Honeybees

Something is very wrong in Wellington County, Ontario – Jim Coneybeare says his bees are dying at an alarming rate.
“It’s my livestock. It shouldn’t be dead stock,” he says. “There is a toxic environment out there that is killing our bees. It’s a severe problem.” Coneybeare believes a group of pesticides called neonicotinoids (NNIs) are killing his bees. Over the past three years, Canadian beekeepers have faced annual losses as high as 35 percent. “Let’s face it, this is an insecticide designed to kill insects, and it’s doing that. It’s killing bees,” he says. Experts say these losses are unsustainable. One-third of all food we eat – including almonds, melons, tomatoes, and cucumbers – is pollinated by bees. Beekeepers like Coneybeare just can’t keep up. While there are many factors associated with bee declines – including mites, viruses, and loss of habitat – there is mounting evidence that NNIs, such as one manufactured by Bayer CropScience called clothianidin, play an important part. When used appropriately, Bayer says its pesticide does not hurt bees. “Currently there is no science that say otherwise,” says Bayer’s Ontario research-and-development manager Luc Bourgeois about the company’s production of clothianidin. Clothianidin is used widely on corn, soya, and other crops.

Beyond the Birds and the Bees moves the spotlight from the risks neonicotinoids pose to bees to the impacts of neonicotinoids to invertebrates such as earthworms or lady beetles. The report provides a comprehensive review of published articles and pulls together the growing body of research that demonstrates risks from neonicotinoids to these beneficial insects. These risks occur particularly in agricultural systems, but are also found in urban and suburban ornamental landscapes. This report details potential negative impacts of neonicotinoid insecticides on important beneficial insects. It also makes recommendations on how we can better protect important beneficials like beetles and wasps.

A recent investigation into the death of thousands of bees last month in Minnesota revealed that fipronil, a widely used insecticide, was to blame. In mid-September, three colonies of bees in Minneapolis were found twitching and dying on the ground. Local apiarist Mark Lucas paints a grim picture of the poisoning event, which he witnessed, recalling that bees inside the hive came “spilling out of the hive as if they were drunk.” University of Minnesota Bee Lab, the University’s Bee Squad and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) carried out the investigation, taking samples from hives to confirm pesticide poisoning. Indeed, MDA tests found that all three of the affected hives tested positive for the presence of fipronil.

Friends of the Earth Canada has filed a notice of objection to Health Canada’s decision under the Pest Control Products Act to renew conditional registration of a bee-toxic pesticide, clothianidin, despite lack of due diligence by the applicant companies. Health Canada’s agency dealing with pesticides is recommending renewing use of clothianidin on potatoes, grape, pome fruits (like apples), stone fruits and turf even though the applicant chemical companies have not met conditions of their earlier registration. Because the pesticide accumulates in pollen and nectar, the chemical companies were required back in 2009 to do a hive study to assess chronic toxicity to bees and a study of the behaviour of clothianidin in plants. Friends of the Earth believes this research is even more important today than it was in 2009 given the dramatic die-off of Canada’s pollinators like honey bees. “Canada’s Minister of Health should put protection of the environment and the safety of bees ahead of profits of chemical companies,” says Beatrice Olivastri, CEO, Friends of the Earth Canada. “Clothianidin should be off the market until proven safe to bees and other pollinators.”

Current bee population declines and colony failures are well documented yet poorly understood and no single factor has been identified as a leading cause. The evidence is equivocal and puzzling: for instance, many pathogens and parasites can be found in both failing and surviving colonies and field pesticide exposure is typically sublethal. Here, we investigate how these results can be due to sublethal stress impairing colony function. We mathematically modelled stress on individual bees which impairs colony function and found how positive density dependence can cause multiple dynamic outcomes: some colonies fail while others thrive. We then exposed bumblebee colonies to sublethal levels of a neonicotinoid pesticide. The dynamics of colony failure, which we observed, were most accurately described by our model. We argue that our model can explain the enigmatic aspects of bee colony failures, highlighting an important role for sublethal stress in colony declines.

An increasing body of scientific evidence indicates that many chemicals have biological effects at doses previously considered negligible. It is increasingly evident that more subtle deleterious effects can occur due to longer-term exposure to relatively low doses of chemicals, individually or in mixtures. New concerns have recently been raised about the impact of pesticides on non-target organisms including insects, especially bees, and amphibians. Studies suggest that low doses of neonicotinoids, a group of neurotoxic chemicals widely used in many countries as insecticides, could have sublethal effects on honey bees and bumble bees with serious consequences for wild populations of these crucially important pollinators and therefore for agriculture and the environment. It has also been suggested that detailed investigation of the effect of neonicotinoids on mammalian brain function, especially brain development, is needed to protect human health, especially that of children.

Researchers with Friends of the Earth US and the Pesticide Research Institute say that more than half of the nursery plants studied contained residues of “neonicotinoid” pesticides, a substance increasingly thought to be contributing to mass die-offs of global honey-bee populations. “At the levels observed in our report, the high percentage of contaminated plants and concentrations suggest this problem is widespread,” Lisa Archer, a co-author of the new report and director of Friends of the Earth US’s food and technology program, told Inter Press Service (IPS). “Unfortunately, too many home gardeners have likely become a source of exposure to pesticides that have been shown to harm, weaken and kill bees. It’s pretty shocking that consumers who may be purchasing these plants specifically to help bees could, in fact, be poisoning them.”

Tibor Szabo, the OBA’s 1st vice president, told OurWindsor.ca that despite the Pest Management Regulatory Agency’s announcement Friday focusing on a tightening of rules in respect to the use of neonicotinoid seed treatments, the plan as currently written is nowhere near sufficient. Some of the protective measures for corn and soybeans – which the PMRA hopes to have in place for the 2014 season - are set to include requiring the use of safer dust-reducing seed flow lubricants; requiring adherence to safer seed planting practices; requiring new pesticide and seed package labels with enhanced warnings; and, requiring updated value information be provided to support the continued need for neonicotinoid treatment on up to 100% of the corn seed and 50% of the soybean seed. “I’m concerned with the continuing emphasis focusing only on seeding dust as the cause of the pesticide bee kills. Has anyone ever actually traced all of the Neonic’s found on dead bees, stored pollen and water sources to the dust at planting time? Is there any real evidence to support this assumption?” said Szabo, adding that another relevant cause is water and soil contamination, which can be linked to pollen and nectar due to mobility dynamics. “Since 80 to 90% of active ingredients do not enter the target crop and that NNI’s are persistent and water soluble, it seems to me that this source is more likely at the core of a number of bee losses. And yet this isn’t addressed or queried anywhere in the release of intent notice,” he said.