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600 Hives Lost in Ontario--CCD/Neonics Suspected Cause

43K views 205 replies 27 participants last post by  BayHighlandBees 
#1 ·
#47 ·
Big dawg, you site the mistakes in one direction but not the other, How about Salt, its bad for you, no wait, good,,, or HOrmone replament, its requred, oh wait it causes cancer, or global cooling in the 70.s, global warming now. the list of scince thats bad goes BOTH ways pretty much equaly,,, why? because its not real science its like dr. lou's report... garbage in, garbage out.....

Real world testing is being done on a huge scale.. and unfortunatly the results are in... Mybees are fine, despite being in the most heavily chem treated areas... and CCD here in the midwest, is non existant.....
 
#48 ·
Real world testing is being done on a huge scale.. and unfortunatly the results are in... Mybees are fine, despite being in the most heavily chem treated areas... and CCD here in the midwest, is non existant.....
And THAT Charlie is the problem--we become the defacto lab rats for the pesticide companies, all without our consent.

I don't know about you, but I don't want my children or my bees to be used as lab rats by the pesticide industry!

Regarding your bees, I'm really glad that so far they seem to be ok. However, if your neighbor has smoked for 20 years and has not yet developed lung cancer, does that constitute proof that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer?

Of course it doesn't.....
 
#52 ·
Big dawg, While I understand your point you guys (your not the only one by any stretch) Fail to understand what your talking about. Seed coatings by and large represent the next step in tech. What the REPLACE is the real key. they replace a ton of post emergence spraying. allow better yields, and control a large number of pest.
You guys seem to think this stuff just started... Hardly... this is just a new revalation, and unfortunatly some people have to much time on their hands... so they sit around and proselytize on topics they really don't understand or have any knowledge of. You won't hear a peep out of me on spotted owls... no clue... not my area.... Seed coatings.... Well they are around me in levels you can't even comprehend. and most years. crop dusting is a dead art.... coup sprayers can be bought cheap, and a lot of real problem pest are at least for the moment under control all done with guys with more brains and heart on the subject than than you can appreciate.
Instead we want to listen to a bunch of Hack scientist who run goofy experiments and are funded by dubious sources. and use that same claim for the guys at Bayer, and Monsanto etc...... you guys want to claim Superior ground, using the same argument you use to discredit Bayer and Monsanto you would see you don't have a claim.

I worked in AG many years on equipment.... and with seed suppliers... I know the way they work and think... and yes there are probably a few bad apples, but as a whole, I would and do trust them with the worlds food supply these guys feed there families also with this stuff......is seed coating were killing off bees in any serious numbers the results would be obvious and products would be pulled........
 
#61 ·
From today's American Bee Journal:

PENSACOLA, Fla. - Forthcoming research in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry analyzes the physiological effects of three separate pesticides on honey bee (Apis mellifera). An international research team - Drs. Stephan Caravalho, Luc Belzunces and colleagues from Universidade Federal de Lavras in Brazil and Institut Nationale de la Recherche Agronomique in France - conclude that the absence of mortality does not always indicate fuctional integrity.

Deltamethrin, fipronil and spinosad, widely used pesticides in agriculture and home pest control, were applied to healthy honey bees and proved toxic to some degree irrespective of dosage. At sublethal doses, the pesticide modulated key enzymes that regulate physiological processes, cognitive capacities and immune responses, such as homing flight, associative learning, foraging behavior and brood development. Sensitivity to these insecticides and foraging range (as far as 1.5 to 3 km) make A. mellifera an optimal candidate for monitoring the environmental impacts of pesticides.
 
#64 ·
... were applied to healthy honey bees and proved toxic to some degree irrespective of dosage.
Yawn...yet another unrealistic bee poisoning by researcher study that will not answer key questions like: 1) What pathogen(s) cause CCD? 2) Why do many beekeepers in heavy neonic usage areas have little CCD and low winter losses? Why do many beekeepers in low neonic usage areas have considerable CCD and high winter losses?
 
#62 ·
What gets me about this argument isn't than one side is right or wrong. It's a debate because we don't know what's causing CCD, and because we don't know the impact that various pesticides (which are under-regulated) have on bees. What gets me is that arguments like

"Seed coatings by and large represent the next step in tech. What the REPLACE is the real key. they replace a ton of post emergence spraying. allow better yields, and control a large number of pest. "

and

"seed treatments are a great leap forward from ariel spraying."

become the underlying theme for an uncompromising rejectionist attitude towards scrutiny of neonics. As though, because it's good for agriculture, the idea that there might be some other, unintended consequence is absurd and illogical.

The point where most things in our society have been vetted, historically, has been when people in the community are impacted and care about the consequences, and either increase scrutiny themselves, or cause some more sophisticated agency to care about it for them. Water contamination, greater ecological damage, overfishing, etc, etc. We have certainly come a long way since the slaughterhouses of Sinclair's Jungle, but the lesson from those moments of progress and accountability should be the value in demanding it - and viewing the world with a calm, objective skepticism. Not simply accepting some corporate broad-stroke message that 'it's all good.'
 
#67 ·
As a new beekeeper with a farming background this whole topic is fascinating. I guess I come down in the middle. I haven't seen anyone refute high neonics vs low ccd and the reverse. Obviously this seems like at least a serious wound if not a fatal blow to the anti neonic crowd. But at the same time I find it personally impossible to believe that big agrochem companies and the revolving door of the oversight agencies are really looking out for bees or people in general. I guess people have much more faith in the system than I do.
 
#68 ·
I haven't seen anyone refute high neonics vs low ccd and the reverse. Obviously this seems like at least a serious wound if not a fatal blow to the anti neonic crowd.
Another new wound to the anti-neonic crowd: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...ionid=BC70C83CBDE883F9E892EA6BE97724FF.d03t04

Abstract Background
Neonicotinoid insecticides have been the target of much scrutiny as possible causes of recent declines observed in pollinator populations. Although neonicotinoids have been implicated in honey bee pesticide incidents, there has been little examination of incident report data. Here we summarize honey bee incident report data obtained from the Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA).

Results
In Canada, there were very few honey bee incidents reported 2007-2011 and data were not collected prior to 2007. In 2012, a significant number of incidents were reported in the province of Ontario, where exposure to neonicotinoid dust during planting of corn was suspected to have caused the incident in up to 70% of cases. Most of these incidents were classified as “minor” by PMRA, and only six cases were considered “moderate” or “major”. In that same year, there were over three times as many moderate or major incidents due to older non-neonicotinoid pesticides, involving numbers of hives or bees far greater than those suspected to be due to neonicotinoid poisoning.

Conclusions
These data emphasize that, while exposure of honey bees to neonicotinoid-contaminated dust during corn planting needs to be mitigated, other pesticides also pose a risk.
 
#76 ·
Use your shoe for more emphasis!
And as we all remember, it worked quite nicely :) As for paper - it is important who wrote the article - some people have more credentials than other. In this case, it is even not a "paper" it is sort of interpretation of public data without any statistical analysis etc. I am surprised that it was accepted as a scientific paper. Make me think about reviewing process in that journal. It is also important to disclose any conflict of interest in the paper - apparently, David Drexler did not disclose that he was with Bayer 2006 – 2011. It is unethical in our community :(
 
#72 ·
Good job Cerezha! With billions of dollars in annual sales on the line, you can bet your sweet patootie that the industry is going to funnel millions of dollars into misinformation and misdirection campaigns in order to maintain the status quo as long as possible.

Of course it matters a great deal what/who the source of the information is, i.e. the Tobacco Industry "scientists" to this day insist that smoking doesn't cause cancer, and yet most people are smart enough to understand that they are paid by the tobacco industry to create and maintain a misinformation campaign designed to hide the truth about the harmful effects of their products....
 
#73 ·
Of course it matters a great deal what/who the source of the information is, i.e. the Tobacco Industry "scientists" to this day insist that smoking doesn't cause cancer, and yet most people are smart enough to understand that they are paid by the tobacco industry to create and maintain a misinformation campaign designed to hide the truth about the harmful effects of their products....
Why do you repeatedly keep trying to link tobacco with bees when "most people are smart enough to understand ....."

:ws:

Are you wearing both shoes?
 
#74 ·
it doesn't seem like the report is full of misinformation and it aligns with my belief that the neonic pesticides while having some impacts on bee colonies (mostly revolving around seed dust) actually are a significant improvement over the non-neonic pesticides.

So rather than debating a ban on neonics shouldn't we be debating about if farmers should be using more neonic pesticides as a replacement for the organophosphates that they are currently using?
 
#79 ·
it doesn't seem like the report is full of misinformation ...
It is not "missinformation", it is "interpretation" without using any scientific tool(s) to prove their interpretation. They claimed at the beginning of the "article" that data was very spotty, many fields were not filled up and approximations were used. They did conclusion, which is not originated from the data... for simple reason - there were not enough data for statistical analysis - only 100 partially reported cases.
 
#80 ·
I agree that the article is an important step forward in better understanding how pesticides negatively impact non-target pollinators. However, I do disagree with your assertion that the Quartz article claims that "CCD is caused by Nosema ceranae combined with a synergistic effect from funigicides that weakens a bee's ability to resist Nosema."

From the Quartz article:

"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."

And nowhere in the original paper did the authors suggest that Nosema is the cause of CCD.
 
#88 ·
From the Quartz article: "The findings break new ground on why large numbers of bees are dying"
Actually, as far as I can tell the study just showed some fungicides impaired the bees' ability to fight off Nosema ceranae when the bees were FORCE FED field collected pollen samples containing fungicide.

The ag chemical industry's position has been that force feeding does not demonstrate what effects ag chemicals have in full real life field situations. More importantly the study did not show that Nosema ceranae is more prevalent in areas of the country where fungicides are used heavily. With regard to CCD, some keepers on this forum like gmcharlie and Barry have said there's little to no CCD in Illinois despite the fact that around 60% of the entire landmass of Illinois (if you exclude Chicago) is covered with crops grown from neonic treated seed and despite some foliar applied (crop duster) fungicide applications in the summer.
 
#92 ·
... That said we should believe no one and yet everyone if they have views similar to ours. GOT IT!!!!
Tobacco companies, in my opinion, committed the crime and never were punished accordingly. The crime was - systematic purposely misrepresentation of the effects of tobacco smoke on human health. By intentionally doing that, yes, they lost credentials. It is up to every individual to decide in what to believe. Nobody limit you. Now, those tobacco "scientists" are still alive (not punished) and possible do "research" in another place - would you believe them?
 
#90 ·
the trick I've heard with Nosema is that its hard to detect. You can't detect it by looking for brown spots at your hive entrance. It requires examining the contents of a bee's intestines with a 400x microscope.

I think the article is poorly written. I can't see that the author really understands beekeeping to properly digest the findings of the study. Is it plausible that ingesting a fungicide could impair a bees bowel system enough to make an existing pest become a real problem? That's the 24k question here. It seems plausible to me, but I think there would need to be further study on the matter.
 
#93 ·
I think the article is poorly written. I can't see that the author really understands beekeeping to properly digest the findings of the study. Is it plausible that ingesting a fungicide could impair a bees bowel system enough to make an existing pest become a real problem? That's the 24k question here. It seems plausible to me, but I think there would need to be further study on the matter.
The study's primary author, Jeffrey Pettis, has a PhD in Entomology and is currently the head scientist of the US Department of Agriculture's Bee Research Laboratory, so, I'm hoping he understands beekeeping pretty well.....

I think the most important questions raised by the study are:

1. "Thus published LD50 values (lethal dosage levels) may not accurately indicate pesticide toxicity inside a hive containing large numbers of pesticides."
2. "Research looking at additive and synergistic effects between multiple pesticides is clearly needed."
3. "Third, pesticides can have sub-lethal effects on development, reproduction, learning and memory, and foraging behavior."
 
#99 ·
To be fair, I don't know the person with the name tag "BlueDiamond", so I could very well be wrong.

But let me venture a guess that he's some how affiliated with the Blue Diamond almond growers cooperative, based out of Sacramento, California which does over 700 million dollars worth of business a year. Looking lean and hard at their bee contracts, he's probably doing an over/under on what would happen to his business if suddenly he couldn't use neonics on his crops and had to switch back to a dirtier pesticide like an organophosphate. He's also probably wondering what impact a smear campaign on neonics (which he uses), or having to switch to organophosphates because of some ban, would have on his costs for already pricey pollination contracts as commercial beekeepers become warier of the losses they could incur from pollinating his dirty crops, driving up his overall costs.

His overall view of bees and beekeepers probably reduces to something along the lines of the going rate for manure, or irrigation, or some other necessary operating cost.

So he comes here, and every single one of his posts tries to mitigate an otherwise moderate, concerned conversation on a bee forum about one of the possible causes or influences surrounding colony collapse disorder.

To be fair, his concerns are valid in the context of his business and the impact is one which should be kept squarely on screen when talking about what the causes of CCD are, and what the impacts of action look like. But, for my money, I'm guessing his presence here is nothing more than a not-so-subtle attempt at lobbying a business position, and not, in its current form, relevant to an overarching, objective conversation on neonics, bees, or the science of studying CCD.
 
#106 ·
Yeah. Nice try.

1. Funding for study comes from Bayer
2. Bees were only exposed to neonics for TWO WEEKS. Please explain how any bees, anywhere, in "full field situations" would only be exposed to neonics for two weeks out of the year?
3. As the recent Pettis article shows, pollen collection from the target crop was very low: "The proportion of pollen that bees collected from the target crop, except for almond and apple, was low (mean±se = 0.33±0.05; Table S1)." http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0070182#pone.0070182-Higes1 Did Scott-Dupree actually analyze the pollen that the test hives were bringing in to ensure that they we actually working the neonics canola fields?

Why didn't they let them get exposed to neonics for the entire year like most bees in intensive ag areas are? Were they afraid of what the data would show?

Where is Dr. Little's "full field situation data" seeing as he says that's the only proper way to study bees.......
 
#107 ·
2. Bees were only exposed to neonics for TWO WEEKS. Please explain how any bees, anywhere, in "full field situations" would only be exposed to neonics for two weeks out of the year? .
Three weeks exposure followed by nearly a year's worth of health monitoring: https://dspace.lib.uoguelph.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10214/2621/32546.pdf?sequence=1

Why didn't they let them get exposed to neonics for the entire year like most bees in intensive ag areas are?
What "intensive ag areas" have crops that are in bloom for a whole year and so would cause bees to get exposed to neonics for an entire year?
 
#124 ·
Its worth noting that canola is highly attractive to honeybees, intense flows and large honey crops are routinely seen. Putting hives in the midst of a field of canola only during its bloom would seem to be the very best way to ensure maximum exposure as the hives would have had no previous history of working any other local nectar or pollen sources. The same process is often followed by orchards requiring pollination that prefer bees be brought in only at bloom onset to maximize their attractiveness to bees. In short, if this isnt a worst case canola exposure scenario I would be interested in hearing how the experiment could be run differently.
 
#125 ·
Its worth noting that canola is highly attractive to honeybees, intense flows and large honey crops are routinely seen.
A big emphasis on the "routinely" part. I have seen some years where bees didn't touch the canola. I don't know if it is the variety or another variable. For example: this year, we have canola fields within 300m of the hives. After numerous checks, I've only seen one bee on the canola one time I checked. The clover on the other side of the road is loaded with bees.
 
#128 ·
Charlie I don't think even the most rabid anti-neonic crowd believes that a hive can get CCD merely from two weeks exposure on a single neonic crop! :) If there were any evidence of that, frankly I think that would be more than enough justification for at least temporarily banning neonics.

I think most reasonable people understand that CCD isn't from a single crop or a single neonic, rather it is both the cumulative amount of exposure over time, plus the way that the pesticide residues interact with each other in the hive.
 
#130 ·
How anybody could knows? It is rhetoric question.
I think, that a lot of "science" was used to create this tobacco idol! I think, Bayer&Ko should follow tobacco companies - they should create an "healthy bee" idol and place it in the center of the every neonics treated field! Properly created idols could do more than science... :(
 
#132 ·
just to raise my point again:

why would you ban a more targeted and modern pesticide and therefore reintroduce the ancient Organophosphate pesticides that are applied airborne, dramatically impact most or all wildlife (mammals, amphibians, aquatic), humans, and are also toxic to bees? :scratch:

Only one way to describe this idea:
 

Attachments

#133 ·
interesting couple of articles put out from a new zealand site. It adds to the list of evidence (using the countries of Australia and New Zealand in their entirety) as proof that Neonic pesticides are not responsible for CCD.

Neonics-factsheet
Bees-Agribusiness-July

-------
Is it true that neonics are contributing to declining bee population
and bee health?
No. Some groups have claimed that neonics are responsible for Colony Collapse Disorder
(CCD), reported in the United States, and severe winter colony losses in Europe. However
independent scientific research has concluded that the varroa mite is the main cause,
amongst others, for these losses.
In Australia, neonics have been used for around 20 years but, because it has no varroa, it is
said to have the healthiest bees in the world.
In New Zealand neonics have been used since well before (Gaucho first registered and used
in 1992) the varroa mite was first identified in 2000. Feral bee numbers have been
decimated, but managed bee hive numbers have increased by 40 percent between 2005
and 2013.
 
#134 ·
...In Australia, neonics have been used for around 20 years but, because it has no varroa, it is said to have the healthiest bees in the world....
Come on. This argument was introduced by Bayer and was heavily discussed on beesource. People from Australia testified that they do not keep bees in near proximity from treated fields. Even some official from agricultural ministry (?) provided an official letter on this regard - it is somewhere on beesource. Please, do not continue the tradition of BlueDiamond repeating old "arguments" again and again ... it is not fun to read the same stuff 10 times :(
If you new and want to jump into discussion, please, do your homework first - read what already posted on beesource :)
 
#135 ·
Internet slang: a troll

I think we all should remember this:

In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people,[1] by posting inflammatory,[2] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a forum, chat room, or blog), either accidentally[3][4] or with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[5] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)
 
#137 ·
Re: Internet slang: a troll

Sergey,
now you're the one bringing up old tactics. Look how many hits for your troll slander shows up when I do a google search on "Sergey Troll on besource.com"!!

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=sergey+troll&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=beesource.com&as_occt=any&safe=images&tbs=&as_filetype=&as_rights=#q=sergey+troll+site:beesource.com&lr=&hl=en&as_qdr=all&ei=j9H0UeKTGsS6rgHdxIC4Dw&start=0&sa=N&bav=on.2,or.&fp=c1b979c941d34e9b&biw=960&bih=498&bvm=pv.xjs.s.en_US.MpiVkF51mpA.O

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?276087-Idea-and-question/page3
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?276087-Idea-and-question/page4
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?270392-Can-someone-please-explain-the-Foundationless-hype-to-me/page17
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?282083-The-Australian-distraction/page3
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?277893-Tests-Show-Most-Store-Honey-Isn%92t-Honey/page14
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?277893-Tests-Show-Most-Store-Honey-Isn%92t-Honey/page17
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?271812-Top-Bars-quot-Pros-and-Cons-quot-Presentation/page3
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?275790-Is-Beekeeping-broke/page4
http://www.beesource.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-276087.html
http://www.beesource.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-277893-p-2.html
http://www.beesource.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-271812.html
http://www.beesource.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-270392-p-2.html
http://www.beesource.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-275790.html
http://www.beesource.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-282083.html


I think we all should remember this:

In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people,[1] by posting inflammatory,[2] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a forum, chat room, or blog), either accidentally[3][4] or with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[5] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)
 
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