# Are beekeepers killing the bees?



## EastSideBuzz (Apr 12, 2009)

Are beekeepers killing the bees?
Posted by Brad Weeks, MD on April 7, 2012

Dr. Weeks’ Comment: Now we are told Imidacloprid, a pesticide is killing the bees. Exposure is not only from flowers but from contaminated high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) which is fed to the bees making CCD an “iatrogenic” problem: one caused by the commercialization of the honey bee. Rather than leaving enough “supers” full of honey to allow the colony to winter over, the fabulous honey is stolen by the beekeeper, sold to market and the hard working bees are fed HFCS – laced with Imidacloprid. Come on FDA – leave the supplement industry alone and clean up our food supply! 


Use of Common Pesticide, Imidacloprid, Linked to Bee Colony Collapse

ScienceDaily (Apr. 5, 2012) — The likely culprit in sharp worldwide declines in honeybee colonies since 2006 is imidacloprid, one of the most widely used pesticides, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH).The authors, led by Alex Lu, associate professor of environmental exposure biology in the Department of Environmental Health, write that the new research provides “convincing evidence” of the link between imidacloprid and the phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), in which adult bees abandon their hives.

The study will appear in the June issue of the Bulletin of Insectology.

“The significance of bees to agriculture cannot be underestimated,” says Lu. “And it apparently doesn’t take much of the pesticide to affect the bees. Our experiment included pesticide amounts below what is normally present in the environment.”

Pinpointing the cause of the problem is crucial because bees — beyond producing honey — are prime pollinators of roughly one-third of the crop species in the U.S., including fruits, vegetables, nuts, and livestock feed such as alfalfa and clover. Massive loss of honeybees could result in billions of dollars in agricultural losses, experts estimate.

Lu and his co-authors hypothesized that the uptick in CCD resulted from the presence of imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid introduced in the early 1990s. Bees can be exposed in two ways: through nectar from plants or through high-fructose corn syrup beekeepers use to feed their bees. (Since most U.S.-grown corn has been treated with imidacloprid, it’s also found in corn syrup.)

In the summer of 2010, the researchers conducted an in situ study in Worcester County, Mass. aimed at replicating how imidacloprid may have caused the CCD outbreak. Over a 23-week period, they monitored bees in four different bee yards; each yard had four hives treated with different levels of imidacloprid and one control hive. After 12 weeks of imidacloprid dosing, all the bees were alive. But after 23 weeks, 15 out of 16 of the imidacloprid-treated hives — 94% — had died. Those exposed to the highest levels of the pesticide died first.

The characteristics of the dead hives were consistent with CCD, said Lu; the hives were empty except for food stores, some pollen, and young bees, with few dead bees nearby. When other conditions cause hive collapse — such as disease or pests — many dead bees are typically found inside and outside the affected hives.

Strikingly, said Lu, it took only low levels of imidacloprid to cause hive collapse — less than what is typically used in crops or in areas where bees forage.

Scientists, policymakers, farmers, and beekeepers, alarmed at the sudden losses of between 30% and 90% of honeybee colonies since 2006, have posed numerous theories as to the cause of the collapse, such as pests, disease, pesticides, migratory beekeeping, or some combination of these factors.

http://weeksmd.com/2012/04/what-is-killing-the-bees/


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## EastSideBuzz (Apr 12, 2009)

Researchers recreate bee collapse with pesticide-laced corn syrup

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

Past research has shown that neonicotinoid pesticides, which target insects' central nervous system, do not instantly kill bees. However, to test the effect of even small amounts of these pesticides on western honeybees (Apis mellifera), Harvard researchers treated 16 hives with different levels of imidacloprid, leaving four hives untreated. After 12 weeks, the bees in all twenty hives—treated and untreated—were alive, though those treated with the highest does of imidacloprid appeared weaker. But by 23 weeks everything had changed: 15 out of the 16 hives (94 percent) treated with imidacloprid underwent classic Colony Collapse Disorder: hives were largely empty with only a few young bees surviving. The adults had simply vanished. The hives that received the highest doses of imidacloprid collapsed first. Meanwhile the five untreated hives were healthy

"There is no question that neonicotinoids put a huge stress on the survival of honey bees in the environment," lead author Chensheng (Alex) Lu, an associate professor at the HSPH, told mongabay.com. "The evidence is clear that imidacloprid is likely the culprit for Colony Collapse Disorder via a very unique mechanism that has not been reported until our study,"

That mechanism? High-fructose corn syrup. Many bee-keepers have turned to high-fructose corn syrup to feed their bees, which the researchers say did not imperil bees until U.S. corn began to be sprayed with imidacloprid in 2004-2005. A year later was the first outbreak of Colony Collapse Disorder.

It doesn't take much to eventually kill the bees accord to Lu, who said an incredibly small amount (20 parts per billion) of imidacloprid was enough to lead to Colony Collapse Disorder within 6 months.

More evidence

Lu's research follows two widely-reported studies last week that also linked Colony Collapse Disorder to neonicotinoid pesticides.

A U.K. team exposed buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) to small doses of imidacloprid, and placed the bees in an enclosed natural setting where they could forage free. After six weeks (a far shorter time than Lu's study), the team weighed the nests and compared them with control colonies that had not been exposed. Treated colonies were on average 8-12 percent smaller than the colonies that had not been exposed, which implies that exposed bees were not gathering as much food. However, even more alarming was the case of the missing queens. Pesticide-exposed colonies produced 85 percent fewer queens: a total of only around 1-2 queens per hive. Queens are the most important bees in a colony, since they found new colonies after winter when all the other bees perish.

A second study, this one conducted in France, shows directly how neonicotinoid pesticides may be impacting bees, eventually leading to the collapse of the colony. Researchers glued tiny microchips to free-ranging western honeybees in order to track their movements. They then administered small does of a different neonicotinoid pesticide, called thiamethoxam, to a portion of the bees. Exposed bees were two to three times more likely to not return from foraging excursions than unexposed bees.

Their findings imply that neonicotinoid pesticide weakens a bees' homing ability, so instead of returning to the hive, the bee gets lost and perishes. This would explain why hives impacted by Colony Collapse Disorder are found largely empty of worker bees: the pesticide theoretically impacts their ability to find their way home.

It has taken a long time to understand the link between Colony Collapse Disorder and neonicotinoid pesticides, because scientists were looking for an instant-killer, and not something that caused slow deaths over several months, says Lu. In addition he adds that scientists ignored "the fact that the timeline of increasing use of neonicotinoids coincides with the decline of bee populations."

Lu says policy makers "need to examine the effect of sub-lethal doses of pesticides throughout the life cycle of the test model (in this case honey bees)." He further notes the depending on LD50 findings (i.e. a lethal dose that results in the death of half of the specimens tested) "is not relevant to the modern day chemical toxicity testing." In other words, regulators need to start testing the long-term impacts of chemicals in the environment, and not simply focused on whether or not they instantly kill test subjects.

Bees play vital roles in a wide-variety of ecosystems as pollinators. In turn they provide massive economic benefits to human society, both through the production of honey and, even more importantly, the pollination of a large variety of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and flower crops. The economic value of honeybees in the U.S. alone has been estimated at $8-12 billion.


Read more: http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0405-hance_colonycollapse_pesticides.html#ixzz1rQkRtk00


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

I have many apiaries located on corn ground in the Champlain valley. In recent years, several large farms have bought up most of the available farm land on the New York side of the lake between Rousses Point and Plattsburg, and have planted corn. All the corn in the valley, unless designated as organic, has been treated with Clothianidin neonicitinoid, and has been treated such since 2004. What isn't corn...very little ground isn't in corn...is soybean that doesn't yield nectar, and alfalfa that is cut 3-4 times and also yields no nectar.

So, with a 4% winter loss, colonies very strong this spring, and nucs wintering with big clusters and 3 frames of brood in the middle of March...


...Where's the CCD?


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## cg3 (Jan 16, 2011)

MP- Do you feed HFCS?


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

...has anyone ever found imidacloprid in HFCS?

deknow


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

I can pretty much echo what MP says here. Corn everywhere anymore. I will go one step further though. We have fed in recent years an average of about 4 gallons of corn syrup per hive. Our bees are thriving on it. We have never seen any of these unexplained losses that I keep reading about. Our only major bee losses have been when our mite levels have gotten out of control. I am not going to claim that they do better on it than they would be doing off of honey or sucrose for that matter since I'm not running side by side tests but I can unequivocally state this: our bees (and we have thousands of hives) are thriving on it, they look better this spring than they have in years. It's a business for many of us and the math is pretty simple. Honey is worth nearly 2.00 a pound and corn syrup is about .25.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

cg3 said:


> MP- Do you feed HFCS?


No, but I did for 20 years. Never saw any issues with production colonies. I stopped feeding HFCS, and went back to sucrose because of issues with wintering nucleus colonies on it.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

If I might clarify: All things equal we I would prefer feeding sucrose. For delivery to Midwest and southern locations the cost is much higher for sucrose. California is quite different. Our experience with liquid sucrose has been good for stimulation and colony growth but much less satisfactory for putting weight on hives.


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## cg3 (Jan 16, 2011)

deknow said:


> ...has anyone ever found imidacloprid in HFCS?
> 
> deknow


That was my impression from my reading of the excerpt of the Harvard study but on re-reading it does not specifically say so (the excerpt). http://home.ezezine.com/1636/1636-2012.04.05.17.00.archive.html 
I'm not critisizing, just looking for some reassurance about the ever-increasing amount of corn around me. With the exception of an occasional rotation of beans, farmers here have given up growing anything else.


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## cg3 (Jan 16, 2011)

Well, maybe it does:



> Bees can be exposed in two ways – through nectar from plants or through high-fructose corn syrup beekeepers use to feed their bees. As most U.S.-grown corn has been treated with imidacloprid, it's also found in corn syrup..


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## deknow (Jul 17, 2006)

...I believe that the source Lu uses for this is a Benbrook document (second document in the references). Benbrook claims to have found "traces", but offers no data.

deknow


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

cg3 said:


> Well, maybe it does:


I am not sure anyone has actually proven that one necessarily follows the other though Idont know why. Seems that it should be pretty easy to test and it should also be fairly easy to test various concentrations on hives to find at what point adverse reactions are seen but by most accounts the most recent study did not do that very well. All beekeepers want the straight unbiased answers to these questions as they affect our livelihoods. Trouble is when it becomes so politicized that people preface their opinions by making sure everyone understands that these companies are evil first and foremost that an unbiased discussion becomes impossible. it sure is nice when somebody level headed like Dean comes along and offers some clarity.


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## EastSideBuzz (Apr 12, 2009)

Is there something we can add to the HFCS to counteract the chemical? That should be the easy solution.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

EastSideBuzz said:


> Is there something we can add to the HFCS to counteract the chemical? That should be the easy solution.


First do no harm. We have some hinting that even at undetectable levels bees may be affected. Good luck testing such an hypothesis which assumes that there are no other undetectable agents at work.


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

the question of pesticides in HFCS was asked on bee-l and this is the response

>
> >Exactly when has a neonic been measured in HFCS -- and at what
> concentration?


Thanks for this Allen. Yes, talk is cheap, actual data is of far more
value.

I checked with Dr. Roger Simonds of USDA, who does all the pesticide
testing for the US food supply.
He checked samples of five brands of HFCS and found no neonics.

So unless Bob or Dr. Taylor have actual data, perhaps we can lay this urban
legend to rest.

Unfortunately, it will soon be propagated, due to some ludicrous
extrapolation in a recent "study" by a researcher who obviously knows
little about bees or pesticides, but somehow managed to get a paper
accepted to the "journal" Bulletin of Insectology.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Informative post Mike. There is so much mis-information out there right now that it's only natural for well intentioned people to draw a lot of erroneous conclusions.


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## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

And then there's the question, if there are neonics in HFCS, is it really harmful?

"Experimental study on the toxicity of imidacloprid given in syrup to honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies"
Jean-Paul Faucon et al.

Abstract: 

> Two groups of eight honey bee colonieswere fed with two different concentrations of imidacloprid in saccharose syrup during summer. Their development and survival were followed in parallel with control hives (unfed or fed with saccharose syrup) until the end of the following winter.

> The parameters followed were: adult bee activity (number of bee entering the hive and pollen carrying activity), adult bee population level, capped brood area, frequency of parasitic and other diseases, mortality, number of frames with brood after wintering and a global score of colonies after wintering. mortality was very low in all groups, with no difference between imidacloprid-fed and control colonies.

> Further research should now address several hypotheses: the troubles described by bee keepers have causes other than imidacloprid; if such troubles are really due to this insecticide, they may only be observed either when bees consume contaminated pollen, when no other sources of food are available, in the presence of synergic factors (that still need to be identified), with some particular races of bees or when colonies are not strong and healthy.


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