Japanese campaign against neonicotinoids

[borderbeeman]

Just discovered that there is a highly co-ordinated campaign in Japan against endocrine-disrupting pesticides and Neonicotinoids

http://www.kokumin-kaigi.org/pdf/Neonicotinoid_e.pdf

There is a map of Japan in this showing mass-losses of bee colonies and other forms of wildlife, correlated with areas where Neonicotoids were introduced.

It has some of the best graphics representing the ecological interactions and the central nervous system effects that I have seen.

Strongly recommend it.

[Scrapfe]

Just discovered that there is a highly co-ordinated campaign in Japan against endocrine-disrupting pesticides and Neonicotinoids...

Yep, they got corn growing in Japan from horzion to horzion. Oh, my bad, I should have said Iowa, where CCD is a non issue

[borderbeeman]

If you look at the Japanese report, they use neonicotinoids on a vast range of fruit and vegetable crops - everything from rice and maize through to strawberries, apples, zuccini, peppers, tomatoes - as you do in the USA - EVERYTHING. They also note that Nicotinoids are widely used in Japanese forests - aerial spraying of trees etc - and in the home and garden - a very wide range of products.

Worth a look.

[D Coates]

If it's so easily shown then why can't anyone repeat it consistantly? Come on, you can't honestly believe everything you read on the internet.

[borderbeeman]

If it's so easily shown then why can't anyone repeat it consistantly?

Would you mind rephrasing your question in full English sentences? I have no idea what you are referring to. What do you mean by 'it'?
I do know what you mean by 'consistantly' - or at least I assume you mean: 'consistently' ?

[PCM]

borderbeeman,

I notice 14 of your 15 post so far have been about chemicals.
This being a bee forum, let's hear a little about your beekeeping, skills, practices, and actual bee experiences.

Thanks
PCM

[D Coates]

Would you mind rephrasing your question in full English sentences? I have no idea what you are referring to. What do you mean by 'it'?
I do know what you mean by 'consistantly' - or at least I assume you mean: 'consistently' ?

Everything is there to constitute a full sentence. Going after my spelling is the a fools errand, you understood the question but chose to try to show how intellectual you are and avoid actually answering the question.

But I'll resubmit the question again. If neonicotinoids are so easily shown as the cause of all of these mass losses then it should be easily repeatable elsewhere. The problem is these are merely unsubstantiated claims that haven't yet been proven or repeatable. Even Joseph Goebbels knew well enough not to believe his own propaganda.

[Barry Digman]

Can we be more civil in our replies to each other please?

[WLC]

I did take a look at the linked pdf from JEPA.

I found it to be quite informative.

That being said, it is very difficult to show a direct link between neonics and pollinator decline.

However, don't be surprised at the impact that these anti pesticide groups can have on policy.

There seems to be a growing groundswell against the use of neonics worldwide.

How long before the 'provisional licenses' for neonic pesticide use are replaced by a more stringent policy where pesticides have to be proven safe, without any doubts, before they are approved for use?

[borderbeeman]

No, I chose to ask you to clarify your question because:

a.) your initial question was sarcastic and cycnical
b.) you were using a verbal shorthand that could mean at least two things

If you want to take the piss out of Japanese bee-keepers who are losing hundreds of colonies - just like American beekeepers - that's your prerogative,
but it doesnt show much empathy or compassion.

If you are genuinely interested, read the Japanese report and contact them - all the details and email addresses are there.

I posted the French news, the British news and the Japanese news to convey basic information -which all points to the same thing. Whatever it is that is killing bees by the billion - it's truly global in extent and the solution will have to be global too. All the evidence, IMHO, points to the global use of a revolutionary family of insecticides, 7000 times more toxic than DDT and present in just about every grain, vegetable and fruit crop you can mention , from corn to almonds, from sunflowers to canola, from tomatoes to strawberries. It's the most profitable family of pesticides on the planet - and there is so much money involved, that everybody can be bought, grant-aided, co-opted and schmoozed to just 'go along' with it.

Here in the UK, every university bee-research group is linked in some way or other to the pesticide companies money; our so-called 'regulatory agency' actually has 60% of its salaries and management costs paid for by the pesticide manufacturers (by law) and our own Beekeepers association, the BBKA, has been bribed with cash - almost $400,000 over ten years to actually ENDORSE PESTICIDES as 'friendly to bees'.

So, it couldn't really get much worse; I'm just sharing the news with this little corner of the global beekeeping world - because you have the biggest problem of all, from what I have read. If you aren't interested in this stuff, that's your privilege; I wouldn't understand how any beekeeper would not see this as high on the agenda, but there's no accounting for folks.

[borderbeeman]

. from PCM:
This being a bee forum, let's hear a little about your beekeeping, skills, practices, and actual bee experiences.

Forager with full pollen baskets entering hive

I am a small scale hobby beekeeper in the Scottish Borders - on the banks of the River Tweed - a great salmon river. I started keeping bees about 15 years ago and I have just ten hives currently - I try and breed all new queens every year, and for the last two years I have had to do that because ALL my queens are getting superseded within a month or two of starting to lay, even when they are laying good brood patterns and all looks good. I keep British blacks (mongrels) as do most beeks aroud here - they cope with the harsh winters better than Italians etc.



Birth of a Black Queen - just as I moved this cell to a 5 bar nuc.

The only theory I have is that I am in the middle of a huge arable crops area - lots and lots of oilseed rape (canola) which is laced, wall to wall with Imidacloprid - mixed with fungicides at the same time. I haven't lost a hive for two years now - but there has been little or no honey harvest for three years. All of which is highly abnormal - the previous decade was more or less fine, but nationally - something is seriously 'out of kilter'/


Willow pollen in early Spring

We have not experienced 'classic' CCD here in the UK (most of us), but losses over the last 4 years for many beeks have varied from 30-80% - a pattern that is completely abnormal- and it isn't just the bad weather. We've lived with the mites for a decade now and most of us manage with IPM treatment - most people are using oxalic acid once a year, some use powdered sugar and a few have moved to formic acid. Relatively few people are using pesticide strips like Bayvarol anymore because the mites are now resistant.


Last honey harvest - 2007
I have a beekeeping photo gallery on Flickr here, which I would be pleased if you visit -I get a great deal of pleasure out of trying to record the life-cycle of my bees and the natural world around the apiary' if anyone needs photos for educational use just ask and I will help if I can.

Visit my bee gallery here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/borderg...7594554490434/

Anyway - that's the news from Lake Woebegon - we all keep soldiering on and enjoying the hobby more than almost anything else.

[emptyenergy]

Love the Lake Wobegon reference from someone from the UK.

[woodhinge]

Gentlemen: If, big IF, we can somehow glean the facts about CCD and somehow possibly remove all the conjecture, possibly we might discover a hint of those things or that thing which causes CCD. Just this past year, at the national meeting in Texas, USA, everyone was offering up their persuasive and undeniable CCD cause(s), and yet, to date we have no definitive cause for certain. At the Texas meeting, sunspots were also blamed. I guess green men from Mars will be blamed next. What bothers me so intensely is the fact that both money and "bad science" ideas fog the issue to the point that we are unable to separate one cause from another. You might want to look up the meaning of bad science.
On this forum, if none of us are actively engaged in CCD research, then of course we feel we must offer information about what others are doing as is related to CCD. BUT, we do ourselves a disfavor by offering information that isn't absolute. What might be better done is for someone to come up with a check list that describes as many variables as possible that we each experience while working our bees. Just possibly, IF this data was collected and correlated, we might better understand that either one or several conditions promote CCD.
My latest understanding is that there is more CCD prevalent with hives/bees transported for pollination. So, this would be one item to be checked off...
___ Do you transport your bees as a commercial pollinator? So on and so forth. One thing for sure, we don't get anywhere by bashing each other.
And, thanks to the moderator!

[fafrd]

Great pics borderbeeman!

[Bud Dingler]

Everyone who identifies as "green" has a ban or petition or an "opinion" now but what is so crazy about this neonic thing is these chemicals are much safer to humans and the environment. thats not really debatable either amongst the science community but you would never know that if you read enough of the internet chatter on neonic/bees

of course the real issue in the bee world is the systemic nature of the neonic and the concern about the transfer of chemicals to pollen and nectar and potential sublethal affects.

you can always pick out those posters online who have no clue what they are talking about when they make broad sweeping statements about these terrible Bayer poisons blah blah blah and how they are hurting the environment etc.

anyone who knows anything about farm chemicals and is concerned about the environment would agree the neonics are really an improvement over the organophosphates that are mostly due for delisting.

so why the fuss over Bayer now?

some of the old timers here might remember the Alar scare back what in the early 80's. It was some movie star who read something in a magazine when she was in the can at the dentists office and decided Alar was the critical chemical in apples that her children might end up eating a trace of and god knows what would happen next but it was not good. anyhow it was a growth regulator that was used to thin apples. really a benign material and a story that got blown way out of proportion.

mark my words this will blow over too and nothing will happen because there is a fairly large body of research that shows these chemicals are not very dangerous to pollinators and honeybees. we see the outlier studies or the misrepresented quote or voodoo science, non peer reviewed "paper" that end up being quoted here and on tree hugger like web sites like grist.

this is also a convenient smoke screen for the migratory bee industry to keep alive and hide behind while they over medicate their bees and while some of them still use Checkmite in their hives, a Bayer product also, while simultaneously blaming Bayer neonics for their crappy bees.....how strange is that eh?

i tell you its really a strange, strange world when internet chatter on something can become an urban legend like "all the bees are dying" (quote now from government report indicating 36% loss each year) and how extinction is not far away and also the impending collapse of our food systems and big ag etc.

to some non beekeeper tree huggers its considered a fact that honeybees are doomed and there is a huge shortage of honeybees. its from this cuukoo nest of strangeness that many of these well meaning drives to ban neonics comes from in my view.

like of course the bees are vanishing, its true...it says so all over the world wide web, so of course any chemical thats transferred through a plant must be more bad for the bees then what was being used before neonics.

[WLC]

...of course the real issue in the bee world is the systemic nature of the neonic and the concern about the transfer of chemicals to pollen and nectar and potential sublethal affects.

Correct.

I would also add that the 'off target' effects of neonics are of great concern to many of us.

Furthermore, here in the U.S., there is a great deal of concern about how pesticides ( like neonics) are conditionally approved for use by the EPA and the states before they are fully tested for safety. That's nontrivial.

Bud, it's the Beekeepers of the world who are leading the movement to ban neonics because they are the first to see the harm that's being caused to their bees by this clas of pesticides.

The 'Greens' joined the fight afterwards in answer to the pleas of the beekeepers.

As for the science, to suggest that 'off target' effects for neonics haven't been documented in peer reviewed studies simply isn't true. They have. That's why many countries have banned neonics.

Beekeepers should be concerned about the results of the Alaux et al. study that have shown that in combination, neonics and Nosema reduce colony immunity by reducing glucose oxidase, the Honeybee's natural antiseptic (this combines with glucose to produce an acid and hydrogen peroxide).

Let's not forget that microsporidians. like Nosema, commonly afflict other pollinators as well (so, how does this affect them?).

In conclusion, there's good reason for all of the attention being brought to the neonic issue.

Let the sun shine in.

[ACBEES]

I think the key word here is "PROFIT". You bet there won't be any easily repeatable findings as long as there are HUGE PROFITS involved. When chemical giants like Bayer keep throwing money at lobbyists, politicians and fund the "research" being done by universities to prove their chemicals are safe...what do you think the outcome is going to be....feet dragging, cover ups and excuses is all your going to get. Nobody from the lobbyists to the researchers wants the free money to go away. We aren't talking about a few pesos here, we're talking about millions Bayer spends to put a happy face on neonics.

I applaud other countries who have the "cahonies" to ban the use of neonics until they take a closer look at Bayer funded research and wisely do some independent studies. Make no mistake....Bayer, Monsanto and other chemical giants aren't in business to keep the environment healthy. They are in business to make as much money as they can and they are going to keep the neonic money train rolling as long as they can until the public shuts them down.

[ACBEES]

I don't like the idea of leaving the fox in charge of guarding the henhose and taking the fox's word all the hens are safe and accounted for.

I remember the Alar issue. It was Meryl Streep I think who did the commercials that raised everyone's awareness. The public is generally uninformed and has no idea what goes on behind the scenes until efforts are made to get their attention. I also believe Alar was used as a growth regulator in aplles and other produce. I believe after the Alar issue came to light, it was brought out Alar was one of the ingredients used in making rocket fuel. I don't know about you, but I prefer my apples without Alar.

The problem with the whole system of approving chemicals is this. It's too heavily influenced by money and not what's safe or unsafe for the environment.

[jonathan]

As for the science, to suggest that 'off target' effects for neonics haven't been documented in peer reviewed studies simply isn't true. They have.

Can you list any field studies that show this?

[WLC]

I posted a link on yet another neonic thread a while back referring to an Italian study. It showed how seed drills could pulverize the neonic coat on maize seeds. It was out of the University of Bologna.