Movement on the bee pesticide front

Posted 8/21/12

Recent developments regarding neonicotinoid pesticides (neonics)—which are being blamed as partly responsible for billions of dead honeybees lost over the past decade or so—have been announced on …

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Movement on the bee pesticide front

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Recent developments regarding neonicotinoid pesticides (neonics)—which are being blamed as partly responsible for billions of dead honeybees lost over the past decade or so—have been announced on a number of fronts.

The first is that the city of Portland, OR earlier this month banned the use of the pesticides on all city-owned parks and properties. That makes at least eight municipalities in the U.S. that have banned neonics.

Scott Hoffman Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, said that when the measure passed the city council, “Portland is showing itself as an early leader in protecting our pollinators from harmful chemicals. Today’s vote demonstrates the council’s dedication to long-term sustainability.”

Closer to home, on April 23, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that New York State would establish an interagency taskforce to develop a pollinator protection plan to promote the health and recovery of pollinator populations in the state.

A press release from Cuomo’s office said, “To address the alarming decline in pollinators—which includes honeybees, wild bees and butterflies—that has occurred in recent years, the governor has directed the Commissioners of the Department of Agriculture and Markets and the Department of Environmental Conservation to meet with farmers, research institutions and key industry leaders to develop a roadmap to conserve and grow pollinator populations across the state.

“Over the last 50 years, the number of pollinators, including honey bees, native bees, bats and butterflies, has dropped significantly. Scientists believe many of these losses are caused by a combination of factors such as poor nutrition, loss of foraging habitat, parasites, pesticides, pathogens, lack of genetic diversity and poor land management practices.”

Another development, reportedly coming soon, will be recommendations from the White House Pollinator Health Task Force concerning the best ways to deal with pollinator die offs.

While these moves are steps in the right direction, it seems that at least part of the solution to the problem would have to be removal of neonics from the environment. That will be no easy task, because they have become one of the biggest-selling pesticides in use today. The companies that produce these pesticides, such as Bayer Crop Science, are not likely to abandon the business without an expensive fight.

One of the most concerning uses of neonics is when they are used for seed treatment. Reportedly, 95% of the seed corn planted in this country is treated with neonics. When the seed grows, the pesticide leaches up through the entire plant, including into its nectar and pollen. Bees and other pollinators feed on nectar and pollen.

A widely-cited study in the journal Nature, published on April 22, found that rather than bees being repelled by the pesticides as had been thought, they were actually attracted to them in some cases. Neonics are similar to nicotine from tobacco, and some researchers have theorized that bees and other pollinators become addicted to the poisons. Given the choice between consuming a plain sugary solution and one with neonics, the bees chose the latter.

The evidence against neonics continues to grow. Another study also published in Nature showed that neonic pesticides are even more problematic for bumblebees than for honeybees.

Dr. Lynn Dicks, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, said, “It is a well-designed and careful piece of research. The methods are entirely transparent and most of the fieldwork was carried out ‘blind’—the field workers didn’t know whether they were working in control or treated fields. It is also independent of the neonicotinoid manufacturers—funded by the Swedish Government.”

The manufacturers were not impressed; spokespersons for them said, among other things, that the concentrations the insects were exposed to did not reflect real-world conditions.

The European Union has a moratorium on several neonic pesticides that runs until the end of this year. This new research makes it more likely that moratorium will be extended. It seems increasingly possible that at some point, neonics will go the way of DDT and be banned entirely from agricultural use. Both neonics and DDT, as well as hundreds of other pesticides that are introduced each year, should be thoroughly tested before being dumped into the environment across the planet for the sake of a corporation’s bottom line.

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