Japanese campaign against neonicotinoids

[jonathan]

Thats a misapplication problem rather than a problem with the normal use. There have been several incidents like that including the well documented one in Germany in 2008 and several in Canada as well.
Incidents like that happen with all pesticides and the answer is regulation and big penalties for the perpetrators.

What I am referring to are field studies which show that neonicotinoids cause problems for bees under normal use.

[WLC]

http://aziendagraria.uniud.it/pubbli...103greatti.pdf

I would characterize that as a 'product defect' rather than a misapplication issue.

Don't you have access to google scholar?

Look up "neonicotinoid guttation" for starters.

http://www.beeccdcap.uga.edu/documents/Girolami.pdf

[valleyman]

Said I wasn't going to do it, (post on this issue again) so forgive me for being wrong or a liar.
What I would like to clarify for my interest is all of the defenders of Neoniconitoids on all the relevant threads that have been on beesource. What is your diagnoses of what is causing CCD. Don't tell me Nosema, Verroa, Tracheal or other enemys, because there are always dead bees in the hives when they abscond from these things. How do you explain the lack of dead bees with CCD? Witchcraft, magic or other voodoo. Which is what you are practicing with your defense of pesticides, in my well read opinion.

[jonathan]

Don't you have access to google scholar?

Look up "neonicotinoid guttation" for starters.

http://www.beeccdcap.uga.edu/documents/Girolami.pdf

I do know how to use google scholar but that's a lab study. (caged bees)
It's field studies I am interested in.

According to Randy Oliver there aren't any which show negative effects of neonics. He's trying to get funding for one.

Which is what you are practicing with your defense of pesticides, in my well read opinion.

I'm not defending anything - just calling for the evidence to be put on the table.
The fact that CCD is still a mystery does not mean that it is caused by neonicotinoids.

[WLC]

Jonathan:

The study shows that upon ingestion of a neonic containing guttation drop, harvested from the field, the bees wings were blocked within a span of 2 to 10 minutes.

Basically, the bee is dead within minutes.

I think that Randy's idea about having a 'field trial' has one serious design flaw.

The bees will have dropped like stones while still out in the field!

They aren't going to make it back to the hive.

[WLC]

I for one don't believe that CCD is caused by neonics. My hypothesis is that it's caused by the suppression of RNAi in bees by pathogens.

[Bud Dingler]

Look no one disputes that pesticides kill insects. On the other hand we're not going to feed the world with a rototiller, 2 acres and a bong.

Pesticides are a fact of life and the facts are the neonics are a vast improvement over surface organophosphates.

Most neonics in there raw form are clearly labeled as being deadly to honeybees. Once applied though they are much safer to pollinators and bees. Their advantage is they don't need to be frequently reapplied and they target problem insects precisely instead of killing everything that comes in contact with a crop.

What we mostly have here on Beesource is well intentioned but uninformed rants about pesticides and corporations.

Guttation and lab studies with caged bees are interesting curiousities but have generally not scaled in field studies. Hello like how many of us have bees near corn or other crops? My family is a 3rd generation apple grower and we use neonics all the time in our orchards. I have not had any mysterious losses of bees on a regular basis.

When you talk to beekeepers who have problems that are blaming Bayer with no data or evidence you usually find out they

a. have no mite load or nosema spore count data
b. admit to using mite treatments 2-4 times a year
c admit to using off label mite treatments.
d admit their bees looked like crap before they crashed
e. admit to feeding tylan in syrup which is btw illegal
f. or admit they might be running too many colonies and did not get the critical work done.

Its a lot easier to blame an external "mystery" then admit you're not much of a beekeeper.

Chemicals like Alar when safely applied offer no more risk then getting a good wiff of gasoline when you fill your tank. Its all about the dosage. TO say its an ingredient in rocket fuel is meaningless. Like many of the molecules found in pesticides are also found in the environment too.

Growth regulators used for thinning are applied in the ppm concentrations. We put a tablespoon into a 50 gallon tank for apple thinning for example. The fruit is quite small at that time and the likelihood of there being any unsafe or even detectable residues in the fruit 3 months later is nill. In fact the EPA max residue on growth regulators is meaningless as its never an issue.

Most of the posters here that ramble on about pesticides obviously are not growing crops for their livelihood. Pesticides are safe when used properly.

The bee world would bee better served to clean up our own misuse of antibiotics and harsh miticides. What is so hypocritical of our industry is how American Bee Federation (ABF) rags about Bayer but yet has never gone on record about the common illegal use of home cure varroa mite treatments.

They have not gone on record either to stop the use of Checkmite. In Bayers eyes its a joke folks! Most often when Bayer has been involved in experiments looking at residues in hives and hive products they keep finding very high levels of miticides and no or few neonics. Thats a fact you can take to the bank, not some rambling misrepresentation.

The problems in our hypocritical industry run deeper then that. Most of the foundation is contaminated with Apistan or Checkmite sold by the very supply houses and in return who redistribute these chemicals. Is that about profits or what ?

For all of the chest pounding here lately about Bayer blah blah blah, if you truly give a rip about bees why not start a petition to force Dadant and Mann Lake to stop selling Checkmite? and Apistan? IF you ever looked at the data, not some tree hugging blog full of nonsense the reality is beekeeper applied chemicals are found at levels 1000 to 10,000 times higher concentrations then ag trace residues brought in by the bees. This of course makes sense since a high load of pesticides would likely kill a bee before it was able to fly back to the mother ship and contaminate the hive and purposefully applied chems dumped into a hive at high concentrations certainly have no where to go but into the wax and pollen etc. Duh....

But thats not very fashionable to condemn the bee industry - its a lot more fun and cool to rag about the evil corporations who distribute poision and we can't trust anything they say blah blah blah blah.

We need to admit that the real serious enemy to the honeybee is the well intentioned beekeeper!

[Barry]

if you truly give a rip about bees why not start a petition to force Dadant and Mann Lake to stop selling Checkmite? and Apistan? IF you ever looked at the data, [snip] the reality is beekeeper applied chemicals are found at levels 1000 to 10,000 times higher concentrations then ag trace residues brought in by the bees.

Bud,

While I don't want to squelch any input people give on bee problems, the elephant in the room is just as Bud says, chemicals that we beekeepers put in the hive ourselves. Keith Delaplane spoke at a meeting where he said 1/3rd of the CCD problem is directly related to mites and the treatments used to deal with them. I still can't believe Checkmite is still being sold.

[WLC]

Guttation and lab studies with caged bees are interesting curiousities but have generally not scaled in field studies. Hello like how many of us have bees near corn or other crops? My family is a 3rd generation apple grower and we use neonics all the time in our orchards. I have not had any mysterious losses of bees on a regular basis.

Didn't I just say that field trials testing the effects of guttation drops, from neonic treated MAIZE, kills bees within minutes?

Therefore, designing a field trial is pointless since the bees never make it back to the hive (there's no way to determine their origin).

I have not had any mysterious losses of bees on a regular basis.

I believe the maize is weeks old when guttation occurs. It's a matter of timing Bud. It depends on when the maize is sown vs when other sources of nutrients become available.

[jonathan]

Jonathan:

The study shows that upon ingestion of a neonic containing guttation drop, harvested from the field, the bees wings were blocked within a span of 2 to 10 minutes.

They aren't going to make it back to the hive.

No. the study shows that if you feed poison to a bee which has no other food source under lab conditions, the poison will kill the bee. The study did not show or attempt to show that bees drink guttation water and die in the field.
It showed that insecticide is poisonous to insects but I thought we all knew that anyway.
In my opinion these studies prove next to nothing.

I believe the maize is weeks old when guttation occurs.

In my experience guttation drops are usually seen on very young plants with just one or two leaves such as the ones you can see on you tube to illustrate the guttation water experiments.

[WLC]

When bees
consume guttation drops, collected from plants grown from neonicotinoid-coated seeds, they encounter
death within few minutes.

That IS the point. The guttation drops ARE poison.

[jonathan]

So lets ban petrol / gasoline.
That's a poison.

[WLC]

Now you understand why field trials would most likely be scientifically invalid, and caged bee trials are necessary.

You have to ascertain the origin of both the bees AND the treatment.

Otherwise your hypothesis test will have a significant chance of making a type 1 or type 2 error (false positives and false negatives).

Forget about field tests.

[bigbearomaha]

On the other hand we're not going to feed the world with a rototiller, 2 acres and a bong.

How incredibly disrespectful and rude.

For what it's worth, in terms of "feeding the world". We are over producing as it is. There are to this day crops that sit rotting, being destroyed by mice and other pests that never get sold to all those "people in the world" that get talked about.

To this day, the government subsidizes farmers to NOT grow certain crops or only grow limited amounts as too many are being grown or they are trying to affect market prices.

Not every small farmer has a "bong". My grandfather was a small farmer, not some corporate mega-farm and he sold fresh vegetables, corn, pumpkins etc... at farmers markets and grocery stores all across the area. He spent his entire life feeding plenty of people right here without "big farm" practices and money, just like his dad before him.

He also wasn't afraid of a lot physical labor. I spent many summers helping in the fields just like the rest of my family using farming practices that are endorsed by the state department of agriculture to this very day as part of "modern" integrated pest management plans.

Methods that a great many corporate and "big" farms will not use so they can maximize their own profit and cut expenses at the risk of their own customers health.

I pretty much quit posting in these forums due to the utter rudeness and attitudes like this that make such sweeping generalizations and looking down at 'small' farmers or beeks.

One thing about the so called "lack" of evidence referring to neonics and bee population decline is that while you love to say that there is no evidence to prove neonics cause harm, there is still no solid evidence to be so assuming they don't.

The fact is there needs to be more independent research which it seems is being actively hampered by the companies like Bayer and others who don't want reports outside of their control or influence to possible give credibility one way or the other to the discussion of neonics effect on bee mortality.

It's one thing to discuss the issue but there are certain folks here who take it way too far to the level of who can shout the others down and who can be the most rude.

Sorry Barry, I'll go back to my corner now.

[Barry]

Please don't!

[D Coates]

One thing about the so called "lack" of evidence referring to neonics and bee population decline is that while you love to say that there is no evidence to prove neonics cause harm, there is still no solid evidence to be so assuming they don't.

But hat's exactly it. Here you are innocent until proven guilty. Too many are expecting "Big Ag" to prove they are innocent. There has been no scientifically accepted proof of them being responsible for any "crime" here. Get enough scientific (ie repeatable) evidence to what's happening and what's responsible and who makes it and you'll get some traction. Until this occurs it looks like hysterical environmentalism screaming about how the sky is falling.

[WLC]

There is plenty of scientifically valid evidence showing that neonics not only go off target, but also harm pollinators.

The evidence shows specifically that neonics kill livestock.
AKA-Honeybees.

'Denial' isn't just a river in Egypt. It's a state of mind.

[bigbearomaha]

Here you are innocent until proven guilty

But, this is not a person we're talknig about is it? no, this is a product. laws for proving some"thing" is in the wrong are different for proving a person is wrong.

As a matter of fact, from what the EPA registration rules say, for a chemical to e allowed, it must be shown first, that it is not harmful to persons, animals, birds, beneficial pollinators, etc..

That's the whole purpose of the registration process. We don't wait until after the the product is on the shelves for the company producing it to be shown non harmful.

in the case of clothianidin, and in recent other pesticide filings with the EPA that have been discussed in this forum, the EPA has been shown to not conduct that process appropriately by allowing those products to get through the system without having the said proof upfront.

that's the whole hubub of the clothianidin issue is that the EPA let it through on shady paperwork and will not remove it after the fact.

[D Coates]

That may be so, but can it be proven to be directly responsible for the die offs that are being claimed? If it was we wouldn't be having this discussion would we?

[bigbearomaha]

can it be proven in certainty that they aren't? no. there seems to be at least enough information to warrant further investigation instead of dismissing it offhand.

Why are people so eager to shut down discussion of further investigation. As I mentioned, the whole purpose of EPA registration is to make sure things are safe before introduction to the public. "eh, might be fine" usually doesn't cut it.