# Bayer launches Bee Care Tour - smoke & mirrors?



## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

This link may be the source of the quote from Robyn Kneen used in post#1:
http://www.agri-pulse.com/bayer-forum-bees-22713.asp

Or, here is Bayer's press release on this topic - somewhat longer than the article above:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/2/prweb10468307.htm


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Do they really care - or are they just trying to protect their products?

Seriously? They are a corporation... what other goal does any corporation ever have? Their only "moral value" is that they make money for their investors...


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## BlueDiamond (Apr 8, 2011)

I would have preferred that Bayer take a bolder approach to defending the neonics. Like making movies for the public to see that show that when hives are placed among vast monocultures of midwest field corn, the bees do not collect hardly any corn pollen and almost never drink guttation water and therefore are not hardly exposed to the neonics. And showing how feral colonies survive in the vicinity of corn monocultures. And showing how in the vast majority of real world field situations, corn planter dust is not a significant problem. And showing that although beekeepers in some corn belt states like Ohio tend to have above average annual losses of colonies, other corn belt states like South Dakota do not, hence the underlying health problem is not likely corn pesticide related.

The sad part of all this focus on possible pesticide effects is that it distracts attention away from much more serious and difficult to solve issues like how the high price of corn and soybeans is causing farmers to farm more conservation reserve program land, cut down shelter belts and install more drain tile so they can farm land where wildflowers currently grow. And because of our 16 trillion dollar federal deficit, it will not be possible for the taxpayers to be able to afford to pay farmers not to expand the amount of land they farm.


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## rniles (Oct 10, 2012)

I'm not sure that thinking a pesticide might be killing bees distracts undue attention away from more serious and difficult issues.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250423/


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## BlueDiamond (Apr 8, 2011)

rniles said:


> I'm not sure that thinking a pesticide might be killing bees distracts undue attention away from more serious and difficult issues.
> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250423/


Whenever researchers try to acquire real world field evidence of this alledged killing, they fail to do so:
Exposure to clothianidin seed-treated canola has no long-term impact on honey bees.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17598537

So it stands to reason that even if the neonics were banned in the USA there would be no change in the annual colony mortality statistics.


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## rniles (Oct 10, 2012)

BlueDiamond said:


> the bees do not collect hardly any corn pollen and almost never drink guttation water and therefore are not hardly exposed to the neonics.


From http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250423/ :
_Sampling of the waste talc from planting activities revealed that extremely high concentrations of clothianidin were found in talc exposed to treated seed._

_Collection of pollen from traps in the field demonstrated that thiamethoxam was present in 3 of 20 samples, while pollen containing clothianidin was present in 10 of 20 samples_

*Maize pollen was frequently collected by foraging honey bees while it was available: maize pollen comprised over 50% of the pollen collected by bees, by volume, in 10 of 20 samples.*

*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*

From http://www.anses.fr/Documents/SANT-Ra-MortaliteAbeillesEN.pdf
_a residue of clothianidin (1.8 ng/bee) in the dead bees and a quantifiable level of the same molecule in two samples of bee bread (25 and 40 μg/kg of clothianidin) were detected._

_for which poor conditions of coated maize seed use (PonchoProNT, the active molecule of which is clothianidin) were to blame for the acute mortality of bee colonies in around 11,500 apiaries (Rozenkranz and Wallner, 2008)._

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/cps-spc/pubs/pest/_decisions/erc2010-4374/index-eng.php
*Clothianidin, on the other hand, is highly toxic to bees through oral or contact exposure.*

_The PMRA concluded that it is highly probable that exposure to clothianidin caused the bee mortality in Ste-Martine. Even though it is not clear how the bees were exposed to clothianidin in this incident, this conclusion is supported by the fact that residues of clothianidin were found in dead bees, clothianidin is known to be highly toxic to bees and that clothianidin was not found in control bees which were collected from a healthy hive in another location._


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