Jeff Pettis: Bee decline in the US 'not explained by pesticides'

A leading American bee researcher, Dr. Jeff Pettis, who first posed a link between insecticides called neonicotinoids and bee deaths told British MPs in April 2011 that his research doesn't explain bee losses seen in the US (presentation and study report attached). "The lab study certainly seemed very clear that low levels of pesticides were impacting on honey bee health. But when we look in the field we don't see the same results. Even when colonies that were exposed to low levels we're not seeing outbreaks of the gut parasite pathogen that we saw in the lab" said Dr Jeff Pettis of the US Agricultural Research Service. The video interview with Jeff Pettis is at this link http://bcove.me/fyyb68e7

Source: Channel 4 News, 4 April 2011
http://www.channel4.com/news/bee-decline-not-caused-by-pesticides

More information:
The Independent, 5 April 2011
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/study-reveals-how-bees-…
Grist, 21 April 2011
http://www.grist.org/industrial-agriculture/2011-04-21-usda-bee-scienti…

Honeybees are sensitive creatures. From time to time a hive simply gives up the ghost and vanishes. Colony collapse disorder, as this phenomenon is known, has been getting worse since 2006. Some beekeepers worry that it may make their trade impossible, and could even have an effect on agriculture—since many crops rely on bees to pollinate them. Dr Pettis and his colleagues knew from previous reports that exposure to a pesticide called imidacloprid has a bad effect on honeybees’ ability to learn things and wondered whether it might be causing other, less noticeable, damage. Since one thing common to colonies that go on to collapse seems to be a greater variety and higher load of parasites and pathogens than other colonies, they wondered in particular whether it might be weakening the insects’ immune systems, and thus allowing infections to spread through a hive. To find out, they gave 20 hives protein food (a substitute for pollen, which is fed to developing larvae) that had been spiked with imidacloprid. In ten cases the dose was five parts per billion (ppb); in the other ten it was 20 ppb. Previous experiments have shown that neither dose perceptibly harms bees. A further ten hives were given unspiked food as a control. Then, when the young bees emerged a few weeks later, Dr Pettis collected them and fed them with spores of a fungal parasite called Nosema. Twelve days later, he killed them and estimated the extent of their infestation.

Both of the groups that had been exposed to imidacloprid harboured an average of 700,000 parasite spores in each bee. Bees from the control colonies, by contrast, harboured fewer than 200,000 spores in their bodies. The insecticide, in other words, was exposing bees to infestation, and thus to a much greater chance of dying prematurely.

Source: The Economist, 28 January 2012
http://www.economist.com/node/21543469