A very interesting paper has been issued under the aegis of the UK Royal Society, which however seems highly selective and biased in its ‘interpretations’. While this ‘appears’ to be a neutral assessment of the existing evidence on neonicotinoids and bee deaths, it is in my opinion a government/ science establishment project designed to justify/ bolster the UK government’s position. The involvement of Tjeerd Blacquiere from Wageningen in Holland makes one immediately suspect a rat - as does the involvement of anyone from Rothamsted Research - whose so-called ’scientists’ have served as the shock-troops for the advancement of GM technology, systemic pesticides and the industrialisation of farming in the UK. There are two scientists here from NERC -funded (National Environmental Research Council) research bodies; this is synonymous with UK government. The paper will undoubtedly be used to justify the UK government’s continued support for neonics and for their opposition to a Europe-wide ban.
Source:
Godfray HCJ, Blacquière T, Field LM, Hails RS, Petrokofsky G, Potts SG, Raine NE, Vanbergen AJ, McLean AR. 2014. A restatement of the natural science evidence base concerning neonicotinoid insecticides and insect pollinators. Proc. R. Soc. B 281: 20140558. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.0558
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Blacquière at long last cites Tennekes publications
The Tennekes papers convincingly demonstrate that the toxicity of neonics to arthopods is reinforced by time. Consequently the risks of chronic exposure have been underestimated. The neonics levels found in nectar and pollen will kill bees within their life time. The papers are cited but not properly reviewed.
Guelph prof Nigel Raine has joined the club of Bayer cronies
The University of Guelph has named the inaugural holder of Canada’s first research chair in pollinator conservation following a year-long international search. Nigel Raine, a leader in pollination conservation and ecology from Britain, will join U of G in May 2014 as the Rebanks Family Chair in Pollinator Conservation. Miraculously, Nigel Raine's views on the origins of bee decline appear to have radically changed as well. Reuters, on 21 October 2012, released the following story: "Pesticides used in farming are also killing worker bumblebees and damaging their ability to gather food, meaning colonies that are vital for plant pollination are more likely to fail when they are used, a study showed on Sunday. British scientists said they exposed colonies of 40 bumblebees, which are bigger than the more common honeybee, to the pesticides neonicotinoid and pyrethroid over four weeks at levels similar to those in fields. "Chronic exposure ... impairs natural foraging behavior and increases worker mortality, leading to significant reductions in brood development and colony success," the scientists wrote in the report in the journal Nature on Sunday. Exposure to a combination of the two pesticides "increases the propensity of colonies to fail", according to the researchers at Royal Holloway, University of London." The abstract of the paper reads as follows: "Here we show that chronic exposure of bumblebees to two pesticides (neonicotinoid and pyrethroid) at concentrations that could approximate field-level exposure impairs natural foraging behaviour and increases worker mortality leading to significant reductions in brood development and colony success. We found that worker foraging performance, particularly pollen collecting efficiency, was significantly reduced with observed knock-on effects for forager recruitment, worker losses and overall worker productivity. Moreover, we provide evidence that combinatorial exposure to pesticides increases the propensity of colonies to fail."
Reference:
Richard J. Gill, Oscar Ramos-Rodriguez & Nigel E. Raine. Combined pesticide exposure severely affects individual- and colony-level traits in bees. doi:10.1038/nature11585
This paper in Nature clearly implicates neonics in bee decline, given the fact that the pesticides referred to have been frequently found in beehives.
But please note that in the recent paper co-authored by Raine, published May 21 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the key message of the Nature publication is substantially watered down:
Gill et al. 2012 [14]. Bumblebee (B. terrestris) colonies given access to sugar water containing imidacloprid (10 ng/g) and allowed to forage for pollen and nectar in the field grew more slowly than controls; individual foragers from imidacloprid-treated colonies were less successful at collecting pollen, and treated colonies sent out more workers to forage and lost more foragers, compared to controls. Combined exposure to imidacloprid and a second pesticide of a different class (a pyrethroid) tended to reduce further colony performance and increase the chances of colony failure [Data]. (a) The concentration of insecticide in the sugar water is within the range observed in nectar in the field but considerably higher than the average (1.9 ng/g; Para. 13a). The actual amount of imidacloprid consumed by individual bumblebees was not measured but will be diluted through foraging from other sources (no pollen was provided). Although it is difficult to make precise comparisons, the pyrethroid concentrations used were towards the upper end of recommended application rates for field or fruit crops [Exp_op].
So it would appear that, by more or less retracting the essence of his publication in Nature, Nigel Raine has now joined the club of Bayer cronies. He seems to be more inclined, now that he's at Guelph, to suggest the jury is still out on neonics' detrimental effects to honey bees.