratory analysis of sample material taken from two selected colonies in each of the 43 apiaries. The logistic regression model which best explained the risk of winter loss included, in order of statistical importance, the variables (1) Varroa destructor mite infestation rate in October 2011, (2) presence of the cyano-substituted neonicotinoids acetamiprid or thiacloprid in the first 2 weeks of August 2011 in at least one of the honey bee matrices honey, bees or bee bread (pollen), (3) presence of Brassica napus (oilseed rape) or Sinapis arvensis (wild mustard) pollen in bee bread in early August 2011, and (4) a measure of the unexplained winter losses for the postal code area where the colonies were located, obtained from a different dataset. We consider in the discussion that reduced opportunities for foraging in July and August because of bad weather may have added substantially to the adverse effects of acetamiprid and thiacloprid.