# Purdue university study confirms neonicotinoids on maize killing honeybees



## borderbeeman

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY STUDY CONFIRMS NEONICOTINOIDS ON MAIZE KILLING HONEYBEES ON A VAST SCAL



The full text of this Purdue University Study can be downloaded (.pdf 120Kb) from the scientific journal 'Plus One' at this link
Multiple Routes of Pesticide Exposure for Honey Bees Living Near Agricultural Fields
http://www.moraybeedinosaurs.co.uk/neonicotinoid/routes%20of%20pesticide%20exposure%20for%20honey%20bees.pdf


*Corn Seed Treatment As Lethal As It Gets For Honey Bees; 
All Season Long, And Long After The Season Is Gone. It Just Keeps On Killing.*

Alan Harman

Frightening new research shows honey bees are being exposed to deadly neonicotinoid insecticides and several other agricultural pesticides throughout their foraging period. The research, published in the scientific journal 'PLoS One' says extremely high levels of clothianidin and thiamethoxam were found in planter exhaust material produced during the planting of treated maize seed. The work, which could raise new questions about the long-term survival of the honey bee, was conducted by Christian H. Krupke of the Department of Entomology at Purdue University, Brian D. Eitzer of the Department of Analytical Chemistry at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station and Krispn Given of Purdue.

Neonicotinoids were found in the soil of each field we sampled, including unplanted fields, they report. Dandelions visited by foraging bees growing near these fields were found to contain neonicotinoids as well. “This indicates deposition of neonicotinoids on the flowers, uptake by the root system, or both,” the report says. “Dead bees collected near hive entrances during the spring sampling period were found to contain clothianidin as well.”

The researchers also detected the insecticide clothianidin in pollen collected by bees and stored in the hive. “When maize plants in our field reached anthesis, maize pollen from treated seed was found to contain clothianidin and other pesticides; and honey bees in our study readily collected maize pollen. “These results have implications for a wide range of large-scale annual cropping systems that utilize neonicotinoid seed treatments,” the report says. The research was funded by grants from the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign and the Managed Pollinator Coordinated Agricultural Project.

There have been red flags about pesticide exposure for some time and of the many compounds detected, the neo-nicotinoid group has received the most attention. As a group, neonicotinoids possess several key attributes that have seen their heavy adoption in both agricultural and urban environments, including low vertebrate toxicity and the ability to be translocated by plants.

Neonicotinoids are also persistent, offering the potential for a large window of activity. The new report says the half-lives of these compounds in aerobic soil conditions can vary widely, but are best measured in months – 148 - 1,155 days for clothianidin.

Among the largest single uses of these compounds is application to maize seed. Production of maize for food, feed and ethanol production represents the largest single use of arable land in North America, reaching a record 35.7 million hectares (88,216,620 acres) in 2010 and is expected to increase. All of the maize seed planted in North America except for 0.2% used in organic production is coated with neonicotinoid insecticides.

Two major compounds are used – clothianidin and thiamethoxam, with the latter metabolized to clothianidin in the insect. The application rates for these compounds range from 0.25 to 1.25 mg/kernel. These compounds are highly toxic to honey bees – a single kernel contains several orders of magnitude of active ingredient more than the published LD50 values for honey bees – defined as the amount of material that will kill 50% of exposed individuals, which ranges from 22–44 ng/bee for clothianidin (contact toxicity).

In fact, the amount of clothianidin on a single maize seed at the rate of 0.5 mg/kernel contains enough active ingredient to kill more than 80,000 honey bees.

Maize seeds are typically planted at a rate of about 12,500 kernels/hectare (30,875 kernels/acre). The latest research was begun after reports of bee kills at Indiana apiaries in the spring of 2010 that coincided with the peak period of maize planting in the area. Analyses of these bees and pollen from the hives revealed that both clothianidin and thiamethoxam were present on dead bees and in pollen collected from a single hive. The compounds were also present in dead bees from other hives but not in bees from hives that did not show mortality. Also found was atrazine, a herbicide that is commonly used in maize production and is relatively non-toxic to honey bees.

The results prompted researchers to carry out more experiments to determine how honey bees may be gaining exposure to clothianidin and other pesticides commonly applied to either maize seed or to plants later in the season. They collected samples from a variety of potential exposure routes near agricultural fields and analyzed them to determine whether pesticides were present. They sampled soils, pollen both collected by honey bees and directly from plants, dandelion flowers, and dead and healthy bees. They even checked waste products produced during the planting of treated seed. Maize seed is sewn with tractor-drawn planters that use a forced air/vacuum system and a perforated disc to pick up individual seeds and drop them into the planting furrow at the selected spacing. Maize kernels treated with neonicotinoids and other compounds such as fungicides do not flow readily and may stick to one another, causing uneven plant spacing. To overcome this, talc (a mineral composed of hydrated magnesium silicate) is added to seed boxes to reduce friction and stickiness and ensure the smooth flow of seed. Much of the talc is exhausted during planting, either down with the seed or behind the planter and into the air using an exhaust fan. Researchers sampled the waste talc after planting to determine whether this material was contaminated with pesticides abraded from treated seeds. The waste is a mixture of the talc that has been in contact with treated maize kernels and minute pieces of the seeds.

“Soil collected from areas near our test site revealed that neonicotinoid insecticide residues were present in all samples tested, with clothianidin occurring in each field sampled,” the research report says. “Herbicide residues were also found in these samples.”

Extremely high concentrations of clothianidin were found in talc exposed to treated seed along with fungicides applied to the seed. Analysis of talc used to plant untreated seed found low quantities of the same pesticides, likely due to contamination and reflecting the difficulties associated with thorough cleaning of equipment between plantings. Direct sampling of anthers revealed that many of the same compounds were present in maize grown from treated seed, but in far lower concentrations. Collection of pollen from traps in the field showed thiamethoxam was present in three of 20 samples, while pollen containing clothianidin was present in 10 of 20 samples. Fungicides were also frequently detected: azoxystrobin and propiconazole were found in all pollen samples, while trifloxystrobin was found in 12 of the 20 samples. Maize pollen is frequently collected b y foraging honey bees while it was available and maize pollen made up more than 50% of the pollen collected by bees in 10 of 20 samples. Samples collected again last year revealed some similar trends.

“Clothianidin was found on all the dead and dying bees we sampled, while the apparently healthy bees we sampled from the same locations did not contain detectable levels of clothianidin,” the report says. “Atrazine and metolachlor were also found, providing further evidence that these bees were foraging near agricultural fields; as these herbicides are commonly applied prior to or during maize planting.

When sampled, the contents of wax combs removed from two hives at the same apiary, researchers found both clothianidin and thiamethoxam in pollen removed from both hives. Nectar did not contain either compound. The miticide coumaphos was found at low levels in each nectar and pollen sample as well.

Both soil and dandelion flowers obtained from the fields closest to the affected apiary contained clothianidin and this could have resulted from translocation from the soil to the flower, from surface contamination of the flowers from dust, or a combination of these two mechanisms. Dandelion flowers growing far from agricultural areas served as controls and no neonicotinoids were detected.

“These results demonstrate that honey bees living and foraging near agricultural fields are exposed to neonicotinoids and other pesticides through multiple mechanisms throughout the spring and summer. The potential for greatest exposure (and the period when mortality was noted), occurs during planting time when there is potential for exposure to extremely high concentrations of neonicotinoids in waste talc that is exhausted to the environment during and after planting. Furthermore, we show that bees living in these environments will forage for maize pollen and transport pollen containing neonicotinoids to the hive. Pollen contaminated with levels of neonicotinoids similar to those shown in our results has been known to impair pollinator health,” researchers said.

The levels of clothianidin in bee-collected pollen the researchers found were about 10-fold higher than reported from experiments conducted in canola grown from clothianidin-treated seed. “Detection of clothianidin in pollen, both in stored pollen in cells and in pollen traps is a critical finding because clothianidin is even more toxic when administered to bees orally, with an LD50 of 2.8–3.7 ng/bee,” the report says. “Given an average weight of 80–100 mg/bee, some of our pollen sample concentrations exceed the oral LD50. This, combined with the result that our samples of dead and dying honey bees consistently demonstrated the presence of clothianidin, suggests that the levels of both clothianidin and thiamethoxam found in our sampling of stored pollen in May of 2011 may have contributed to the deaths of the bees we analyzed.”

The results also showed clothianidin present in the surface soil of fields long after treated seed has been planted. “All soil samples we collected contained clothianidin, even in cases where no treated seed had been planted for two growing seasons,” the report says.

During the spring planting period, dust that arises from this soil may land on flowers frequented by bees, or possibly on the insects themselves. Of potentially greater concern are the very high levels of neonicotinoids and fungicides found in the talc that has been exposed to treated seed. “The large areas being planted with neonicotinoid treated seeds, combined with the high persistence of these materials and the mobility of disturbed soil and talc dust, carry potential for effects over an area that may exceed the boundaries of the production fields themselves.”

“A key mechanism for honey bee exposure may occur during the period when maize is typically planted across much of the Midwest (mid-April through early May). At this time, the energetic requirements of honey bee colonies are increasing rapidly and pollen and nectar resources are being gathered for colony growth. Talc and soil dusts from planting are mobile and have the potential to contaminate any flowering plants that are commonly found in or near agricultural fields and are visited by honey bees, including dandelion. It is a preferred pollen and nectar source for honey bees during this period, when floral resources are relatively limited.”

Later in the season, when planting is largely complete, the researchers found bees collect maize pollen that contains translocated neonicotinoids and other pesticides from seed. Translocation of neonicotinoids into pollen has previously been reported for maize grown from imidacloprid-treated seed, but the researchers say the degree to which honey bees in their study gathered maize pollen was surprising. “The finding that bee-collected pollen contained neonicotinoids is of particular concern because of the risks to newly-emerged nurse bees, which must feed upon pollen reserves in the hive immediately following emergence,” they say.

“Lethal levels of insecticides in pollen are an obvious concern, but sub-lethal levels are also worthy of study as even slight behavioral effects may impact how affected bees carry out important tasks such as brood rearing, orientation and communication.” Also potentially important are the three fungicides found in bee-collected pollen samples – trifloxystrobin and azoxystrobin and propiconazole. Azoxystrobin and trifloxystrobin are frequently used in maize seed treatments as protectants and all three are widely applied to maize in North America, even in the absence of disease symptoms. These findings have implications both for honey bees located near these crops year-round, but also for migratory colonies such as almonds and other fruit and nut crops, the report says.


----------



## Barry Digman

PLoS. It's an acronym for "Public Library of Science".


----------



## indypartridge

In the spring of 2010, many of the Purdue bees were killed (along with the bees of many other Northern Indiana beekeepers) during a time of heavy corn planting. It had been a very dry spring, and there was a lot of dust created by the pesticide-coated corn seed as it was jostled about in the planting hoppers. Dr. Greg Hunt and his staff have been working on this research since then. Glad to see that it's finally been published.


----------



## Barry

This is BAD news. I moved my bees to an out yard last year that has crop fields well within flying distance. I'll be anxious to see what I find come spring.


----------



## jim lyon

My reading on this study is that it dosent really break any new ground (pardon the pun). It is not news that these neonics are highly toxic to bees that are directly exposed to it. If hives are near dusty planting conditions especially when foraging is taking place in those fields bee losses will most definitely result. With the no-till that is so commonly done it is not that unusual to have some stand of weeds that the bees may be working that is being planted through. Most often these fields are "black" but certainly not always. This is all very condition specific and something that could be addressed with a local farmer ahead of the planting season. To make the leap from this to assuming that any pollen gathered later in the summer is an equally significant problem that is either a cause or contributing factor to overall hive health is where significant disagreement has taken place among researchers. In our area we have seen a considerable increase in corn and bean acreages in the past two years yet the overall condition of our bees has improved during the same time frame. It is important to note, though, that all of our bees are moved in after virtually all the spring planting has been done.


----------



## mmiller

2 years ago I put 2 hives on a friends property that border huge corn fields. Both hives slowly died out. I didn't (and still don't) know what happened since those colonies were strong when I took them over. I chose not to replace them. :scratch:

Mike


----------



## Barry

Jim -

Thanks for giving your input on this, which I value. Since my bees are sitting there year round, I'll be watching this spring to see if I see any possible impact. I'll also observe what the routine is with the local farmers.


----------



## Acebird

> Both soil and dandelion flowers obtained from the fields closest to the affected apiary contained clothianidin and this could have resulted from translocation from the soil to the flower, from surface contamination of the flowers from dust, or a combination of these two mechanisms. Dandelion flowers growing far from agricultural areas served as controls and no neonicotinoids were detected.


I think you are back-dooring this point. It is not just the planting time that the nectar and pollen is toxic and toxicity increases with time (use).


----------



## psfred

Great shock and consternation to discover (gasp!) that chlorinated hydrocarbons accumulate in the environment, eh?

Obviously the current crop of mad chemists at the agrobusiness firms haven't read any of the environmental research from the last 50 years, since they advocate dumping hundreds of millions of tons of very highly toxic very persistent materials into the soil.

The major problem here is that no one seems to have tested for the persistence of neo-nics in soil. It was assumed they would wash out and degrade very rapidly and never accumulate. Why anyone thought that I don't know, as there is more than ample literature concerning the persistence and bioaccumulation of any number of other chlorinated substances (DDT, Toxaphene, Heptaclor, etc) going back 60 or 70 years now, all equally supposed to "deteriorate" rapidly in the environment. They do, actually, degrade fairly rapidly when exposed to sunlight and the UV in it, but UV only penetrates a few thousandths of an inch into soil for some reason.

EPA and USDA more or less grandfathered these chemicals into use, assuming they were very similar to the realted pyrethrins, which do NOT accumulate or persist (and I assume they were told this by Bayer, et al.). Nope, they hang around for months if not years, so treated seed, much of which is probably seriously overtreated in good old agribusiness style, leads to higher and higher amounts of neo-nics in the soil, hence in the plants, hence in the pollen, nectar, and guttation exudates -- these are probably the worst thing for bees, as bees will greedily pick up the high sugar guttation droplets from small corn seedlings, where the neo-nics will be in the highest concentrations (very small plants, after all, lots of cool, damp nights in the early spring, lots of guttation).

The other area not investigated at all was the low level, non-lethal exposure effects of neo-nics. Most likely this will result in the same sorts of things mites cause -- lower brood success, shorter lived, lower weight bees, and general lack of vigor. Same as anything else that impacts general health. 

Mix all of this in with the gross overspraying of glyphosates on "RoundUp Ready" crops and you will have serious lack of forage to add to the problems bees have. In my area, there are very few roadside plants left, just roundup resistant grasses, since the farmers spray very sloppily. No blackberries, no wildflowers, nothing. In many cases, severe erosion from lack of plant life on the sides of the huge drainage ditches. 

I flew home from Chicago in early June this year at fairly low altitude, and was rather shocked at the lack of anything green. Corn was planted (late, due to very wet weather) and not showing yet, and so the ground was brown for dozens of miles in all directions. Nothing green along the roadways since the feilds extend right up to the pavement, obvious severe erosion in feilds, just brown soil and pavement, releived once in a long while by a flat, mowed short lawn. The only woodlands were where it was impossible to plow.

Hardly a surprise beekeeping is in decline -- they have to eat, after all, and these days in "farmland" there is nothing for bees to collect the vast majority of the year. They will collect huge amounts of corn pollen, mainly because there isn't any other pollen for them out there. It's not the best for them, doesn't have the correct amino acids, but it's all they have. Since there are VERY few farms raising livestock, there is no clover or anthing like that, just the weeds in the fields before they are drenched in RoundUp.

Peter


----------



## ctgolfer

So what does this report mean to us? I am surrounded by corn fields, cow corn mostly for silage. Will this report get other universities looking in this direction, I would hope they have been anyway 
after the ban in Europe. Does this mean we will see a ban in Neo-cides here? I could move my bees out of here during planting season, that may help but its not a fix. The U.S. gov may do something about it in 2020 but what do we do until then?


----------



## Acebird

I would avoid putting hives next to corn, soybeans, and maybe sugar beets but what the heck do I know.


----------



## hoodswoods

So if I'm a big Ag Chem company and start feeling pressure from USDA about my chemicals (how likely is that?), then I lobby to have the treated corn, etc. labeled as strictly an energy/ethanol fuel (not fit for human/animal consumption) & transfer its control to the Department of Energy as vital to national security.

I doubt that I am the originator of this thought.


----------



## Acebird

LOL, vital to national security but detrimental to your health. That's a good one.


----------



## hoodswoods

Unless they can make clothianidin or thiamethoxam taste and appear as one or more of the following:

Salt, Pepper, Butter, Honey, Molasses, Sugar, Milk, Cream, Cheese, Numerous Type of Gravy (Sausage, Red-Eye, Bacon/Drippins, Flour...)

And doesn't kill/disable any of the following (in general order of importance):

Pick-up, Dogs, Pigs, Cows, Chickens, Fish, Bees, Wild Turkey, Children, Us, Racoons, Possums, Our Cousin-in-Law Spouses, our Neighbors Spouses, Our Spouses

Here in the South, we would prefer our grits not messed with - and what about my moonshine reputation?


----------



## psfred

This is a very serious issue, as probably 90% of beehives are withing flying range of a cornfield, at least in the easter half of the US. 

The real problem is indiscriminant use of pesticides with no evaluation of effects beyond the immediate application to crops. 

Most pest can be controlled by changing the way we grow crops, but those alternate methods are not conducive to massive corperate agribuisness. I dont' see that as a problem, but the people getting rich soaking us with chemicals do.

Certainly the problems neo-nics cause with bees is another argument to ban them, on top of the other issues no one wants to talk about (like aquatic toxicity -- anyone in favor of no fish in the rivers, streams, and lakes?).

Peter


----------



## wildbranch2007

Barry said:


> Jim -
> 
> Thanks for giving your input on this, which I value. Since my bees are sitting there year round, I'll be watching this spring to see if I see any possible impact. I'll also observe what the routine is with the local farmers.


most of my hives are very close to cow corn fields, most of the farmers don't use no-till, none of the farmers are aware that there are neonics on the seeds from what I can tell. all of the fields have weeds close to them but they till under the fields, I haven't had any problems that I can attribute to the corn, one thing to remember though, this is a very wet area so usually dust is at a minimum. I'm more worried about when they follow the corn with alfalfa, since the neonics stay in the soil for years I really hope they get it cut b/4 it blooms.
My partner did have a bee kill at the same time they were planting around him, once in the last 4 years, we weren't aware of the seed's being treated or else would have sent away some dead bees for testing. I monitor my honey harvest closely and have not seen any decrease since they planted the corn two years ago, but they are plowing in all my golden rod at a terrible pace.


----------



## Barry

psfred said:


> I flew home from Chicago in early June this year at fairly low altitude, and was rather shocked at the lack of anything green. Corn was planted (late, due to very wet weather) and not showing yet, and so the ground was brown for dozens of miles in all directions. Nothing green along the roadways since the feilds extend right up to the pavement, obvious severe erosion in feilds, just brown soil and pavement, releived once in a long while by a flat, mowed short lawn. The only woodlands were where it was impossible to plow.


You must be referring to central Illinois, where my family is from. Northern and southern Illinois is not like that. Around here there are lots of ditch weeds and stands of trees and brush between fields.


----------



## whiskers

So we are applying chemicals with half lives of years. So if we should decide that this is a mistake the fields might have to be left fallow for a century or so until one could say that they are essentially gone. These chemicals are taken up by the plants so that the plant becomes poisonous to the target insect. Poisonous enough that (I hear) ear worms that attempt to burrow into the ears are killed. And poison which remains in the plant at harvest. And then I get to eat it. Milk cows get to eat it and (pure conjecture here) concentrate the poison in their milk. And I drink it. If we find out that there is some slow to show bad effect (say birth defects or cancer...) then what to do, essentially all the farm land in this country now contains this stuff. All on the assurance of agribusiness and agrigovernment that all is well, don't worry. Meanwhile we hear of increasing autism, food allergy, asthma and who knows what all. None of which can be explained. So far we don't even know the chronic toxic effects on bees, which are much more sensitive and have a much shorter life cycle. Good luck to us all.
Bill


----------



## Acebird

wildbranch2007 said:


> My partner did have a bee kill at the same time they were planting around him, once in the last 4 years, we weren't aware of the seed's being treated or else would have sent away some dead bees for testing.


The farmer may not know. They assume the people they buy seeds from is looking out for their best interest. If you own a business the worst thing you can do be it a farm, bee or anything else is make an assumption that your interest is the same as the people you do business with.


----------



## Acebird

whiskers said:


> Meanwhile we hear of increasing autism, food allergy, asthma and who knows what all. None of which can be explained.


Ah, Bill it can be explained but even cutting off the financial benefits of medical solutions is hard to give up when you are on the receiving end. Do you really think it would take a 100 years to solve the cure for most cancers when it only took 10 years to land on the moon when the Russians wanted to do it?


----------



## 2Tall

I think the half-life is a very important point, they are killing now and will kill for many years later.As was noted in paper chemicals found in fields that had been out of use for a couple of years.


----------



## Bud Dingler

Randy Oliver noted over on BEEL that the EPA has not received one official complaint of corn seed coatings and bee die offs etc. One can see how from Bayer and the EPA's standpoint there is no problem.


----------



## jim lyon

I do think it is important to keep perspective on this issue. I know what pesticide poisoning does to bee hives, I have seen it many times in years past with foliar spraying. Neonics have lessened the need for foliar spraying. Since corn is the largest crop in the US and I would assume the majority of hives are within flying distance of a corn field it seems that the easily observed effects of pesticide poisoning should be quite apparent if direct contact kill was a problem. As far as any residue in the fields it would be nice to see some hard data on that as far as how common it might be and what the concentrations are as this report (as near as I can tell) is only dealing with a specific case. The real issue on neonics has always been the potential of sub lethal dosages and if that could be more of a stealth killer. The majority of the testing up to this point has failed to show a connection to the original ccd type symptoms but instead has suggested that viruses is probably a much more plausible culprit. That is not to say that neonics arent perhaps a contributing factor. In any case let's work off what we know and any documented losses that can be proven.
Here are my unscientific observations, we have bees on over 100 locations all within flying distance of corn fields. Figuring a 2 mile flight radius they would cover well over 1000 square miles and I haven't yet seen anything that concerns me. I think that is a pretty significant piece of evidence.


----------



## Acebird

jim lyon said:


> Figuring a 2 mile flight radius they would cover well over 1000 square miles and I haven't yet seen anything that concerns me.


When it does you think there will be time for your concerns?


----------



## Fusion_power

I don't like biased studies, and this study is biased. I don't like fear mongering and that is a lot of what I am reading in this thread. I also don't like pesticides in all their various flavors.

This study is biased because of who paid for it and the innuendo that is included in lieu of hard facts. The association of bees dead with small amounts of neonics in them does not prove that the neonics killed the bees. They are going to have to back up this observation with cold hard provable facts.

The statements made so far in this thread sound like someone is holding a smoking gun. This gun is not smoking folks. Read the article with a bit less bias and see what it is really getting down to.

The significant issue found in this study is the proliferation of dust from the seed during planting. There is a reasonable establishment of cause and effect that bees are dying during corn planting and that they are dying from neonic exposure. This means the seed companies are going to make a huge effort to coat the seed with a second layer of inert material to reduce the dust problem.

The buildup of neonics in soil was pretty much limited to 3 years. What they didn't say is what happens in a dry region where rainfall is less than 20 inches per year. It would be reasonable to guess they would persist longer under such conditions. There is also reason to suspect that the residue buildup will be incorporated into corn plants and into corn pollen since these chemicals have definite systemic activity. What is not established is whether or not the bees are getting a lethal dose from the pollen.

The Bayer studies that led to licensing of these chemicals was seriously flawed. It did not take into account interactions between bees and corn when the area of distribution is as large as it is in the real world.

My take on this is that it is one more sign of a serious problem with a relatively new pesticide. We need more studies.


----------



## TWall

I read the study and the most interesting new piece of information was the used talc exhausted out of the air planter. This appears to be the significant, new, potential exposure to honey bees. Although, at this point there is no evidence of how they are being exposed. It could be they would forage this material if it were found in concentrated areas. I haven't worked with these planters so I'm not sure how the exhausted material will accumulate. This will be something for me to find out this spring!

When reading the tables at first I was a little confused since I couldn't understand how foraging bees could bring in corn pollen during planting time. While reading the study I learned that the plots for the study were not planted until July. This is concerning since this is not "typical" planting time and does not represent what colonies in mid-western agricultural areas will face during a typical planting season.

Also, if dead bees were tested for clothiandin levels in July what is the source of the clothiandin? Pollen from surrounding corn fields? Dandelion, July is well past peak flowering. Exhausted planter talc? The authors noted it was not clear how bees would be exposed to high levels of clothiandin after the seed was planted.

As far as soil pesticide levels. I found it interesting that clothiandin levels were essentially the same in the unplanted soil as the production fields surrounding the test plots. This data is starting to develop a baseline. It would be interesting if the authors continued to collect this data to see what soil levels do.

Another interesting point made was that pollen had sub-acutely toxic levels of clothiandin. It was estimated it would several days of consuming the pollen to reach the LD50 level and metabolic activity would decrease residual levels. The impact of sub-acute levels of exposure needs to be studied. It would also have been nice to check clothiandin levels in capped brood to see how much is making it into the bees.

I was surprised no clothiandin was found in nectar. It has been found in guttation from corn seedlings. It is found in pollen. I don't know if it isn't in nectar or the levels are below detection.

Something to note, all levels of pesticides are reported in parts per billion. It wasn't that long ago that those levels were almost undetectable.

I was surprised there was no discussion about the detection of coumaphos. What was the potential source? Was it actually applied to the hives for mite control?

The study is a first step to answering some questions about how, or if, neonics impact honey bee colonies. I hope the authors continue to pursue this research and provide some hard answers to the questions we all have.

Tom


----------



## Roland

Jim Lyon wrote:

Figuring a 2 mile flight radius they would cover well over 1000 square miles and I haven't yet seen anything that concerns me. I think that is a pretty significant piece of evidence.

I agree. Keep up the keen observations please.

Crazy Roland


----------



## squarepeg

two mile radius = about twelve and a half square miles


----------



## Scrapfe

Here is a link more easily downloaded than the one provided by borderbeeman. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0029268
As you may notice it allows you to cut, copy, and paste so you can more easily make a side by side comparison between the un-quoted material in the beginning post and the information published by those who authored the final paper. 

I found it somewhat unusual that despite all the previous claims to the contrary NO traces of clothianidin and thiamethoxam were detected in any of the nectar tested, despite numerous previous claims that these chemicals readly translocate to nectar and corn seedling guttation droplets. But for the sake of honesty I admit that there is this little thing about corn not producing nectar. 

I call you attention to table 4. http://www.plosone.org/article/slid...RI=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0029268.t004
One of the two hives situated at a TREATED corn field showed LOWER concentrations of clothianidin after planting than before clothianidin treated seeds were planted. Why? One of the 2 hives situated at an UNTREATED corn field showed HIGHER concentrations of clothianidin after planting untreated corn seeds than before untreated seeds were planted. Why? 

Because no base line information was available for 2010 or earlier. I can only assume that table 4 means the clothianidin and thiamethoxam contamination of pollen occurred during the dry and dusty planting conditions encountered in 2010 and not during 2011. In a previous thread I already discussed the late and damp 2011 planting season in the American Mid-West. The good news is that this study dove tails perfectly with the brief suspension of clothianidin and thiamethoxam use in Europe following a similar corn planting accident.


----------



## sqkcrk

Or it could indicate contamination from a source farther away. Mary Anne Frazier, and others, have shown that bees forage a lot farther away from the hive than previously thought, covering a lot more acreage. Is it possible that the contamination came from another source, farther away?


----------



## psfred

All wax from hives treated with coumaphos contain fairly large amounts of it, since it dissolves in the wax. This includes "new" foundation, which is made from recycled wax. Probably a good way to breed resistant mites, along with low level toxicity to bees (and possible cause for absconding -- too much nasty stuff in the comb).

Bees metabolize neo-nics quite rapidly, and excrete them fairly quickly as well, so I'm not surprised at low levels in live bees. Usually they die very quickly at lethal levels, and non-lethal levels vanish over a few hours as the bees excrete them. The question is what does low levels of neo-nics do to bees? They are central nervous system poisons, after all -- what does something like this do to the developing brood? Change behaviors? Make them nice homes for phorid flies?

Lots of questions, not very many answers, and remember, neo-nics are not used in trace amounts. At a few mg per seed, the dosage on a field is in the dozens to hundreds of pounds range, and if they do persist in the soil, the amount starts to get really high.

Another question is what are we doing to the ecology of the field when we poison EVERY insect out there. 

All of this should have been answered BEFORE neo-nics were approved for field use, whatever the crop. Neo-nics are a huge problem in Europe, and there is considerable pressure to have them banned completely.

Peter


----------



## TWall

> Lots of questions, not very many answers, and remember, neo-nics are not used in trace amounts. At a few mg per seed, the dosage on a field is in the dozens to hundreds of pounds range, and if they do persist in the soil, the amount starts to get really high.


I think your math is off. There isn't even a hundred pounds of corn seed, probably 10-20 pounds at the most, planted per acre. The seed treatment would be much less. I can't remember off the top of my head but isn't the ai something like 0.5 mg per seed?

Tom


----------



## wildbranch2007

a search of the internet says the following

Sweet Corn



Common spacing of one sweet corn plant every 10 inches in rows roughly 36 inches apart yields about 17,000 corn plants per acre. Depending on the variety, this requires between 150 and 225 lbs. of seed per acre. Sweet corn planting density is lower than field corn density because it is commonly harvested by hand, which requires more space than with mechanized field corn harvesting equipment.


Field Corn



Depending on the hybrid or variety, field or grain corn planting rates vary from about 20,000 to 44,000 plants per acre. Grain corn dries on the stalk with the kernel forming a dent on one end when ripe, which is caused by shrinking starch. Higher planting rates require closer planted rows along with seeds planted closer together within the row. Higher planting rates are used for grain corn because the emphasis is on total yield rather than quality of each ear.



Read more: How Much Corn to Plant Per Acre? | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/info_8479833_much-corn-plant-per-acre.html#ixzz1iu3puwnY

a 150-225lb for sweet corn and more for field corn.


----------



## TWall

Mike,

I call BS on your source. No plants anywhere near that much corn seed per acre. 

To make the math easy lets say there are 4000 seeds per pound of corn. That is 21 pounds to plant 44,000 plants. You have to plant more to get that stand so lets say you plant 25 pounds.

Sweet corn is more like 10 pounds per acre rule of thumb.

Soybeans are somewhere around a bushel, 60 lbs, per acre.

Tom


----------



## Acebird

Forget how much corn is planted think about the tons of poison produced every year an understand it goes somewhere. It is not in storage bins.


----------



## psfred

Just out of pure cussedness, I just weighed out two ounces of Hickory King field corn seed and counted them. Just at 100 kernels per ounce, which translated to 1200 seeds per pound. This particular batch was a bit on the small side, so probably very close to field corn.

The real point here is that 44,000 seeds per acre is 220,000 mg or 220 gr or half a pound of neo-nic per acre. Assuming that the real amount is significantly higher (for "better results", eh?) assume a pound per acre.

Takes a couple nanograms to kill a bee so this "dose" can kill 100,000,000 bees.

Peter


----------



## Acebird

peter masage those numbers again 100 x 16 = 1600 seeds per pound.


----------



## Gypsi

Avaaz.org sent a petition to the EPA last year with 10,000 signatures on it asking for clothianidin to be banned, I know, because I signed it and helped circulate it. So much for no complaints. Granted I sent that as a concerned citizen, not a beekeeper. Can the EPA and Bayer be sued by an Apiary?


----------



## northbee

I will be very interested to see the long term health of the hives I have surrounded by corn and beans (also treated for the most part I believe) in southern MN. I have also caught swarms in this area which does not have a lot of managed beehives to my knowledge. 

I certainly believe that they toxicity is an issue and that these compounds will not outright kill colonies but rather there may be a reduction in the vitality of colonies over time and a general taxation on colony immune function. I will keep observing, keep records and speak with local farmer to try to learn more about the seed treatments they are getting with their seeds.


----------



## Scrapfe

Gypsi said:


> ... Can the EPA and Bayer be sued by an Apiary?


The short answer is yes. 

The long one is that most beekeepers lack standing (see note) to bring the case to court, plus the evidence is flimsy, and did I mention very subjective? 

If the legal question was, "Can this product kill bees if it is used improperly?" then lawyers would be killing each other to get to be the first in line to sue Eddy Baugher for selling canoe paddles.  And I could sue you for planting marigolds or mums in your vegetable garden. 

Law firms don't like cases if they have to prove the facts. They prefer open and shut cases were there is little or no work or expense. In this respect lawyers are very much like honeybees robbing out a weak hive.

Note: Standing is a loss or interest that can be linked to the product or action in question.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/standing

By suing the only business you are going to harm in the long run is going to be your friendly neighborhood farmer. He is the one using these legal products in a reckless or illegal manner and in the end the farmer is the one who you will have to drag into court and sue to prove your case. I wish to remind you that he is also the same farmer you very likely depend on to provide your bees with free nectar and pollen, if not an apiary sight or pollination fees for you. So go ahead, knock your self out, sue. Just don't come crying on my shoulder when every farmer whose door you knock on slams the door in your face when you mention the word apiary. :lookout:


----------



## Gypsi

Perhaps I was not clear - I wrote it wrong. If all of the apiaries in Indiana and Illinois, and Iowa and Nebraska, if I remember it right (lived there when I was 7) put together a class action lawsuit, could they effectively sue Bayer? 

Yes, it would take the kind of testing on every darned hive that was done for the original study. But I've known for a year this product was unsafe for bees.

I planted sweet corn for the first time last year, 3 rows, not a lot, and was back at the feed store asking whether my seed had been treated after I read last year's report on clothianidin. I still have the seed. The only way I'll really know if it is clean is to send it to Texas A&M I suspect. My feed store insists it is, they don't sell treated seeds per the owner. (and my local farmers don't plant much these days. Between the drought and the gas drilling. They run a few cows. I AM the local farmer, with 1/3 of an acre.)

Gypsi


----------



## Scrapfe

Gypsi said:


> .... If all of the apiaries in Indiana and Illinois, and Iowa and Nebraska... put together a class action lawsuit, could they effectively sue Bayer?...


(IMHO) No, not unless they bribe a majority of the judges at every level of the justice system. Since it is common for every cent recovered by class action law suits to go to legal fees, bribery is a viable option. 

Class action suits are usually a scam. The lawyers sue, the food companies agree to pay or else they fight. Either way the lawyers fatten up at the publics' expense while the food companies sued advance the price of food to either fatten or employ a new crop of lawyers. Meanwhile we end up eating more and more Chinese rice, fresh apple juice, and processed foods. It really is a vicious cycle and this cycle is the only *" sustainable "* thing happening now in American agriculture.


----------



## Scrapfe

Gypsi said:


> ... I planted sweet corn for the first time last year, 3 rows, not a lot…


Please don't take my words the wrong way, but 1 year of experience growing 3 rows of sweet corn on 1/3 of an acre will not qualify anyone as an expert agriculture whiteness, anymore than squeezing a zit qualifies me to perform plastic surgery. 



Gupsi said:


> …and was back at the feed store asking whether my seed had been treated after I read last year's report on clothianidin. The only way I'll really know if it is clean is to send it to Texas A&M...


Bone up on the differences between DENT corn and SWEET corn verities.



Gypsi said:


> …my local farmers don't plant much these days…


If your local farmers don't plant much these days have you ever wondered or asked why? Could it be that more and more of the food (even organic food) on the grocery store shelves these days comes from China or other former Third World Countries? Aren't these the same countries whose starving children used to appear on the NBC Nightly News with flies crawling on their faces? But these former Third World Countries are now well fed and growing and selling us more and more of the food we eat because we are unable to grow it here and sell it at the prevailing World Price. 

Why is that? Don't we still have plentiful rain, dirt, and Sunshine in this country? :scratch: 



Gypsi said:


> ...I AM the local farmer, with 1/3 of an acre...


Unless I treat it as a tax dodge I can’t keep body and soul together little less eek out a living by legally dirt farming what is in effect a 70 X 200 foot subdivision lot. Try it yourself for 5 years without any savings or other outside sources of income and show us how it‘s done. I am betting that you come away from the experience with a new found respect for pesticides and the role they play in agriculture. Either way it would make one heck of a reality TV program, you just can't get paid for doing it.


----------



## spunky

I have been beekeeping 6 yrs now. I live on 2 acres here in Indiana surronded on all 4 sides by bean and corn fields. Bees gotta fly at least 1/4 mile to hit a small pasture /woods and water in one direction 1/2 to 3/4 mile in the others. I have lost hives for 2 reasons as far as I can tell. One, is starvation, my fault ,and second was a freak january storm which which blew apart 2 hives that were 3 yrs old apiece. I have planted sweet corn in my garden in the same spot for 5 yrs , about 10 feet away from 1 hive stand, and I dont treat my yard with chemicals to kill any dandelions. JM2 cents


----------



## wildbranch2007

TWall said:


> Mike,
> 
> I call BS on your source. No plants anywhere near that much corn seed per acre.
> 
> Tom


:scratch: didn't really read it but I guess people are correct all kinds of odd information out there. from a university
down south.
Aim for a population of 14,000 for fields without irrigation and 22,000 for irrigated fields. This should be between 10 and 15 pounds of seed per acre. More plants per acre may not increase the number of ears, since crowded stalks sometime will not produce ears.


----------



## Acebird

Scrapfe said:


> Why is that? Don't we still have plentiful rain, dirt, and Sunshine in this country? :scratch:


It's the dirt that is questionable and the equipment used to grow food today is no longer designed to work the dirt. The equipment is designed to plant acres and acres of one plant species or deposit tons and tons of poisons. Third world countries don't have this equipment. I haven't seen much organic food coming from China unless you are talking about honey. Nobody believes China produces anything organic. They learned from us and they are polluting their air, land and water at a phenomenal rate.


----------



## Gypsi

Scrapfe said:


> Unless I treat it as a tax dodge I can’t keep body and soul together little less eek out a living by legally dirt farming what is in effect a 70 X 200 foot subdivision lot. Try it yourself for 5 years without any savings or other outside sources of income and show us how it‘s done. I am betting that you come away from the experience with a new found respect for pesticides and the role they play in agriculture. Either way it would make one heck of a reality TV program, you just can't get paid for doing it.



I never said I made my living off my 1/3 of an acre by farming, but I buy fewer and fewer groceries each year, and I've been here for 10 years. And it is approximately a 130x130 subdivision lot with good soil (they didn't terraform it and truck off the top soil). 

The chickens eat the weeds and bugs (and bees if I'm not careful), they also eat the tomatoes that split, surplus cantaloupe, watermelon, and part of the greens, but mainly I feed me and supplement 3 daughters and 3 grandchildren. Fertilizer comes from chicken manure a little, but mostly fish pond waste, composted, (if chemicals were used in the pond, it does not go to the regular garden), I do have to add magnesium and potash because my fish waste is too high in nitrogen. I've been here 10 years. I am NOT qualified to speak on agriculture. And my local farmers who aren't planting have been in a record breaking drought. I saw corn 2 miles away last year, it burned up long before harvest. I turned off the water to mine as soon as the ears were edible size. Incredibly high water usage for not much to eat. 

I do make my living off my land. I raise ornamental fish and aquatic plants. The rest is just to feed me, and the bees are helpful, but aside from tomatoes, not truly necessary.

My main pesticides are dish soap and DE. Fish and pesticides do NOT mix. (use tea tree oil for pond plants with aphids)

I would surely HOPE that judges do not have to be bought to give beekeepers a fair shake. IF I had an unexplained bee loss and lived next to a corn patch, I'd be contacting A&M and having my bees tested. I guess those impacted will have to decide.

Gypsi


----------



## sqkcrk

Scrapfe said:


> Why is that? Don't we still have plentiful rain, dirt, and Sunshine in this country? :scratch:


Actually NO. Rainfall and sunshine, I guess. Though watertables in many parts of the country are down.

Aerible land is paved over and used for new houses every day. The land best suited for growing food is also quite highly prized for and bought by those who wish to build houses and live there.

Case in point are apple orchards in Peru, NY, Clinton Co., south of Plattsburgh, which when the Orchard went bankrupt, the Bank holding the debt auctioned off the land. The other Orchard owners couldn't compete w/ the price others were willing to pay. A lot of that one orchard now stands unused, a source of disease and pests for the neighboring orchards. Much of it is in houses too.

One orchard I pollinate for wanted to buy some cleared land across the road so they could expand their orchard. Again, the price is too high to invest in for growing apples.

So, my point is were don't have the "dirt" which we used to. I'm sure you meant soil, right?


----------



## Nabber86

*Let's re-visit the math.....*

From the cited OP – “the amount of clothianidin on a single maize seed {is} 0.5 mg/kernel.”

From this source (Iowa State) we get 34,000 corn seeds per acre (mid-point on Table 3):
http://www.extension.iastate.edu/publications/pm1885.pdf

0.5 mg/kernel x 34,000 kernels per acre = 17,000 mg clothianidin per acre, or only 17 grams. That’s not a whole lot of pesticide. 

Then that 17,000 mg of clothianidin is distributed over 34,000 corn plants and surface soil. 
1 acre = 43,560 square feet. Let’s assume that the upper 1 inch of soil is contaminated with 50 percent of the 17,000 mg clothianidin per acre. Therefore: 

Volume of soil = 43,560 sf x 0.083 ft = 3,630 cubic feet

Soil weights about 120 pounds per cubic foot, so 3,630 cf x 120 pcf = 435,600 pounds, or 197,585 kg.

50 percent of 17,000 mg per acre = 8,500 mg clothianidin per acre, 
8,500 mg clothianidin / 197,585 kg soil = a clothianidin soil concentration of 0.043 mg/kg, or 43,020 ng/kg. 

If the lethal dose of clothianidin for a bee is 22 ng, so a bee would have to eat about 0.5 grams of soil to die (22 ng/43,020 ng/kg x 1000 mg per kg). An average bee weights around 200 mg, so drum roll please ………….that bee would have to eat over twice it’s weight in contaminated soil in order to die.

I didnt know bees ate that much soil.


----------



## sqkcrk

*Re: Let's re-visit the math.....*

I didn't know that bees ate soil at all. Maybe that's where they get their vitamins?


----------



## Gypsi

*Re: Let's re-visit the math.....*



Acebird said:


> We have more unoccupied buildings (mostly commercial) than anywhere I have seen in the country, yet there is another brand new Aldi's taking over some more land that will open up next month. The "I love NY" theme for tourism will be turning into "Come visit our parking lot Monuments" instead of our scenery and wildlife.


They have been doing the same in Texas. A virtual wasteland of unoccupied grocery stores and industrial buildings, but carving up the countryside for more, more more. I've got a lot of open land around me. I should be playing the lottery, because one day they will run out of prime spots, and right now it is only about $30K an acre here. If I don't buy it, I may be surrounded by a suburb.


----------



## jim lyon

*Re: Let's re-visit the math.....*

The conversion of prime farm ground to suburbia and highways with ridiculously wide medians is horribly shortsighted. I suppose this has to be a local decision but we need to take a lesson from Europeans where land is by necessity highly prized and agricultural land is rarely taken out of production.


----------



## Gypsi

*Re: Let's re-visit the math.....*

we have to have those ridiculously wide medians to accommodate traffic at 70+ mph as we rush, rush rush to meet our deadlines and print fake money that is meaningless. I checked my math. At $10K per 1/6th acre lot that I wanted and someone else bought 2 years ago, adjacent to mine, that is $60K an acre. I'm kinda in favor of a bit more recession and americans getting hungry and realistic, but don't tell anyone.


----------



## Barry

*Re: Let's re-visit the math.....*

Let's get back to honeybees.


----------



## TWall

> Takes a couple nanograms to kill a bee so this "dose" can kill 100,000,000 bees.


Peter,

The point is not whether neonics are toxic to bees. Neonics are used in crop production and are in the environment. The question is are the bees exposed, how are the bees exposed and how much are they exposed to.

The cited study identified a new, to me at least, potential pathway to bee exposure through dust exhausted from the vacuum system. The study did not identify is this increased bee exposure. The study did find dead bees with clothiandin in/on them. But, they were not able to determine how the exposure occurred since they tested while the remaining fields were in tassel. So the question still remains were the bees exposed from pollen? Or, from planting? Or, both?

Considering the amount of neonics used throughout the country if bees were exposed as many fear they are most colonies would have been dead a long time ago. That said, figuring out how the actual exposure takes place will help to determine how to best protect the bees.

Tom


----------



## oldreliable

ctgolfer said:


> So what does this report mean to us? I am surrounded by corn fields, cow corn mostly for silage. Will this report get other universities looking in this direction, I would hope they have been anyway
> after the ban in Europe. Does this mean we will see a ban in Neo-cides here? I could move my bees out of here during planting season, that may help but its not a fix. The U.S. gov may do something about it in 2020 but what do we do until then?


ban? are you kidding me...with the pliticians we have today and the lobbyist and self interest groups running the country now you can expect $$ and farm wants to trump environment and bees needs..


----------



## Nabber86

TWall said:


> Peter,
> 
> Considering the amount of neonics used throughout the country if bees were exposed as many fear they are most colonies would have been dead a long time ago. That said, figuring out how the actual exposure takes place will help to determine how to best protect the bees.
> 
> Tom


Exactly. It's called exposure and risk assessment. In my calculation the amount clothianidin would be 17,000 mg per acre. That's like one half of an ounce, but as pointed out that's enough to kill millions of bees. _* BUT *_the clothianidin isnt just dumped in a pile and a million bees proceed to ingest it. It's spread out over an acre of land and ends up at a low enough concentration that a bee would have to ingest an enormous amount of dirt (relative to a bee) to receive a toxic dose. Last time I checked, bees dont eat dirt. 

If the route of exposure is claimed to be fugitive dust landing on nearby flowers, the clothianidin is even further diluted in the air, and then even further diluted as the pollen falls on a flower, and even further diluted as only a percentage of contaminated dust would stick to a pollen grain or incorporate into the flower nectar. The _route of exposure may be complete_, but the _dose_ isnt there.


----------



## Joseph Clemens

In reading that last post, I can't help but think, "I don't really care how low the dose is, I don't appreciate any quantity of poison in my body or in my bees, especially any that I didn't intend to put there, myself or in my bees."

I don't know about your bees, but my bees collect nectar and pollen, and concentrate these items inside their hives.

How much cyanide or other poison would you subject your livestock to, even if you were sure it were a less than lethal dose?


----------



## sqkcrk

In Bee Culture this month Kathy Kellison writes in her article "One Colony, One Acre", "Consider this- France, a country comparable in size to California, supports approximately 2.3 million managed colonies, which is nearly the same as the 2.4 million in the U.S."

So, seems like we aught to be able to have more beehives here than in France. It must be the economics. Don't ya think? It's not economically viable for enuf people?

Keith Delaplane's article illustrates some of these problems too.


----------



## Nabber86

Joseph Clemens said:


> In reading that last post, I can't help but think, "I don't really care how low the dose is, I don't appreciate any quantity of poison in my body or in my bees, especially any that I didn't intend to put there, myself or in my bees."
> 
> I don't know about your bees, but my bees collect nectar and pollen, and concentrate these items inside their hives.
> 
> How much cyanide or other poison would you subject your livestock to, even if you were sure it were a less than lethal dose?


Bad comparison. Clothianidin isnt very toxic (cyanide is about 5,000 times more toxic). To put it in to perspective,you would have to eat about 100 _grams_ of clothianidin to die while only 100 _mg_ of cyanide will do you in. There is more than a few nanograms of cyanide in you body right now. Do you ever eat almonds or spinach? They contain cyanide. 

Of course most people respond to these examples by saying something like the cyanide in almonds is "natural" so it's OK. As if "natural" is way less toxic "un-natural cyanide". 

Anyway, like Paracelsus said in the 16th century, "The dose makes the poison".


----------



## sqkcrk

Joseph Clemens said:


> I don't appreciate any quantity of poison in my body or in my bees, especially any that I didn't intend to put there, myself or in my bees."
> 
> I don't know about your bees, but my bees collect nectar and pollen, and concentrate these items inside their hives.


Then you'd better not let your bees forage at all. And if they do, you'd better not eat any of their honey, especially comb honey. Because, as stated somewhere above and as foiund by Dr. Mary Anne Frazier, honeybees are bringing home 135 or more pesticides, fungicides and other things, matabolites I think they are called, you don't want to eat and it ends up mostly in the wax, but also in the honey. Honeybees and beehives end up being good filters and samplers of what is in the environment.

There may come a time when honey becomes inedible, unless people still believe the benefits outweigh the risks. Because almost all of the chemicals which show up in wax and honey do so in traces of PPBs well below acceptable levels, even the miticides we intentionaly put in beehives.


----------



## Nabber86

I forgot to mention that bee venom is only slightly less toxic than cyanide. If you are worried about poison in any amount, you shouldnt bee keeping bees.


----------



## slickbrightspear

does anyone know if the plants themselves concentrate the neonics when it pulls them up into the plant. could the plants be concentrating the neonicotids from multiple plantings in the same soil as it does not always break down quickly.


----------



## Nabber86

slickbrightspear said:


> does anyone know if the plants themselves concentrate the neonics when it pulls them up into the plant. could the plants be concentrating the neonicotids from multiple plantings in the same soil as it does not always break down quickly.



Neonicotids are _taken up_ by plants, but not _concentrated _over the long term. The half-life in both soil and plants is on the order of days to months. There is some quantifiable residual left in the soil the following planting season, but that level is low compared to the new planting season application. 

It's not like heavy metals accumulating in fish over the course of several years (the concentrations get higher and higher, because there is no breakdown mechanism), if that is what you are thinking.


----------



## slickbrightspear

so the residual in the soil can not be pulled into the plant increasing the amount available in the plant, in soils that have been cropped in corn repeatedly. its my understanding also that the soil type has a lot to do with how quickly the neonicitids break down.


----------



## Scrapfe

The corn to conduct this test on was planted in July 2011. Given that upper Indiana is not Northern Alabama or even Kansas, some if not most of the environmental factors involved in these tests have little or no relevance to the commercial cultivation of maze in other parts of the country. 

Here in Alabama the 4th of July is considered the absolute latest planting date for corn, that is if you hope or expect to produce more grain than you put into the ground in the form of seed.

With corn planted by the 4th of July a farmer or home gardener here still needs to irrigate almost daily, as well as stand watch around the clock over his corn to guard against insect pests.

I realize that center pivot irrigation has somewhat changed corn production in this regard and that later plantings can now sometimes be made, but there is still the prospect if not the promise of reduced yields with late planted corn. Further South you can double crop corn, or grow a corn crop followed by a second corn crop in the same field during the same growing season. But a build up of insect pests is still a serious problem for the later corn crop.

The one incident in Indiana during the 2010 planting season involving the poisoning of honeybees is an echo of what happened in Europe during their 2007 or 2008 corn planting seasons. These incidents have and are being characterized on this forum as a total or complete ban on the planting of corn seed in Europe if that seed has been coated with neonicotiniods. This is untrue. 
http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/about/intheworks/ccd-european-ban.html
The European bans to my knowledge have all been lifted. The suspensions were made so the facts as to how, when, where, and why bees came into contact with neonicitinoids could be studied. This action is proper to insure the health of both humans and bees. But even then European corn farmers could still make foliage applications of these same pesticides to the tassels, leaves, silks, stalks, roots, and even ears of corn plants while honeybees worked the corn fields and overspray or drift areas surrounding the corn fields for both nectar or pollen. If the danger is as high as some claim this makes no sense. Since the first poster in this thread is from Europe I am mildly surprised that he did not report this fact. 

It has been a while since I last saw population statistics on France. But about 20 years ago 25% of the French population still worked in what some would characterize as agriculture stoop labor, while in this country the figure was 3 percent or less. I suspect that this one fact alone has a lot to do with the more numerous numbers per square mile of managed honeybee colonies in France than here in the United States. I also suspect that the French environment or the French government is no more bee friendly than any other country is but that there are many more hard working people in France who are involved in agriculture and who seek to supplement their on farm incomes through beekeeping than there are here in the USA.


----------



## wildbranch2007

Nabber86 said:


> Neonicotids are _taken up_ by plants, but not _concentrated _over the long term. The half-life in both soil and plants is on the order of days to months. There is some quantifiable residual left in the soil the following planting season, but that level is low compared to the new planting season application.


I have bees near corn and don't worry much about it but I do worry when they are getting ready to plant the follow on crops of alfalfa etc. I have looked for a study on the residuals in follow on crops and can't find a thing. I also find very little studies have been done other that the one from this tread since the early 2000's. I went looking for the label change thata was made some time back because of the length of time it stays in the soil. I always have fun and find out more facts that cause me more consternation.
I'll give my take and then copy in some of the datat found. one that surprised me was the flea stuff used on dogs and cats contains neonicitds. the good news if you want is that the bugs are showing resistence to this class of pesticides, the bad/good news is that dupont and that german company have the next class coming out. I also would like to thank C.A., seems they are the only ones that I could find doing any newer studies. I also found when they are trying to get a product registerd the longevity of the product is downplayed, when trying to sell it however they give different figures on how long it lasts. one note says no studies have been done for longer than 1 yr, one of my questions is what happens the the stuff left in the plant as the plant breaks down, does it then add back into the amount in the soil?

http://www.cdpr.ca.gov/docs/emon/pubs/fatememo/Imidclprdfate2.pdf
There were 131,394 pounds of imidacloprid active ingredient applied in California in 2004 with the highest statewide commodity use for structural pest control (39,538 pounds). 
Field dissipation half-life 
26.5 – 229 days 
There is evidence that imidacloprid residues can drift off-site on plant debris. Greatti et al. (2003) detected imidacloprid residues on plants growing adjacent to a field sown with seed-treated corn. Plant samples were analyzed using gas chromatography and found to contain imidacloprid and imidacloprid degradates at concentrations ranging from 14–54 ppb. The imidacloprid-treated seeds were sown using a pneumatic corn seed drill, so it is likely that seed debris was lost through the fan exhaust system. 
Detections in corn plants that were seed-treated at a rate of 0.7 mg/seed ranged from an average of 2.1 ppb in pollen to 6.6 ppb in the flowers (Bonmatin et al., 2005 

The majority of toxicity studies have focused on the parent compound, imidacloprid. It should be noted that two imidacloprid derivatives (olefin and nitrosimine) occur as metabolites in treated plants and have greater insecticidal activity than the parent compound (Nauen et al., 1998). The guanidine metabolite of imidacloprid does not possess insecticidal properties, but has a higher mammalian toxicity than the parent compound (Tomizawa and Casida, 1999). 

http://www.cdpr.ca.gov/docs/emon/pubs/fatememo/imid.pdf


But in a recent study
conducted in 1997 to 1998, Bayer Corporation found imidacloprid in ground water, 18
feet below ground surface (sandy loam soil). Concentrations ranged from < .1 ppb to 1
ppb.
Degradation on soil via photolysis has a t
1/2 of 39
days. In the absence of light, the longest half-life of imidacloprid was 229 days in field

studies and 997 days in laboratory studies (Miles Inc., 1993). This persistence in soil,
without the presence of light, makes imidacloprid suitable for seed treatment and <------- so the longer halflife is more feasabile?
incorporated soil applications because it allows continual availability for uptake by roots

as part of the study where they pulled imidacloprid from almonds calif. said

http://www.cdpr.ca.gov/docs/registration/canot/2011/ca2011-10.pdf 
This reevaluation is based on an adverse effects disclosure
regarding the active ingredient imidacloprid. The disclosure included twelve ornamental plant
residue studies and two combination residue, honey, and bumble bee studies of imidacloprid use
on a number of ornamental plants. 
DPR’s evaluation of the data noted two critical findings:
(1) high levels of imidacloprid in leaves and in blossoms of treated plants, and (2) increases in
residue levels over time. Data indicate that use of imidacloprid on an annual basis may be
California Notice 2011-10


additive, in that significant residues from the previous use season appear to be available to the <---so its over a year and its still there and possible significant and I'm guessing
treated plant. <---- it's folliar applied and not seed treated


----------



## wildbranch2007

an aside to my previous post I also found the following:

Research shows this class of chemical (neonicotinoid) stimulates egg production by female
plant-feeding mites. Therefore do not use imidacloprid or other neonicotinoid product
more than twice per season on plants susceptible to mite injury

I wonder if its doing the same to the varroa? couldn't resist.


----------



## Nabber86

wildbranch2007 said:


> I have bees near corn and don't worry much about it but I do worry when they are getting ready to plant the follow on crops of alfalfa etc.


Thanks for posting a lot of good information. I will try to respond to some of the info without parsing too much (gets really hard to follow that way)




> I'll give my take and then copy in some of the datat found. one that surprised me was the flea stuff used on dogs and cats contains neonicitds.


That is a classic example of a chemical exposure scenario (flea meds on dogs) that is presented often to help people understand chemical risk and exposure. The amount of flea chemical that you put on your dog is tiny and does not represent acute exposer (your dog doesnt immediately fall over dead when you treat him). However, there is chronic exposure over the lifetime of the dog from repeated treatments that can cause problems. OK so big deal, most prople understand the difference between acute and chronic exposure. But here is the kicker - It has been determined that it take years of chronic exposure to flea meds on dogs to cause any health problems. _More years than the life of a dog. _IOW, your dog is dead long before chronic exposure causes problems. Neat huh? 



> There is evidence that imidacloprid residues can drift off-site on plant debris. Greatti et al. (2003) detected imidacloprid residues on plants growing adjacent to a field sown with seed-treated corn. Plant samples were analyzed using gas chromatography and found to contain imidacloprid and imidacloprid degradates at concentrations ranging from 14–54 ppb. The imidacloprid-treated seeds were sown using a pneumatic corn seed drill, so it is likely that seed debris was lost through the fan exhaust system. Detections in corn plants that were seed-treated at a rate of 0.7 mg/seed ranged from an average of 2.1 ppb in pollen to 6.6 ppb in the flowers


Not sure if I am reading that correctly, but it looks like they are saying that the plants in the adjacent field had levels of 14 to 54 ppb and the treated seed corn plants had levels of 2.1 to 6.6 ppb. - That is physically impossible. Anyway, I find that exposure through drifting plant debris is questionable. From the standpoint of how far do the plant debris really travel? Probably not very far. I would like to see the results of several samples from a downwind adjacent field, taken at regular intervals along the axis of the wind direction, and then plotted on a graph. I bet the graph would fall off like a rock. 

Of course I can already hear the people claiming that debris can travel miles downwind. Sure individual particles can travel long distances, but you have diffusion working and the concentration of the debris decreases with the distance traveled. It's kind of like the inverse square law: the exposure from a spherical source is decreased to 25 percent of it's original level if you double the distance from the source. Of course the source is more of a 3D parabola flattend along the vertical axis than a sphere, but you get the idea. 



> But in a recent study conducted in 1997 to 1998, Bayer Corporation found imidacloprid in ground water, 18 feet below ground surface (sandy loam soil). Concentrations ranged from < .1 ppb to 1 ppb.
> Degradation on soil via photolysis has a t 1/2 of 39 days. In the absence of light, the longest half-life of imidacloprid was 229 days in field studies and 997 days in laboratory studies (Miles Inc., 1993). This persistence in soil, without the presence of light, makes imidacloprid suitable for seed treatment and <------- so the longer halflife is more feasabile?
> incorporated soil applications because it allows continual availability for uptake by roots
> as part of the study where they pulled imidacloprid from almonds calif.


Admittedly chemical degradation half-lifes are all over the place and are completly dependant on the environment in which they are studied. Half-life range is best used to _qualify_ a chemical as persistance in the environment, or relatively quick to decay. IOW - are we talking days to months, or years to decades? Of course the greenies always pick the highest value that they can find (degradation rate measured in a sealed test tube, in complete darkness, and in the the vacuum of space) and the big bad chemical corporations select the one that was calculated by dumping the pesticide on a compost heap, applying a fresh load of cow manure, then probably setting the whole thing on fire after a couple of weeks.





> This reevaluation is based on an adverse effects disclosure regarding the active ingredient imidacloprid. The disclosure included twelve ornamental plant residue studies and two combination residue, honey, and bumble bee studies of imidacloprid use on a number of ornamental plants.
> DPR’s evaluation of the data noted two critical findings:
> (1) high levels of imidacloprid in leaves and in blossoms of treated plants, and
> (2) increases in residue levels over time. Data indicate that use of imidacloprid on an annual basis may be California Notice 2011-10


Of course the levels may increase in ornamental plants. They live forever (compared to seasonal crops) and have time to accumulate more.


----------



## Duck1968

Gypsi said:


> I planted sweet corn for the first time last year, 3 rows, not a lot, and was back at the feed store asking whether my seed had been treated after I read last year's report on clothianidin. I still have the seed. The only way I'll really know if it is clean is to send it to Texas A&M I suspect. Gypsi


All the treated seed I have planted was easy to tell that it was treated. The treatment has a dye in it so the seed is stained, my field corn is usually pink or purple and soybeans bright green. Plus federal law requires treated seed to be labeled with what it has been treated with.

I have only kept bees for two years. All my hives are on the sides of my fields that rotate between corn and soybeans. Most are less than 30 feet from the crop. Last year I installed 2 4lb. packages on the 15th of April and then planted treated corn with an 8 row vacuum planter on the 18th of April. Both hives drew out 2 deeps and filled 2 med with honey. I don’t see dad buying untreated seed any time soon and I don’t have any other place to keep my bees. So I will just have to watch them and see how they do.

Brian


----------



## Gypsi

Thank you Brian - I hope your bees do well. Yours is the first straight answer I feel like I've had on this - how to tell if seed is treated. (other being the feed store) It was kinda nice having fresh corn, but corn is a lot cheaper than new bees. 

Gypsi


----------



## rwurster

Brian is correct. All our corn seeds are usually 'stained' pink and the package is marked what they have been treated with.


----------



## Gypsi

My sweet corn seed is for "candy corn", and it is stained pink. Bulk seeds, feed store said no pesticide treatment on it. I hand plant - it doesn't smell bad. Any clue if the feed store is lying? I still have maybe half a pound.

Googled it. 

Your role in growing ATTRIBUTE® sweet corn
www.rogersadvantage.com/pdf/AttributeGrowerGuide1.pdfFile Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
ATTRIBUTE® insect-protected sweet corn varieties from Syngenta Seeds Inc. are a viable ... of insecticide sprays, growers can aid in slowing down or ... To clearly identify ATTRIBUTE insect-protected sweet ... blue color to distinguish it from traditional sweet corn, which typically is covered in a bright pink coating. Please ...
Sweet Corn Production


----------



## Scrapfe

Duck1968 said:


> ... I installed 2 4lb. packages on the 15th of April and then planted treated corn with an 8 row vacuum planter on the 18th of April. Both hives drew out 2 deeps and filled 2 med with honey. I don’t see dad buying untreated seed any time soon...


Before today’s’ modern pest control methods came along, 10 or more applications of insecticides per growing season were required here if a farmer here expected to earn enough from a crop of cotton to buy a plain pair of shoes for each of his children at harvest time. 

Now if you and your dad had to fly on 10 or more aerial applications of insecticides, or else spray each of your corn crops ten or more times using a High Cycle boom sprayer, do you think your bees would have lived through the summer?


----------



## jim lyon

Scrapfe: I haven't heard of spraying on the scale you describe up here but your point is one I have been trying to make for some time. Whether or not neonics are harmful to bees is a point of some debate, on the other hand there has never been a debate on whether the alternative which is foliar spraying kills bees and unlike neonics it isn't selective to insects that feed on the plant....virtually all insects are killed good or bad.


----------



## Acebird

Scrapfe said:


> Before today’s’ modern pest control methods came along, 10 or more applications of insecticides per growing season were required here if a farmer here expected to earn enough from a crop of cotton to buy a plain pair of shoes for each of his children at harvest time.


This brain washing occurred with the first applications of insecticides because an immediate gain was observed. The long term losses were not known until later when the minds of the farmers were well pickled to believe in chemical solutions. So, a little was good and then came a lot was better. Chemical warfare on insects is not sustainable in any form. Chemicals come from oil dependency and the price will only increase. It has already past the cost of not using them at all. In a balance ecosystem the loses due to insects is fixed. The loses due to chemical warfare is not.


----------



## Scrapfe

Acebird said:


> This brain washing occurred with the first applications of insecticides because an immediate gain was observed... a little was good and then ...a lot was better...


Thank you Ace. You just proved Jim's, Nabbler's, Barry D's and my case for us. Yes, a lot proved not so good, but a little applied in a smart and a sustainable manner proved so much better for both the farmer and the bees. Way to go there pal! Keep up the good work!!! :thumbsup: :applause:


----------



## Acebird

You can parse out the phrases to change the meaning of my post but I am sure most people read all of what I wrote.


----------



## Duck1968

Acebird;744236 So said:


> I'd go broke in a hurry if I used "a lot is better" aproach. Chemicals are too expsensive when you are dealing with 800+ acers
> 
> Brian


----------



## Scrapfe

We all should remember that the first chemical pesticide, (actually an insecticide) is a pesticide that is still employed today on organic farms everywhere. The active ingredient in this pesticide is Pyrethrum. Remember that Pyrethrum was first discovered by the Chinese and that Pyrethrum has been in commercial agricultural use for 400 years or longer. I don't believe anyone who has ever had the privilege of working (or dying) on a 14th or 15th Century peasant farm would describe the experience as making a living as much as describe it as fending off death. 

So please, if you are repelled by the idea of living by employing insecticides or other pesticides, by all means live your life without them. A good way to start is for you and your extended family to go somewhere where pesticides are not widely employed, then swoop down on the local population and either murder or enslave the people already living there. This is how we humans have eked out an organic living for most of our history.


----------



## Scrapfe

jim lyon said:


> Scrapfe: I haven't heard of spraying on the scale you describe up here but your point is one I have been trying to make for some time...


Cotton is the #1 value added crop in American agriculture.

jim, unlike corn, wheat or soybeans, cotton has no insect enemies.  It seems that every insect LOVES cotton, eating cotton that is.  
A partial list is: boll weevils, pink boll worms, boll worms (the same species as the corn ear worm)
http://ipm.ncsu.edu/AG271/corn_sorghum/corn_earworm.html
http://wiki.bugwood.org/Archive:SEIPM/Cotton_Insects
tobacco bud worm, thrips, two spotted spider mites, cabbage leaf lopper, banded wing white flies, tarnished plant bugs, cut worms and a platoon of army worms. Some times an insecticide that controls one pest causes a population explosion in another because beneficial insects are killed.

Also remember that cotton is a perennial and if cotton is grown in areas without a killing frost and provided with enough water, cotton will grow into a large shrub or a small tree. To the insect world this makes a stalk of cotton the 401k or trust fund plant of American agricultural.

Here is a chart that shows a 1,000% or higher insecticide use on Alabama cotton verses cotton grown in some other places.
http://www.bt.ucsd.edu/bt_cotton.html
Here is an example of how Bt cotton and the boll weevil eradication program (using pesticides in a smart way) has benefited bees. Bt corn has done the same thing.
http://www.cotton.org/tech/pest/bollweevil/eradication4.cfm
the above link should be read by everyone regardless of your views on pesticides.


----------



## borderbeeman

Is this the same Bud Dingler who told us all a year back that "bees feed DO NOT FEED on corn pollen"? Pity that nobody told the bees that collect neonic contaminated pollen from the 88 million acres of poisoned corn mentioned in the Purdue Study.

Last I heard from Randy Oliver he was in meetings with Bayer - and telling us how they were going to fund him to carry out long term field studies on Imidacloprid. His actual words- as best I can recall were that he and Bayer and the EPA were all "singing from the same hymn sheet" on their concern over Imidacloprid. 

Do you and Mr Oliver SERIOUSLY expect us to believe that the EPA has not received one SINGLE OFFICIAL COMPLAINT about neonicotinoid seed coatings and bee deaths?

The EPA has received HUNDREDS of "OFFICIAL" complaints about the impact of neonicotinoid seed coatings and their causing mass-bee - deaths.
Here are a couple that are 'official' - from the National Honey Board:

http://www.beyondpesticides.org/pollinators/EPAltr12082010.pdf

The letter - to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was signed by:
Steve Ellis - National Honeybee Advisory Board
David Mendes - American Beekeeping Federation
Kenneth Haff - American Honey Producers Association
Jay Feldman - Beyond Pesticides
Heather Pilatic - Pesticide Action Network North America
Justine Augustine - Centre for Biological Diversity

And here is the EPA's tongue-twisting, snake-oil seller's response - which is worthy of an Eastern European Police State bureaucrat in its complete determination to 'say nothing'. if you can understand even a single paragraph - then you are ahead of me.

http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/eparesponse.pdf

Here is another more recent 'official complaint' to the EPA from the 1.3 million members of the Sierra Club:
http://www.sierraclub.org/biotech/whatsnew/whatsnew_2012-01-10.asp

The EPA also received hundreds of complaints from beekeepers like Dave Hackenberg and Tom Theobald - and from organisations like PANNA and Beyond Pesticides - these are matters of Public Record.

Perhaps you and Mr Oliver could enlighten us as to the basis for your quoting of his 'alleged' statement that "the EPA has not received a single official complaint" about the use of neonic seed coatings on corn and the associated death of 4 million bee colonies across the USA?

Better still - maybe you could stop spreading smokescreens and laying false trails about this issues and actually DEAL WITH THE SCIENCE AND THE FACTS IN THE PURDUE UNIVERSITY STUDY.


----------



## Gypsi

I probably signed 2 of those petitions, and a 3rd with Avaaz.org. Never got a personal response, didn't know what happened.

Gypsi

BUT - I rate the actual experience of members of Beesource keeping bees between treated corn fields and treated soybean fields far more highly than any industry or university study, since the big players are often paid to lie, and paid quite well. Where as a guy with 2 hives has nothing to gain or lose by honestly saying what happened to his bees, and I don't remember his name, but his bees were fine.


----------



## Joseph Clemens

An issue that might complicate matters, is that individual hives, even those of similar strength and positioned side-by-side in the same apiary, won't necessarily forage from the same sources, or even work various sources to the same degree. I can think of many factors that affect the foraging behaviors of hives. One hive in an apiary may harvest a high percentage of tainted pollen from an unlikely source, while all the other colonies in that same apiary, may never collect a basket load.


----------



## Scrapfe

Gypsi, check out the following link and see if the top left picture looks like your pink sweet corn seed. Let us know if it does.

http://www.google.com/search?tbm=is...447l0l26146l37l37l0l26l26l0l187l1435l2.8l10l0


----------



## Corvair68

Gypsi said:


> I rate the actual experience of members of Beesource keeping bees between treated corn fields and treated soybean fields far more highly than any industry or university study, since the big players are often paid to lie, and paid quite well. Where as a guy with 2 hives has nothing to gain or lose by honestly saying what happened to his bees, and I don't remember his name, but his bees were fine.


You would take the word of one person with two hives who is not a professional beekeeper or researcher, over the word of several university students and professors with degrees. What are the chances Perdue University, one of the top 100 universities in the word, being able and willing to fake a study, and convince all the students and staff involved to lie about it. These studies I am sure involved more then two hives and a couple rows of corn.


----------



## Gypsi

Are you aware that in order to get the gulf declared clean BP hired at high prices with signed non-disclosure statements most of the credentialed professors of science in the Gulf area? 

I trust my own experience more than what comes out in official studies that are financed by the corporation whose products effects are being studied. 

I may be wrong, but in my case it would be an accident.

Gypsi


----------



## Gypsi

Scrapfe said:


> Gypsi, check out the following link and see if the top left picture looks like your pink sweet corn seed. Let us know if it does.
> 
> http://www.google.com/search?tbm=is...447l0l26146l37l37l0l26l26l0l187l1435l2.8l10l0


It looks like my corn seed. I'll take a picture tomorrow, but yes, basically hot pink. I'm beat - daughter had a truck emergency, just got in from a rescue mission. Guess that means my seed was treated with mercury? My tired brain doesn't even want to know what that means. 

Gypsi


----------



## Scrapfe

I hope she is OK. Please let us know. I am sorry for your daughter's emergency or any inconvience it caused you. Rest well. I hope tomorrow is a better day. 

Scrap Iron.


----------



## Scrapfe

Gypsi said:


> ... I rate the actual experience of members of Beesource keeping bees between treated corn fields and treated soybean fields far more highly than any industry or university study, since the big players are often paid to lie, and paid quite well...


Ms Gypsi, I feel that it is Deja Vu that you made the above statement on the eve of the 51st anniversary of President Dwight David Eisenhower's Military Industrial Complex speech (01/17/1961). President Eisenhower was a very smart cookie, and what most people fail to recognize and don't know is that Ike condemned two equal dangers in his "Military Industrial Complex" speech. The second danger that Ike spoke of is the power of money and it's caustic effect on scholarship and research at American universities by creating a scientific elite who drives public policy to reap a harvest of research dollars. So I guess you could also call Ike's "Military Industrial Complex" speech his "University Research Elite Complex" speech as well. 
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5407.htm

Don't allow anyone, me included to bully you.


----------



## wildbranch2007

Gypsi said:


> Gypsi
> 
> BUT - I rate the actual experience of members of Beesource keeping bees between treated corn fields and treated soybean fields far more highly than any industry or university study, since the big players are often paid to lie, and paid quite well. Where as a guy with 2 hives has nothing to gain or lose by honestly saying what happened to his bees, and I don't remember his name, but his bees were fine.


if you would like some interesting reading from a researcher(jerry bromenshank sp?) on why the actual research is so bad read the following post on bee-l .
its too long to copy and cut and paste doesn't work due to imbeded characters.


http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/...=A&I=-3&J=on&K=2&d=No+Match;Match;Matches&z=4


----------



## wildbranch2007

borderbeeman said:


> Last I heard from Randy Oliver he was in meetings with Bayer - and telling us how they were going to fund him to carry out long term field studies on Imidacloprid. His actual words- as best I can recall were that he and Bayer and the EPA were all "singing from the same hymn sheet" on their concern over Imidacloprid.
> 
> Do you and Mr Oliver SERIOUSLY expect us to believe that the EPA has not received one SINGLE OFFICIAL COMPLAINT about neonicotinoid seed coatings and bee deaths?


would be interested in where you found the info on Randy Oliver doing a long term neonic study? I check on bee-l and his web site with no mention. he has been trying for at least two years in his posts on bee-l to get the committe in Calif. to do a study but it doesn't hit the top five list of problems(by beeks in calif) according to posts. Is this the post from bee-l you are refering to?

http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2=ind1201&L=BEE-L&F=&S=&P=68065





>
> >Although the study has touched on my concerns quite a bit of research is
> still needed.


At the AHPA conference today, Bayer and EPA representatives reported.
The issue of contaminated dust from pneumatic planters was downplayed. I
brought it up during questioning, and found that they are not receiving
incident reports about it in the U.S., which surprised me. I asked to whom
reports by beekeepers experiencing seed dust problems such as in the paper
cited should be made.

Beekeepers experiencing bee kills due to planting dust should call Tom
Steeger at EPA directly, and Dick Rogers at Bayer directly.
-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com


----------



## wildbranch2007

there is an article in ABJ called chemical/miticide warfare. Since I get it online I can't copy info from it but they lost most of the hives in a communal apiary for muliple years in a row.
for the beeks that would prefere the info from other beeks than from reaserchers, they sent away the comb to a lab(not usda as far as I could) the results were the normal
varroa mitacides as residuals and also hope my keyboard types what my eyes are seeing on the paper.
chlorothalonil (a miticide) at 202ppb
chlorpyrifos (a organophospate at 2.3 ppb)
from the article they didn't say they had ever seen any pesticide kills, they do not appear to be located in a rural location as they were talking to the greenhouse owner although they do mention that the chemicals are used on corn etc. also looking them up online the organophosphate has not been available for sale to homeowners since 2000.
they sent the comb away specificly looking for neonics, and I didn't see any names that I recognized at a neonic but I'm no expert, but they never mentioned them again.
one thing I have found intersting, not related to the article, in all the residual data on nenonic. the fact sheet they say that for instance on corn that xx parts per million are ok for consumption but on all other pesticedes I looked at they all list residue at max of xx parts per billion? the other thing I find amazing is they don't actually do any testing, they take the manufactures data and run it through models to estimate the results???? when do you think they updated the models for systemics.


----------



## Nabber86

borderbeeman said:


> And here is the EPA's tongue-twisting, snake-oil seller's response - which is worthy of an Eastern European Police State bureaucrat in its complete determination to 'say nothing'. if you can understand even a single paragraph - then you are ahead of me.
> 
> http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/eparesponse.pdf


The second paragraph on the second page is pretty clear to me - The EPA approved clothianidid because it is a better alternative to organophosphates. If it wasnt clear the first time, this point is re-stated in fourth sentence of the second paragraph of page 3. Allow me to paraphrase the paragraph in case anyone is confused, "_Clothianidid generally poses less risk to agricultural workers, and fish, and wildlife when compared to the organophosphate insecticide alternatives_".

Despite what people think, the EPA does not exist to ban all pesticide use. Nothing is perfect when it comes to insecticides, but if one is selected over the other because it is safer for the environment, it was the right choice. The EPA has to consider ALL risks and they did their job, period. You cant keep everyone happy. Trout Unlimited was probably on the the EPA's ass because organophosphates are killing fish. Not to mention the ag workers becoming ill from exposure to organophosphates. 

Also concerning the "imminent hazard" that was falsely claimed in the initial letter from the National Honeybee Advisory Board, et. all., the EPA called their bluff. No imminant hazard exists. The fourth sentence on page 2 makes this abundantly clear.


----------



## Gypsi

My sweet corn seed is supposed to be "candy corn", mixed yellow and white, very tasty, and I was told not coated with pesticides, not gmo. I uploaded a pic 

http://i338.photobucket.com/albums/n406/gypsi_fw/Bee%20and%20Garden%20Stuff/pink_sweetcorn_seed.gif

It's set to public so you should be able to see it. between hot pink and cardinal red I guess. 
I am interested in knowing whether it is treated, but not desperate enough to send it to a lab. Thanks for any info.

Gypsi


----------



## Acebird

Put it in a strainer and see if it rinses off?


----------



## Gypsi

If it turns out to be mercury, do I want it on my hands? For right now the dye can stay on the corn.


----------



## VeggieGardener

Gypsi, I always thought the reason to dye seeds was as an indication that they were treated in some manner and to prevent the seed from being used as food or feed. Only case where I have come across untreated seed that was dyed or colored was in packets of mixed varieties so that you could distinguish between the seed of multiple varieties that were packaged together.


----------



## Nabber86

The seed was treated with a fungicide and the pink dye is there to let you know. Almost all sweet corn seed that I have seen is treated that way. You had better check with your seed supplier because if they say it is un-treated, they either dont know or are not telling the truth.

*
Corn *Corn seed is especially susceptible to attack by soil-borne pathogens when sown in cold (below 50 degrees Fahrenheit) wet soil, when the seed is in poor condition, when it is mechanically injured, or if it has been stored for two years or more. Seed treatment will protect against seed rot and reduce the danger of seedling blight. _*Sweet corn is more susceptible to attack than field corn, but both should be treated*_. Most field corn is already treated when purchased. A number of protectant and systemic fungicides are registered for control of seedling blights and seed rot in corn.


----------



## psfred

Mercury has not been used as a fungicide for quite some time, but I'd wash my hands well after planting treated sweet corn seed (and use gloves while planting it if you touch the seed). 

Chlorothalonil is a fungicide, very commonly used, and probaly not a real threat to bees. The trade mane is Daconil.

Chlorpyrophos is a miticide (probably next to each other in the list). 

Neo-nics will NOT show up in comb analysis, as they are not fat (wax) soluble. They will be present in pollen if found in the hive, but probably not in honey, as noted below.

The lack of neo-nic residues in bee hives had two causes -- first, it's extremely toxic, and bees will be exposed to lethal levels when they pick it up from guttation droplets or contaminated flowers, and hence die before they return to the hive. This is why the toxic levels are so low in plants and why neo-nics are such effective insecticides.

The other reason is that the bees metabloize neo-nics very quickly, so if they are not killed outright, the level of neo-nic in the bee drops off very quickly from conversion into break-down metabolites and excretion. Probably never makes it into the honey, as the extended processing nectar undergoes to make it into honey will permit enough time for the neo-nics to be removed by the bees and excreted. 

The real danger, other than the acute die-off of foragers from direct contact, is brood being fed contaminated pollen, or nurse bees dying or being severely injured by eating contaminated pollen.

Bee kills are not the only problem with neo-nics. The most concerning problem is long term persistence in soil and therefore accumulation, with much higher amounts found in plants with each year of use.

Peter


----------



## Scrapfe

I could not help but notice that borderbeeman included the Pesticide Action Network of Germany and its American affiliate in his list of environmental groups that are supposedly opposed to pesticide coatings on seed corn, see post 82. 

The PAN of North America is among the greenest of the verdant environmental organizations. The American branch of PAN is so green that approximately half or more of all the green environmental originations partnered with PAN are located in or near the San Francisco Bay area or in adjoining states. No one, and I mean NO ONE can accuse PAN of being in the pocket, on the payroll, or of being a lackey to Bayer, Monsanto, or any other agriculture giant.

I suspect however that the Honorable borderbeeman failed to read PAN’s “Field Guide to Non Chemical Pest Management in Corn Production.” 
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&...JU4qTq&sig=AHIEtbTOpgm17qLnrNJM1Vur0tVLbVQysw

In the name of full discloser the following quote is directly from PAN’s web page and it has in no way been tweaked, massaged, or changed to help prove my or any other poster’s point. The font and color differences between my post and PAN’s words is an enhancement added by myself to further differentia PAN’s words from my own feeble mutterings. 

Pesticide Action Network’s Field Guide to Non Chemical Pest Management in Corn Production, page 9 
General Recommendations line 3.

“_3. Always select good and diseased-free seeds. If possible, treat seeds to kill seed
borne pathogens and insect pests_”

There you have it right from the horses’ mouth. Nuf said on this issue? I think so!


----------



## Gypsi

Ok, I'll plant my pink seeds. And I had enough biology in a farming region to know about using a fungicide on seeds before planting. I used to dunk them in a clorox/water rinse. Reckon my corn doesn't need dunked.


----------



## Nabber86

So you dont have a problem with Big Chemical treating your seeds with a toxic fungicide, without your knowledge or permission? :scratch:


----------



## Gypsi

Mercury I would have issues with, it is too toxic. Neonics I would prefer to avoid, corn is cheaper than bees.

I may have a problem with unknowingly buying treated seeds, but I have a limited number of places to buy seed from. I either plant them or throw them in the trash. I will be getting seeds from some heritage seed collectors in the future. 

The only reason I even bought sweet corn seed last year was my neighbor unexpectedly tilled me a large area that I hadn't had planted before, I had nothing to put there, and I had 2 options, plant something or grow weeds. I hastily bought and planted sweetcorn, then the neo-nic petitions and warnings came out, then I asked my feed store whether the seeds were treated. (my specific concern being neo-nic) They said no, so I didn't pull the plants out and trash them. 

Haste makes waste. I will either take my own seeds from this year's crop and dry and preserve them my way, or buy heritage seeds, or not plant corn again. A lot depends on the weather. It is a heavy water user. And I really don't need that much corn. Doesn't store well unless I do a lot of labor intensive canning or cutting and freezing, and its nutritional value is slightly above zero.


----------



## wildbranch2007

psfred said:


> Chlorothalonil is a fungicide, very commonly used, and probaly not a real threat to bees. The trade mane is Daconil.
> 
> 
> Bee kills are not the only problem with neo-nics. The most concerning problem is long term persistence in soil and therefore accumulation, with much higher amounts found in plants with each year of use.
> 
> Peter


Elevated levels of the fungicide chlorothalonil in honey bees have been associated with “entombed pollen” which is linked
with increased risk of colony mortality (vanEngelsdorp et al. 2009b). <-- from the new study out on neonics causing increase in nosema-c

do you know of anything published, posted on the accumulation of neonics in the soil and plants? I have heard of slides being presented at bee meetings etc but haven't been able to find any study of the same field for instance over muliple years? thanks


----------



## Gypsi

http://www.johnnyseeds.com/

Time to order seeds.


----------



## humbee

Read all the posts on this topic and I have to say with some of it is just amazing.

I've been keeping bees long enough to remember when beekeepers had a real disdain for chemicals in Ag, my how times have changed.

Two of my once most productive yards and best winter survival rate, are now in the field corn belt. five years ago things changed abruptly. When returning for late winter checking of hives, I had 38 dead outs or close to it and 2 overly full hives which appeared unnatural for that time of year. Never have I seen bees boil over when cracking the lid, not in late january anyway!! it appeared that perhaps bees had moved in from the hives next to them. 
The hives that were dead or dying had no dead bees in the hives only maybe a handful of bees around the queen if that. I've had a very productive track record up until then, twenty years worth of fine clover by the barrel and trapping pollen for human consumption. Had to buy replacement packages which I had not done since the seventies.
The only thing that changed in my area was the advent of field corn, and now lots of it and I'm still having problems. So I'm giving up on my once best yards in this region and moving them to less productive area.

Why I was motivated to write on this topic was the assumption that the purdue team was on the payroll, and had an agenda, of one of the non profits that sponsored this study. This mindset is laughable, If you want to compare a multi national pesticide corporations incentives against a nonprofit you go right ahead. Bayer is in it for money, and have a very bad track record that goes way back to the Nazis. And yes it wasn't that surprising that they hired one the most beautiful woman in Germany to represent them at Apimondia last sept.

The North American Pollinator Protection Campaign is an ecological group made up of diverse PHd people that was started in 1999, Since then the NAPPC has grown from an idea by Gabriela Chavarria, Ph.D., and philanthropist-beekeeper, Paul Growald, to an international force driving interest in the vital role and fragile status of native and managed pollinators; species responsible for one-third of our food. 
So yes I do think this research is valid, and the purdue team has integrity, and most of all it should continue.
According to Dr krupke and Dr Hunt who I have corresponded with, lack of funding is always an issue. There are many good scientists trying to get funds from a very limited source , and to date the American bee federation and the California state beekeepers hasn't given any funds for this research.
So if anyone has any ideas about how to raise funds to continue true science, and Not diversionary tactics I would appreciate the correspondence.

However I'm not at all interested in some sort of online debate. So If you need to throw mud, maybe just turn off the computer, and go check the bees or build some equipment or something more productive.
And BTW I'm 3rd generation beekeeper going back to 1906 on the german side of my family and I love apiculture and I'm very committed to it. 
I wish everyone out there a very productive and healthy year with the bees and the rest of there activity.
Still believing in good quality home produced honey is better then GMO high fructose corn syrup. Keep them buzzing, best to all Seth


----------



## Gypsi

Thank you for posting this Seth. 
I keeP signing petItions.
Bayer keePs buying PolitIcians


----------



## Acebird

humbee said:


> There are many good scientists trying to get funds from a very limited source , and to date the American bee federation and the California state beekeepers hasn't given any funds for this research.
> So if anyone has any ideas about how to raise funds to continue true science, and Not diversionary tactics I would appreciate the correspondence.


Seth, you have to create a machine like the American Cancer Society. The problem is once created it grows into a bureaucracy that just grows and doesn't produce anything. The research is great proof if it ever comes but the solution is in common sense. Like your life experiences tells you what happened to your bees.


----------



## Gypsi

Ace,

I believe the point is that we have to live with what is. By the time Seth has created a machine like the ACS half of us will be in our graves and our bees will be dead too. sign a petition. Boycott Bayer. Don't buy GMO's, and I hate to boycott my local feed store, but Monsanto shelled out 1.4 million to buy up the varieties of seeds and plants I've been getting from them for years. I may buy 3 Early Girl tomato plants, the rest - I'll order heritage non Monsanto seeds. We have to keep the competition in business. Or let them go, it is our choice.

I'm not a big AG farmer, and I'm not a big AG fan, and I don't care how much corn it takes to feed the ethanol machine, if we lose the bees the nutritional value of GMO wheat, neonic corn and etc won't be enough to support healthy humans.

And now I am stepping down off of my soap box and leaving Beesource for the day. I have a business to run and I'm ticked off again...

Gypsi


----------



## Acebird

I wasn't expecting Seth to do it. I use "You" as a general term.
I hear you Gypsi, sometimes it just feels good to vent. Just so you know Lowes is carrying High Mowing Seeds right next to Monsanto's (Burpee). We just got 95% of our seeds this year at Lowes.


----------



## Gypsi

http://www.agardenforthehouse.com/2...forearmed-veggie-varieties-owned-by-monsanto/

no time. read the link


----------



## Lauri

My problem with making informed choices is that the 'information' is usually flawed or intentionally fabricated. I don't have the personality to have the 'ostrich with it's head in the sand' approach. I want to know everything, see everything. And yes, I am often amazed or horrified.
I believe no one until they prove themselves truthful-a cynical view I know, but one I have learned in a life time of seeing too much deceit.
Whether we're talking about Politics, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, food safety, etc. no matter. If you want to know the truth, usually just follow the money.
All most of us can do is be observant and do what we think is right. 
Years from now we will have some answers..yes, when it is too late. I wonder what those answers will be? 
What do you know now you wish you had known 20 years ago? Yes, you should have stopped smoking, should have eaten a healthier diet, should have exercised more. But then, those are things you DID know 20 years ago-just chose to ignore. 
What are some ignoring now? The facts are there if you can sort through them. Will you make changes or just ignore them and hope they won't affect you?

Knowing details has helped me be successful in many of my endeavors. But I don't want to be worried about the weeds in my garden if a Hurricane is coming. 

It's all in your Perspective.


----------



## Scrapfe

Gypsi said:


> ... I hate to boycott my local feed store, but Monsanto shelled out 1.4 million to buy up the varieties of seeds and plants I've been getting from them for years. I may buy 3 Early Girl tomato plants, the rest - I'll order heritage non Monsanto seeds...


When you plant your heritage tomato seeds I do hope that you don't plant the Rutgers tomato variety. The reason is that the Rutgers tomato is not a "heriloom" tomato, except by a very very taught stretch of the imagination.

Rutgers is a cross bred hybrid tomato (Early Girl is too) Rutgers tomatoes were hybridized by Rutgers University in New Jersey at the (I think) behest of the Campbell’s Soup Company for use in Campbell’s pre-processed food factories for products like canned tomato juice and other processed foods. That is why New Jersey's old nick-name is "The Garden State" 

Do remember however, Monsanto is NOT in the business of selling seeds. It is impossible in fact to buy a seed that Monsanto has grew, owned or paid others to grow for them. Monsanto business is licensing its gene splicing technology to other seed companies and these seed companies grow, distribute, and sell these seeds. Some of these seed companies are wholly owned subsidiaries of Monsanto others are not. There is a very good possibility that any non GMO seed that you purchase is grown and sold by a seed company that also sells seeds produced using Monsanto's patented Bio-Tech (Gene-Splicing) technology even though the seeds you buy from this company are not Genetically Engineered.

On a side note, The paten on the GMO soybean variety known as Round UP Ready soybeans, expires at the end of 2014. Staring with the 2015 crop year, farmers all over America can save their ROR soybean seeds and replant them year after year without owing a licensing fee to Monsanto or anyone else. So I guess that makes RUR soy a "heriloom" soybean.

This is in no way intended as a condemnation of your or anyone else’s closely held beliefs. I only include this information so you can make better informed choices as to which seeds you purchase, or which seeds you leave in the store. Knowledge is power.


----------



## VeggieGardener

Scrapfe said:


> Do remember however, Monsanto is NOT in the business of selling seeds. It is impossible in fact to buy a seed that Monsanto has grew, owned or paid others to grow for them.


Per Monsanto's own website: "Monsanto offers the world’s vegetable growers more than 4,000 distinct seed varieties representing more than 20 species. Monsanto’s vegetable seed business serves open-field and protected culture customers through its brands: Seminis, De Ruiter Seeds and regional brands."



Scrapfe said:


> Knowledge is power.


So is the truth.


----------



## Nabber86

This is pretty interesting information. Apparently Monsanto is in control of many seed "products". This brings up a number of questions in my mind: 

If a seed is labled as "heirloom" is there any guarantee that the seed is in fact, not a hybrid variety? How can one know for sure? Seems a little vauge. 

Just because a seed is a hybrid variety, does this mean that Mansanto "owns" the rights to it? Again, how can you know for sure? Are there there hybrids out there that are in the public domain? If so, which ones? 

Most importantly, how does Mansato enforce the "no seed saving" policy? I buy plenty of hybrid garden seed every year and I have yet to see a warning lable instructing me to not save seeds. I wonder if some of the scare from RR soy beans is "drifting" (hehe) towards the garden seed discussion.


----------



## Acebird

Scrapfe, Monsanto has bought up many seed producing companies including Organic seed producers. As yet they haven't change the standard of organics to include GMO but many fear it. Can you smell monopoly? Almost smells like oil.

What is wrong with hybrids? That doesn't mean GMO or round up ready.


----------



## Gypsi

Seed kept dry and refrigerated keeps for years. I kept seed from last year, the varieties that Monsanto just bought the company for, and I will be stocking my fridge with heirloom seeds in the next couple of weeks. Some people stock a year's worth of canned goods in case of an environmental disaster. I hate canned veggies.

And yes, informed choices are really hard Lauri - I don't have time to deeply research 1/4 of the things I would like to research. So I follow the money, I try to make the best choices I can, support smaller businesses. 

(like my locally owned small feed store - who I would really like to see do the research and offer more choices - every seed I've bought from them in the last 10 years is a variety now owned by Monsanto, including my Early Girl tomatoes - I bought 3 today.)

We can only do the best that we can do. But I don't want any neonics. Corn is a semi-useless crop anyway, I don't eat much of it.


----------



## Scrapfe

Scrapfe said:


> ... Monsanto business is licensing its gene splicing technology to other seed companies and these seed companies grow, distribute, and sell these seeds. Some of these seed companies are wholly owned subsidiaries of Monsanto others are not...





VeggieGardener said:


> … "Monsanto offers the world’s vegetable growers more than 4,000 distinct seed varieties representing more than 20 species… through its brands: Seminis, De Ruiter Seeds and regional brands."





VeggieGardener said:


> So is the truth.


 So? Didn’t I say that Monsanto owned some seed distribution companies but not others, Seminis and De Ruiter are only two, what‘s your point??? 

By its very nature knowledge produces truth. As for knowledge producing power. The reason Monsanto is powerful is because Monsanto possesses more knowledge than its detractors do.


----------



## VeggieGardener

Nabber86 said:


> If a seed is labled as "heirloom" is there any guarantee that the seed is in fact, not a hybrid variety? How can one know for sure? Seems a little vauge.
> 
> Just because a seed is a hybrid variety, does this mean that Mansanto "owns" the rights to it? Again, how can you know for sure? Are there there hybrids out there that are in the public domain? If so, which ones?
> 
> Most importantly, how does Mansato enforce the "no seed saving" policy? I buy plenty of hybrid garden seed every year and I have yet to see a warning lable instructing me to not save seeds. I wonder if some of the scare from RR soy beans is "drifting" (hehe) towards the garden seed discussion.


Nabber, it is somewhat vague with some groups using a forty year time frame to qualify a variety as an heirloom and others using shorter periods but there is usually still enough history or background to set them apart.

Monsanto does not own all hybrids and hybrids are vastly different from GMO varieties. Hybrids usually aren't restricted or protected to the same degree as GMO's. Partly because most hybrid crosses aren't stable and saving seeds from them is a crap shoot as you never know what traits you will wind up with from the offspring of seeds that you save and replant.

Monsanto can easily identify and document even traces of GMO material in saved seed and then enforce the restrictions through litigation.


----------



## VeggieGardener

Scrapfe said:


> So? Didn’t I say that Monsanto owned some seed distribution companies but not others, Seminis and De Ruiter are only two, what‘s your point???


Scrapfe, maybe you over looked the part about "and regional brands" which could combine with Seminis and De Ruiter to make up the vast majority of all seed distribution.

My point is that I expected your bias would allow you to read Monsanto's own admission that they ARE a seed business and continue to maintain that they aren't... and that as usual you would continue to assert that everything you post is a fact in one twisted way or another.


----------



## Gypsi

Well now this whole kettle is all stirred up again. I'm sorry. I was part of it. It doesn't matter how much Scrapfe extolls the virtues of Monsanto, I'm still not gonna like them.

And knowledge doesn't always produce truth. Enough knowledge can then be used to manipulate facts and nuances to mislead, and increase power exponentially. 

I'd name some examples, but since it is unlikely that I will change anyone's mind, I'm going back to packing orders and figuring out a woodware order. If you want to help me shop Mann Lake - tip request on the hardware thread.

I've got to sleep, early job in the morning, and it's a long one.

And as Lauri said: just follow the money. Who has the most to gain by said manipulations usually has blueberry pie all over their face.


----------



## Nabber86

VeggieGardener said:


> Monsanto does not own all hybrids and hybrids are vastly different from GMO varieties. Hybrids usually aren't restricted or protected to the same degree as GMO's. Partly because most hybrid crosses aren't stable and saving seeds from them is a crap shoot as you never know what traits you will wind up with from the offspring of seeds that you save and replant.


So I guesss I dont see the problem of Mansanto having control over hybrid seeds. 

The GMO thing is a completely different issue and really has nothing to do with purchasing seeds for the garden, unless you plant RR Soybeans between your rows of tomatoes.


----------



## Gypsi

I'll be buying a lot of seeds this year and storing at a controlled temp and humidity for future years. I have zero reason to trust monsanto. What I can get in heirloom varieties will be first choice. right now monsanto hasn't had time to tamper with the rest, in my understanding.


----------



## Nabber86

Do you think that Monsanto's goal is to eventually control or eliminate all heirloom seed varities? Thus forcing you to purchase only their hybrids?


----------



## Acebird

No I think Monsanto's goal is to make more and more money with no concern for the environment or the people that they destroy. This is much the same way any monopoly would conduct themselves.


----------



## VeggieGardener

Nabber86 said:


> So I guesss I dont see the problem of Mansanto having control over hybrid seeds.
> 
> The GMO thing is a completely different issue and really has nothing to do with purchasing seeds for the garden, unless you plant RR Soybeans between your rows of tomatoes.


I enjoy the diversity of raising heirloom varieties and don't really need the benefits that most of the hybrids offer, plus I like to have the option of saving my own seeds if I choose to do so, now or in the future. I grow a few hybrids but there are so many more options available if you explore the heirloom seeds that are available.



Nabber86 said:


> Do you think that Monsanto's goal is to eventually control or eliminate all heirloom seed varities? Thus forcing you to purchase only their hybrids?


Who knows what their ultimate goal is, but I agree with Ace that they are out to maximize profits. Eliminating heirlooms and other varieties that they can't control would have to be good for their business and they have purchased small seed companies in the past which offered open pollinated varieties of seed that Monsanto had no interest in continuing. Making money is fine but don't destroy heirloom seeds or restrict the opportunities for growers to maintain and grow their own seeds.


----------



## Gypsi

Monsanto's goal is to make money.
My goal is to have safe food that I know provides healthy nutrients.
Those 2 goals may be on a collision course. For my own goal, I'm saving seeds. Not illegal, not immoral. 

- did you notice that for all the pink ribbon campaigns breast cancer incidence continues to go up, not down? For all the greater volume of food produced, human health is going down. Something is wrong with this picture. It's not my job to figure out what.


----------



## Acebird

Gypsi said:


> It's not my job to figure out what.


You already have. You are what you eat. Same for bees and any living thing you can think of. There is one important ingredient missing in a civilized food source. Dirt! It is very evident between a pastured pig and a barn raised pig.


----------



## sqkcrk

Gypsi said:


> - did you notice that for all the pink ribbon campaigns breast cancer incidence continues to go up, not down?


Really? What is your source? What is the cause?

Nowadays we seem to have people, primarily Politicians, making statements, not fact based, masquerading as facts. If what you say is a fact, that is too bad. But, it is also only part of the story.


----------



## sqkcrk

Acebird said:


> There is one important ingredient missing in a civilized food source. Dirt! It is very evident between a pastured pig and a barn raised pig.


Huh? Are you refering to soil as a source of minerals?


----------



## Acebird

Yes. There are other benefits.


----------



## Nabber86

So all we have to do is eat more DIRT? Then we will all be healthy and the world will be safe from breast cancer? Interesting theory.


----------



## sqkcrk

Acebird said:


> Yes. There are other benefits.


Such as?


----------



## Acebird

Nabber86 said:


> So all we have to do is eat more DIRT? Then we will all be healthy and the world will be safe from breast cancer? Interesting theory.


As usual you twist most of what I say. The benefits are more for male cancers than female and you can read up on it if you like. I think it is just a matter of a few posts and I will get wacked again for derailing a post so I am bowing out.


----------



## sqkcrk

Acebird said:


> As usual you twist most of what I say.


Maybe if you had said something more understandable this sort of thing wouldn't happen. So much.


----------



## Nabber86

Acebird said:


> As usual you twist most of what I say. The benefits are more for male cancers than female and you can read up on it if you like.


Twisting words? You said:


Acebird said:


> There is one important ingredient missing in a civilized food source. Dirt! It is very evident between a pastured pig and a barn raised pig.


I was assuming that you were saying that there are benefits of eating dirt. No? Then you go on to say something really vauge about male versus female cancer, proving that my comment about breast cancer actually 
did have something to do with your eating dirt comment. No?

Where is the "twist", Ace?


----------



## Lauri

And now, back to Beekeeping! 
Smiles everyone


----------

