Bees? What bees?

Covered in bees!

Scientists had struggled to find the trigger for so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that has wiped out an estimated 10 million beehives, worth $2 billion, over the past six years. Suspects have included pesticides, disease-bearing parasites and poor nutrition. But in a first-of-its-kind study published today in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have identified a witch’s brew of pesticides and fungicides contaminating pollen that bees collect to feed their hives. The findings break new ground on why large numbers of bees are dying though they do not identify the specific cause of CCD, where an entire beehive dies at once.

When researchers collected pollen from hives on the east coast pollinating cranberry, watermelon and other crops and fed it to healthy bees, those bees showed a significant decline in their ability to resist infection by a parasite called Nosema ceranae. The parasite has been implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder though scientists took pains to point out that their findings do not directly link the pesticides to CCD. The pollen was contaminated on average with nine different pesticides and fungicides though scientists discovered 21 agricultural chemicals in one sample. Scientists identified eight ag chemicals associated with increased risk of infection by the parasite.

Most disturbing, bees that ate pollen contaminated with fungicides were three times as likely to be infected by the parasite. Widely used, fungicides had been thought to be harmless for bees as they’re designed to kill fungus, not insects, on crops like apples.

“There’s growing evidence that fungicides may be affecting the bees on their own and I think what it highlights is a need to reassess how we label these agricultural chemicals,” Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the study’s lead author, told Quartz.

Labels on pesticides warn farmers not to spray when pollinating bees are in the vicinity but such precautions have not applied to fungicides.

Bee populations are so low in the US that it now takes 60% of the country’s surviving colonies just to pollinate one California crop, almonds. And that’s not just a west coast problem—California supplies 80% of the world’s almonds, a market worth $4 billion.

In recent years, a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids has been linked to bee deaths and in April regulators banned the use of the pesticide for two years in Europe where bee populations have also plummeted. But vanEngelsdorp, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland, says the new study shows that the interaction of multiple pesticides is affecting bee health.

“The pesticide issue in itself is much more complex than we have led to be believe,” he says. “It’s a lot more complicated than just one product, which means of course the solution does not lie in just banning one class of product.”

How dare we say no to a corporation...

Just because of a few bees, Europe has said no to Bayer's pesticide. I mean... really.

 

Bayer has just sued the European Commission to overturn a ban on the pesticides that are killing millions of bees around the world.

A Widow's Mite...

Cops out of control.

Indepth story of Jeff Bauman, one of the many who were wounded in the Boston Marathon bombing.

Ass-hat takes on a whole new meaning..

Oregon bans insecticide after bee deaths.

People talking about wonderful books.  And fun books being made into movies and tv shows. And plays.

Or not to bee

Bees dying by the millions

ELMWOOD - Local beekeepers are finding millions of their bees dead just after corn was planted here in the last few weeks. Dave Schuit, who has a honey operation in Elmwood, lost 600 hives, a total of 37 million bees. 

“Once the corn started to get planted our bees died by the millions,” Schuit said. He and many others, including the European Union, are pointing the finger at a class of insecticides known as neonicotinoids, manufactured by Bayer CropScience Inc. used in planting corn and some other crops. The European Union just recently voted to ban these insecticides for two years, beginning December 1, 2013, to be able to study how it relates to the large bee kill they are experiencing there also. 

Local grower Nathan Carey from the Neustadt, and National Farmers Union Local 344 member, says he noticed this spring the lack of bees and bumblebees on his farm. He believes that there is a strong connection between the insecticide use and the death of pollinators.

Suddenly Sunday...

Finding cave paintings in Mexico

About the earthquake swarm near the Lassen Volcanic Center.... nothing to do with volcanoes.  (Rats.)

What the soldiers in the Vietnam War really thought.

Colony Collapse Disorder.

Marching against Monsanto.  Because of things like this.  And who actually owns organic products.

And because I haven't posted for a while... kittens and cats

US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits, spyware, ransomware and trojans to attack pirates!

Unexpected Health Insurance Rate Shock-California Obamacare Insurance Exchange Announces Premium Rates

Friday frivolities

Victory for bees... in Europe.

Knowing what is broken.

Post a secret.

Dear god... goats with spider web genes in their milk.

The USA... the land of allergies.

What the human body can do... and why we keep doing things we shouldn't do to it.

More cat... suddenly visiting the fishes.

Saturday skittles

Melissa Harris-Perry's apology to the Steubenville rape survivor.


Peru Bans Monsanto and GMOs

The decree banning GMO foods was drafted in 2008. It not only bans GMO crops like Monsanto’s BT-Corn, but also expands on a prior law that required all foods on supermarket shelves that contain GMOs to be labeled. Those GMO containing foods will now be completely banned. After being subjected to public discussion, being amended, and finally passed in the Peruvian congress in April of 2011, the ban is finally going into effect this week. 

A study done in April of 2011 by the Peruvian Association of Consumers and Users (ASPEC) tested 13 products purchased in major supermarkets and shops in Lima, Peru. Unsurprisingly, 10 out of 13 tested positive for containing GMOs.

Pesticide Suspected in Bee Die-Offs Could Also Kill Birds

Controversial pesticides linked to catastrophic honeybee declines in North America and Europe may also kill other creatures, posing ecological threats even graver than feared, say some scientists.

According to a report by the American Bird Conservancy, the dangers of neonicotinoid pesticides to birds, and also to stream- and soil-dwelling insects accidentally exposed to the chemicals, have been underestimated by regulators and downplayed by industry.

First transgender character in comics.

4 Myths About Emergency Contraception Explained

A Sunday slurry...

So my concerns about high fructose corn syrup and the colony collapse disorder with bees have finally connected:

Systemic pesticides, such as neonicotinoids, move up through a plant, producing contaminated pollen and nectar. And after the first frost, when outside food is no longer available, the bee colony is affected by any contaminates in the food they stored from the summer, he explained. Honeybees are also fed by beekeepers, some of whom use sugar. These days, however, many large operations routinely feed bees with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). 

The birds and the bees – and high fructose corn syrup 

A recent study, published last June in the Bulletin of Insectology by Chensheng Lu, an associate professor at Harvard School of Public Health, gives further support to Hackenberg’s suspicions of the neonicotinoids. And Lu’s study brings up another way for bees to consume the pesticides — through the HFCS fed to them by beekeepers.  

In Lu’s study, colonies were fed HFCS treated with one of the nicotine pesticides, imidacloprid, which resulted in the collapse of almost every test hive, all showing the same pattern consistent with the CCD seen by beekeepers. Corn seed, which is still widely treated with the neonictinoids, received extra high doses of the chemical several years ago, just around the time CCD was first being recognized.

Asteroid deciding whether to visit or not...

Common sense gun regulation  and why gun show attendees support it

69 feet of sea level rise

Chris Christie's lack of impulse control.

Weirdness:  the aye-aye and its spooky fingers.

Gee, how strange...

Spraying pesticides kills bees.  Who'd a thunk?  (And how many times do we have to rediscover this fact to do something about it?)

Um...

This is my 7002nd post on this blog.  Is that a lot? I don't talk too much, do I?  What do you think?  Do I?  Could it be that I post a lot because politics and news and war are relentlessly bad and I can't stand it and I must say something or my head will blow off and then there'd be a mess at my computer and we couldn't have that so I must rant and complain loudly?  And often.

I dedicate the seven thousand and two post to zombie bees.



Poor bees.  First we poison them with pesticides and they get Colony Collapse Disorder and now they have zombie-making parasites.  Apparently we really do want to destroy humanity... bees first.

We really are trying to kill ourselves, aren't we?

Corn seed is coated with Bayer’s pesticides by means of an adhesive developed by another industry giant: Monsanto. Despite studies which showed these pesticides are highly toxic to bees, their use was justified with the reasoning that the corn seed to which they were applied would be buried in the soil where it would presumably be harmless to other creatures. This was a grave mistake.
 The first clue that Colony Collapse Disorder was the result of poisoning, similar to the DDT bird kill-off decades ago, was when clothianidin was used on corn crops in Germany’s state of Baden-Wurttemberg. In July of 2007, the German crop was infested with root worms. The German government ordered that every possible method should be used to eradicate this pest, including the use of neonicotinoids. Shortly after the seeds were planted, in May of 2008, some 330-million bees abruptly died. The global phenomenon has continued to this day, resulting in millions of dead colonies… billions of dead bees.
 An investigation revealed that the seed coating did not stay in the soil but was introduced to the air (and the rest of the plant) by simple abrasion – the rubbing together of seeds – as they are stored, moved and planted. The German government quickly banned this pesticide, gave compensation to the farmers and issued a strong warning against using this chemical in agriculture. According to the German Federal Agriculture Institute, “It can unequivocally be concluded that poisoning of the bees is due to the rub-off of the pesticide ingredient clothianidin from corn seeds.”
 According to the German Research Center for Cultivated Plants, 29 out of 30 dead bees had been killed, in the 2008 study, by direct contact with clothianidin. Philipp Mimkes, spokesman for the German-based Coalition Against Bayer Dangers, said: “We have been pointing out the risks of neonicotinoids for almost 10 years now. This proves without a doubt that the chemicals can come into contact with bees and kill them. These pesticides shouldn’t be on the market.”

News today, yesterday, and whenever....

Bees win!  In Poland.... Beekeepers Win Ban on Monsanto's GMOs in Poland

Appreciating French political women.

50,000 dead in 6 years in Mexico drug wars.  If this was a childhood disease, or a bomb going off in a city there would cries of outrage.  But this?  Do we care?

New research could power rocket trip to Mars in weeks, not months

Starting burglary lessons early:

Go Poland!

Poland will impose a complete ban on growing the MON810 genetically modified strain of maize made by US company Monsanto on its territory, Agriculture Minister Marek Sawicki said Wednesday. 

"The decree is in the works. It introduces a complete ban on the MON810 strain of maize in Poland," Sawicki told reporters, adding that pollen of this strain could have a harmful effect on bees. 

On March 9, seven European countries -- Belgium, Britain, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Ireland and Slovakia -- blocked a proposal by the Danish EU presidency to allow the cultivation of genetically-modified plants on the continent. 

Seven days after that, France imposed a temporary ban on the MON810 strain.
Talks on allowing the growing of genetically-modified plants on EU soil are now deadlocked as no majority has emerged among the 27 member states.

Update:

Scientists with the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have re-created the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder in several honeybee hives simply by giving them small doses of a popular pesticide, imidacloprid. Bee populations have been dying mysteriously throughout North America and Europe since 2006, but the cause behind the decline, known as Colony Collapse Disorder, has eluded scientists. However, coming on the heels of two studies published last week in Science that linked bee declines to neonicotinoid pesticides, of which imidacloprid is one, the new study adds more evidence that the major player behind Colony Collapse Disorder is not disease, or mites, but pesticides that began to be widely used in the 1990s.

Monsanto, Bank of America, Bees, and Cavemen...

Monsanto Found Guilty of Chemical Poisoning in France 

Honeybee Deaths Linked to Corn Insecticides

Corn insecticide linked to great die-off of beneficial honeybees

Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail

US e-voting system cracked in less than 48 hours

Cave Fossil Find: New Human Species or "Nothing Extraordinary"? 

Tell the E.P.A.: Ban the pesticide that's killing honey bees

Since 2006, U.S. honey bee populations have been in precipitous decline, with some estimates suggesting losses as high as 30% per year. While that's terrible, the problem is far greater than just the destruction of a species. Without bees, a big piece of our food supply is in serious danger. Pollination by honey bees is key in cultivating the crops that produce a full one-third of our food

Scientists have been scrambling to understand the crisis -- termed Colony Collapse Disorder -- but have yet to find a single, definitive cause. There are likely multiple interacting causes, and mounting evidence suggests that one widely used class of pesticides may be a critical factor.

One such chemical, called clothianidin, is produced by the German corporation Bayer CropScience. It is used as a treatment on crop seeds, including corn and canola, and works by expressing itself in the plants' pollen and nectar. Not coincidentally, these are honey bees' favorite sources of food.

Shockingly, no major independent study has verified the safety of this pesticide. While clothianidin has been used on corn -- the largest crop in the U.S. -- since 2003, it was officially approved by the Environmental Protection Agency last year on the basis of a single study, conducted by Bayer. However, recently leaked documents show that the study was actually debunked by the agency's own scientists, so the pesticide was effectively approved with no scientific backing.

The petition reads:
"The E.P.A. must immediately ban clothianidin and conduct a full, independently verified scientific review on the effect of the pesticide and other neonicotenoids' impact on honey bees and other non-target species."

Update: Here is another petition from Food Democracy Now:

Save the Bees, Tell the EPA to ban Bayer's toxic pesticide clothianidin

For the past several years scientists have been alarmed by the mysterious collapse of bee populations worldwide. Known as “Colony Collapse Disorder”, massive bee die-offs discovered by beekeepers has resulted in the loss of as much as 30% of the commercial honeybee population in the U.S. since 2006.

Last month a leaked EPA memo uncovered proof that the U.S. government approved a pesticide toxic to bees based on "fatally flawed" science and they have no intention of banning it even though it is harming the U.S. bee population. Incredibly, beekeepers and scientists around the world are pointing to Bayer's clothianidin as a leading factor in colony collapse and 4 European countries have already banned it. Join us in telling the EPA to immediately ban the sale and use of clothianidin until proper tests can be conducted.

h/t to Steve Bates in comments

Apparently Europe banned this pesticide three years ago...

To hell with the bees

Better living through chemistry and all that.

Leaked document shows EPA allowed bee-toxic pesticide despite own scientists’ red flags

So... our food and the bees we rely on to help make that food are not as important as the corporations which make the pesticide?

An internal EPA memo released Wednesday confirms that the very agency charged with protecting the environment is ignoring the warnings of its own scientists about clothianidin, a pesticide from which Bayer racked up €183 million (about $262 million) in sales in 2009.

Clothianidin has been widely used on corn, the largest U.S. crop, since 2003. Suppliers sell seeds pre-treated with it. Like other members of the neonicotinoid family of pesticides, clothianidin gets "taken up by a plant's vascular system and expressed through pollen and nectar," according to Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA), which leaked the document along with Beyond Pesticides. That effect makes it highly toxic to a crop's pests -- and also harmful to pollen-hoarding honeybees, which have experienced mysterious annual massive die-offs (known as "colony collapse disorder") here in the United States at least since 2006.

The colony-collapse phenomenon is complex and still not completely understood. While there appears to be no single cause for the annual die-offs, mounting evidence points to pesticides, and specifically neonicotinoids (derived from nicotine), as a key factor. And neonicotinoids are a relatively new factor in ecosystems frequented by honeybees -- introduced in the late 1990s, these systemic insecticides have gained a steadily rising share of the seed-treatment market. It does not seem unfair to observe that the health of the honeybee population has steadily declined over the same period.

According to PANNA, other crops commonly treated with clothianidin include canola, soy, sugar beets, sunflowers, and wheat -- all among the most widely planted U.S. crops. Bayer is now petitioning the EPA to register it for use with cotton and mustard seed.

The short answer is yes.

H/t to mahakal for the link.

Bee happy...

Scientists may finally understand what is causing the Colony Collapse Disorder:

Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.

Now, a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two.

A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana in the online science journal PLoS One.

Exactly how that combination kills bees remains uncertain, the scientists said — a subject for the next round of research. But there are solid clues: both the virus and the fungus proliferate in cool, damp weather, and both do their dirty work in the bee gut, suggesting that insect nutrition is somehow compromised.

Meanwhile... back on the ranch...

Global warming:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released data today (15 June 2010) confirming what NASA separately reported last week: global surface temperatures this Spring rose to record levels. NOAA data also indicate that other temperature records are toppling -- all consistent with long-term trends driven largely by rising greenhouse gas emissions.

And bees:

Distracted by a mysterious rash of dying bees, researchers may be overlooking a more insidious pollinator crisis. It has little to do with bees and everything to do with booming markets for raspberries, pears, and chocolate

Erik Prince of Blackwater fame thinks about Dubai:

Sources close to Blackwater and its secretive owner Erik Prince claim that the embattled head of the world's most infamous mercenary firm is planning to move to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Middle Eastern nation, a major hub for the US war industry, has no extradition treaty with the United States. In April, five of Prince's top deputies were hit with a fifteen-count indictment by a federal grand jury on conspiracy, weapons and obstruction of justice charges. Among those indicted were Prince's longtime number-two man, former Blackwater president Gary Jackson, former vice presidents William Matthews and Ana Bundy and Prince's former legal counsel Andrew Howell.

And the horrible health care we have in this country:

Can’t afford a doctor? No health insurance? Well, you can always go to the emergency room.

Kathy Myers found out the hard way that the ER isn’t the answer. Out of work, lacking insurance, and unable to get proper treatment for a painful shoulder injury incurred a month ago, the 41 year-old Michigan woman took drastic steps.

She lay on her bed, put a pillow over her shoulder, and shot herself with a handgun. Not in a suicide attempt, but in an attempt escape the constant pain and get medical treatment. A month of pain without no end in sight will mess with your head.

A 911 call did result in a trip to the ER, but only to take care of the gunshot wound. Her previous non life-threatening injury was left untreated. No CT scan, no MRI. She was home within a few hours. And she’s in worse shape than ever, with the added possibility of facing criminal charges for discharging a firearm within city limits.

And how far we've come..../snark: Marines Put Gay Man in Hospital. Will Anyone Prosecute?

Bees ... or no bees

At all...



It's worse than we thought:

Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.

The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.

The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS).

The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honeybee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to the global economy.

Potential causes range from parasites, such as the bloodsucking varroa mite, to viral and bacterial infections, pesticides and poor nutrition stemming from intensive farming methods. The disappearance of so many colonies has also been dubbed "Mary Celeste syndrome" due to the absence of dead bees in many of the empty hives.

US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees, wax and pollen, lending credence to the notion that pesticides are a key problem. "We believe that some subtle interactions between nutrition, pesticide exposure and other stressors are converging to kill colonies," said Jeffery Pettis, of the ARS's bee research laboratory.

Bees

Or no bees at all:

MERCED, Calif. – The mysterious 4-year-old crisis of disappearing honeybees is deepening. A quick federal survey indicates a heavy bee die-off this winter, while a new study shows honeybees' pollen and hives laden with pesticides.

Two federal agencies along with regulators in California and Canada are scrambling to figure out what is behind this relatively recent threat, ordering new research on pesticides used in fields and orchards. Federal courts are even weighing in this month, ruling that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency overlooked a requirement when allowing a pesticide on the market.

[snip]

Bees have been declining over decades from various causes. But in 2006 a new concern, "colony collapse disorder," was blamed for large, inexplicable die-offs. The disorder, which causes adult bees to abandon their hives and fly off to die, is likely a combination of many causes, including parasites, viruses, bacteria, poor nutrition and pesticides, experts say.

"It's just gotten so much worse in the past four years," said Jeff Pettis, research leader of the Department of Agriculture's Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Md. "We're just not keeping bees alive that long."

This year bees seem to be in bigger trouble than normal after a bad winter, according to an informal survey of commercial bee brokers cited in an internal USDA document. One-third of those surveyed had trouble finding enough hives to pollinate California's blossoming nut trees, which grow the bulk of the world's almonds. A more formal survey will be done in April.

"There were a lot of beekeepers scrambling to fill their orders and that implies that mortality was high," said Penn State University bee researcher Dennis vanEngelsdorp, who worked on the USDA snapshot survey.

Beekeeper Zac Browning shipped his hives from Idaho to California to pollinate the blossoming almond groves. He got a shock when he checked on them, finding hundreds of the hives empty, abandoned by the worker bees.
The losses were extreme, three times higher than the previous year.