#bee deaths

Beekeepers in Campeche are blaming agrochemical testing linked to Bayer-Monsanto for the deaths of more than 300,000 bees in their apiaries. The mass bee death affected around 100 apiaries and up to 2,500 hives in San Francisco Suctuc and Crucero Oxá, in the municipality of Hopelchén. Beekeepers report combined economic losses of up to 12 million pesos (US $663,000). The cause of the incident is unconfirmed until laboratory tests are concluded. But some farmers allege it is linked to aerial fumigation of corn, sorghum and soy crops at the Zenit ranch near Crucero Oxá, which they say is operated by agrochemical giant Bayer-Monsanto. “One of Bayer’s engineers or technicians allowed us to take samples from one of their crops after the bees started to die,” José Manuel Poot Chan, one of the affected beekeepers, told the newspaper La Jornada Maya. “We are exhausting all possible legal instances, while members of the Welfare Ministry already came to offer humanitarian social aid to cover part of the damages,” he added. Poot Chan said that the 50-hectare Zenit ranch is on loan to Bayer Monsanto from a local businessman. The beekeepers suspect the multinational is using it to test new agrochemical products.

“Safe” Zika pesticide nukes millions of bees [Report by Jon Rappoport]

  By Jon Rappoport

Millions of bees have just died in South Carolina, because Dorchester County officials decided to attack Zika mosquitoes from the air, from planes, with a pesticide called Naled.

The Washington Post reports, in an article headlined: “‘Like it’s been nuked’: Millions of bees dead after South Carolina sprays for Zika mosquitoes.”

“The county acknowledged the bee deaths Tuesday.‘…

By Chelsea Harvey, Washington Post, May 13, 2016

If there’s any animal that can’t seem to catch a break, it’s the honeybee. Thanks to what scientists believe is a combination of disease, parasites, pesticides and other environmental stressors, honeybee colonies have experienced significant losses over the past decade or so--a phenomenon that’s troubling to say the least, given the insect’s immense importance when it comes to pollinating food crops and other plants. But despite recent efforts to increase protections for the honeybee, new surveys suggest that the insect is still suffering--perhaps now more than ever.

A survey released this week by the Bee Informed Partnership, a collaborative organization of honeybee researchers around the country, revealed that beekeepers in the United States lost 44 percent of their colonies in the past year--the second highest annual loss reported in the past 10 years. Colony “losses” refer to colonies whose bees died from any number of possible reasons, such as disease. They do not necessarily refer to hives stricken by colony collapse disorder, which is a well-publicized but very specific phenomenon that occurs when a colony’s worker bees suddenly and mysteriously abandon the nest.

Notably, the survey indicated that bee losses during the summer were just as high as bee losses during the winter--an alarming finding, considering summer is the time of year when bees should be at their healthiest.

“The summer is boom time for bees--lots of forage,” said Dennis VanEngelsdorp, the survey’s project director and an entomologist at the University of Maryland. “We usually think of this as a very good time for bees. When we first started this [survey] 10 years ago, we didn’t even monitor summer losses because we didn’t think this would be significant.”

Altogether, the study surveyed more than 5,700 beekeepers managing nearly 400,000 honeybee colonies across the country. The findings indicated that about 28 percent of managed colonies were lost during both the 2015 summer and the 2015-2016 winter. Because beekeepers tend to add, remove or restore colonies throughout the year, these numbers come out to about a 44 percent loss of all colonies managed between April 2015 and March 2016.

A second survey, published Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, supports these dire findings. Those results suggested that beekeeping operations throughout the country, maintaining five or more colonies at a time, lost anywhere from 12 to 18 percent of their colonies each quarter between January 2015 and April 2016.

Scientists say they think the losses stem from a variety of factors, some of which may be more prevalent than others.

“What we think from other surveys is there are three major drivers,” VanEngelsdorp said. “Pesticides, poor nutrition and, most importantly, parasites.”

At the end of the day, scientists generally believe that no single factor is causing the demise of honeybees in the United States--and recent efforts to help the insects recover reflect this view. Last year, for instance, the White House released its first National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators, a document that stressed the importance of increased research on the effects of pesticides and establishing larger areas of good-quality habitat for pollinators, such as bee and butterfly gardens in urban areas.

In the coming weeks, the Bee Informed Partnership will continue to break down the results of the most recent survey in order to analyze whether any particular regions or types of beekeeping operations seem to be more affected than others and to examine the causes of death most suspected by beekeepers. Gaining a greater understanding of these kinds of trends is a matter of immense importance to agriculture, and therefore national food security, VanEngelsdorp said.

Survey: Spike in bee deaths could impact economy

A survey released this week shows a sharp increase in the death of American honey bees. According to numbers released by the United Stated Department of Agriculture (USDA), 28 percent of bees died this past winter, up six percent from a year ago. Some economists worry not only about the health of bees, but the impact the increase in deaths could have on food prices. The USDA estimates about 25…

National sampling finds neonicotinoid insecticides in more than half of streams

Neonicotinoid insecticides (neonicotinoids) were present in a little more than half of the streams sampled across the United States and Puerto Rico, according to a new U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study. This is the first national-scale study of the presence of neonicotinoids in urban and agricultural land use settings across the Nation and was completed as part of ongoing USGS investigations of…

By Leah Sottile, Washington Post, August 8, 2015

CORVALLIS, Ore.--On a recent summer morning in a bright green meadow off a winding country road, Devon and Landon Prescott were prying open beehives. They moved quickly among the 1,400 wooden boxes, eyeing each brood and locating its queen.

Landon, 19, spoke up after finding four hives with missing queens.

“That’s pretty bad,” said Devon, 21, peering over his brother’s shoulder to search the bee-covered screen. A hive without a queen is likely doomed. “That’s really high.”

There was a crate of replacement queens in the truck, each housed in its own tiny wooden box. Each queen, specially ordered and shipped from warm-weather climates, costs at least $20. Too many queenless hives could put young beekeepers like the Prescotts out of business.

Over the past decade, billions of bees have been lost to colony collapse disorder, an umbrella term for factors thought to be killing honeybees in droves and threatening the nation’s food supply. Amid the die-off, beekeepers have been going to extraordinary lengths to save both their bees and their livelihoods.

That effort may finally be paying off. New data from the Agriculture Department show the number of managed honeybee colonies is on the rise, climbing to 2.7 million nationally in 2014, the highest in 20 years.

Bees are still dying at unacceptable rates, especially in Florida, Oklahoma and several states bordering the Great Lakes, according to the Bee Informed Partnership, a research collaborative supported by the USDA. Last month, Ohio State University’s Honey Bee Update noted that losses among the state’s beekeepers over the past winter were as high as 80 percent.

Oregon has taken less of a hit. Researchers say innovative beekeepers will be critical to helping bees bounce back.

“People ask me, ‘The bees are going to be extinct soon?’” said Ramesh Sagili, principal investigator at the Oregon State University Honey Bee Lab. “I’m not worried about bees being extinct here. I’m worried about beekeepers being extinct.”

Beekeeping in America was already a graying industry when the rigors of colony collapse began to take their toll. A new generation of backyard beekeepers and urban hobbyists--worried about the fate of bees--has sprung up in the face of the disorder, said Tim Tucker, a Kansas beekeeper who serves as president of the American Beekeeping Federation.

But “what’s not increasing are the commercial levels of beekeepers,” said Tucker, who estimates that the number of professionals on his membership list has plummeted by half since the mid-1990s.

That makes Devon Prescott something of an anomaly among the nation’s estimated 2,200 commercial pollinators: a young man. He networks with other beekeepers on Facebook and Instagram, and sees his work as an essential part of a global cause.

“I feel a social responsibility to provide good bees,” Prescott said. “It makes me happy to look at the part that I’m playing.”

Still, Prescott, who trucks bees from the almond fields of California to the cherry orchards of the Columbia River Gorge, worries about the economics of the business. He said he has lost track of the number of hives that have turned up dead or queenless since he started keeping bees four years ago. Each dead hive equals a loss of as much as $200.

Back in his truck, Prescott shook his head. “Why are they so hard to keep alive?”

He looked across the cab at his brother. “What do you think, Landy?”

“I don’t know why it’s so hard. They’ve been around so long,” Landon said. “Why would we need to help them so much?”

Obsessing over bee health was unheard of 50 years ago, said Marla Spivak, a University of Minnesota professor of entomology. “In the past, it was very easy to keep bees. Throw them in a box, and they make honey and survive. Now, it takes lots of management.”

Researchers think a variety of factors are responsible for colony collapse: Monocultural farming practices, diseases and pesticides are suspected. Also, the tiny varroa mite, which sucks bee blood and leaves open wounds. The mite arrived in the United States in the late 1980s and “has changed the face of beekeeping,” Sagili said.

Bee death was not new to beekeepers. In their 2012 working paper, “Colony Collapse Disorder: The Market Response to Disaster,” agricultural economists Randal Rucker and Walter Thurman write that seasonal die-offs have always occurred, with beekeepers losing 14 percent of their colonies, on average, each winter.

But since colony collapse was first documented in 2006, the annual die-offs have been far more dramatic, forcing beekeepers to use increasingly creative techniques to keep their bees alive. One common tactic: restocking queenless hives with fresh, new queens. Another: splitting a healthy hive in two and starting a second hive with a new queen. Beekeepers can also turn to packaged bees, which cost about $55 for 12,000 workers and a fertilized queen.

“Beekeepers know what to do,” Rucker said in an interview. After 2006, “they adjusted and they adjusted quickly.”

Research suggests that beekeepers are being at least partially compensated for that effort with higher honey prices and higher pollination fees. For California almonds, which require the pollination help of 1.6 million hives per year, beekeepers earn roughly $175 per hive.

Other crops pay significantly less, however. For example, blueberries, cherries and pears pay around $40 per hive in Oregon.

Then there are the long seasons and constant travel.

In Oregon, commercial beekeepers work from January to October, pollinating not only crops of fruits and vegetables but also the multibillion-dollar Willamette Valley seed and wine industries.

And beekeepers who avoid big colony-collapse losses face other potential disasters. In late June, a truck filled with hives tipped in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, sending the load tumbling off the highway. Hundreds of thousands of bees perished.

“It is hard, and it costs a lot of money,” said George Hansen, past president of the ABF and a beekeeper in Oregon for 35 years. “There’s a certain toll you have to pay for when things go wrong. ... How many times can you take those kinds of hits and still get up and do it again?”

Henry Storch, 32, does it because he felt a calling to beekeeping. A farrier by trade, Storch said he could make more money shoeing horses. But five years ago, he became obsessed with the notion that he could build a better bee.

“I put some out in the middle of nowhere, and the bees were doing really good,” Storch said, popping open a hive with his bare hands. He barely flinched as a bee stung him on the upper lip.

Storch’s mountain-bred “survivor” bees are like open-range cows: tough, hardened and less in need of close management than the bees he trucks to the California almond fields. Storch compares the effort to growing organic, non-GMO food.

“I’m trying to create something with a certain set of traits that’s more resilient, that provides a solution to world problems,” he said.

Storch keeps his costs low, using his arms instead of a forklift to load each 60-pound wooden hive onto his 20-year-old truck.

With low costs, he can experiment. Rumbling through the Oregon wilderness, for example, he noticed a profusion of invasive plant species. He wondered: Can I make honey from that?

“If you’re worried about having non-native species here, you’ll just get bummed out,” he said. “With the bees, it’s potential.”

In the wildlands of Oregon’s Coast Range, Storch found that his survivor bees thrived on invasive plants. He began bottling the result, selling jars of honey produced from weird, rarely seen varietals such as big-leaf maple, blackberry and lotus--even poison oak.

The idea has resonated among Portland’s foodies. One Portland cafe, Sweedeedee, uses Storch’s Old Blue Raw Honey in all of its baked goods; a local food critic declared the salted honey pie “divine.” Another high-end bistro hosted a $50-per-plate, four-course “honey brunch” featuring Storch’s honey in everything from honey-cured bacon to honey “drinking porridge.”

While Storch depends on almonds to stay in business, he always keeps some survivor bees in the mountains to make their “really rad honey.”

“Bee breeding has gotten really skewed toward almonds,” he said. “That’s part of why I’m doing my own thing.”

Earlier this year, Storch separated five breeder queens from his survivor colonies and gave them away to beekeepers in California.

5X5 – 2. CROPS

• 1 – 2,4-D Report Expected Next Week The World Health Organization is expected to release a report early next week that could alter public perception of 2,4-D.

Members of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a division within WHO, met from June 2–9 in France to review the cancer risk associated with 2,4-D, the oldest and still one of the most widely used herbicides in the…