{"id":30282,"date":"2013-06-17T12:00:48","date_gmt":"2013-06-17T11:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=30282"},"modified":"2015-05-06T09:00:16","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T08:00:16","slug":"worldwide-honey-bee-collapse-a-lesson-in-ecology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/06\/worldwide-honey-bee-collapse-a-lesson-in-ecology\/","title":{"rendered":"Worldwide Honey Bee Collapse: A Lesson in Ecology"},"content":{"rendered":"

We know what is killing the bees. Worldwide Bee Colony Collapse is not as big a mystery as the chemical companies claim. The systemic nature of the problem makes it complex, but not impenetrable. Scientists know that bees are dying from a variety of factors\u2014pesticides, drought<\/a>, habitat destruction, nutrition deficit, air pollution<\/a>, global warming<\/a> and so forth. The causes of collapse merge and synergize, but we know that humanity is the perpetrator, and that the two most prominent causes appear to be pesticides and habitat loss.<\/p>\n

\"colony\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Biologists have found over 150 different chemical residues in bee pollen, a deadly \u201cpesticide cocktail\u201d according to University of California apiculturist Eric Mussen. The chemical companies Bayer<\/a>, Syngenta<\/a>, BASF<\/a>, Dow<\/a>, DuPont<\/a> and Monsanto<\/a> shrug their shoulders at the systemic complexity, as if the mystery were too complicated. They advocate no change in pesticide policy. After all, selling poisons to the world\u2019s farmers is profitable.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, wild bee habitat shrinks every year as industrial agribusiness converts grasslands and forest into monoculture farms, which are then contaminated with pesticides. To reverse the world bees decline, we need to fix our dysfunctional and destructive agricultural system.<\/p>\n

Bee Collapse<\/b><\/p>\n

Apis mellifera<\/i>\u2014the honey bee, native to Europe, Africa and Western Asia\u2014is disappearing around the world. Signs of decline also appear now in the eastern honey bee, Apis cerana<\/i>.<\/p>\n

This is no marginal species loss. Honey bees\u2014wild and domestic\u2014perform about 80 percent of all pollination worldwide. A single bee colony can pollinate 300 million flowers each day. Grains are primarily pollinated by the wind, but the best and healthiest food\u2014fruits, nuts and vegetables\u2014are pollinated by bees. Seventy out of the top 100 human food crops, which supply about 90 percent of the world\u2019s nutrition, are pollinated by bees.<\/p>\n

Tonio Borg, European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy, calculates that bees \u201ccontribute more than \u20ac22 billion ($30 billion U.S. dollars) annually to European agriculture.\u201d Worldwide, bees pollinate human food valued at more than \u20ac265 billion ($350 billion). The bee collapse is a challenge to human enterprise on the scale of global warming, ocean acidification<\/a> and nuclear war<\/a>. Humans could not likely survive a total bee collapse.<\/p>\n

Worker bees (females) live several months. Colonies produce new worker bees continuously during the spring and summer, and then reproduction slows during the winter. Typically, a bee hive or colony will decline by five to 10 percent over the winter and replace those lost bees in the spring. In a bad year, a bee colony might lose 15-20 percent of its bees.<\/p>\n

In the U.S., where bee collapse first appeared, winter losses commonly reached 30-50 percent and in some cases more. In 2006, David Hackenberg, a bee keeper for 42 years, reported a 90 percent die-off among his 3,000 hives. U.S. National Agriculture Statistics show a honey bee decline<\/a> from about 6 million hives in 1947 to 2.4 million hives in 2008, a 60 percent reduction.<\/p>\n

The number of working bee colonies per hectare provides a critical metric of crop health. In the U.S., among crops that require bee pollination, the number of bee colonies per hectare has declined by 90 percent since 1962. The bees cannot keep pace with the winter die-off rates and habitat loss.<\/p>\n

Europe Responds, U.S. Dithers<\/b><\/p>\n

In Europe, Asia and South America, the annual die-off lags behind the U.S. decline, but the trend is clear, and the response is more appropriate. In Europe, Rabobank<\/a> reported that the annual European die-offs have reached 30-35 percent and that the colonies-per-hectare count is down 25 percent. In the 1980s, in Sichuan, China, pear orchard pesticides obliterated local bees, and farmers must now pollinate crops by hand with feather dusters.<\/p>\n

A European Food Safety Authority<\/a> scientific report determined that three widely used pesticides\u2014nicotine-based clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiametoxam\u2014pose \u201chigh acute risks\u201d for bees. These neonicotinoid pesticides\u2014used in soils, on foliage and embedded in seeds\u2014persist at the core of the toxic pesticide cocktail found in bee hives.<\/p>\n

A Greenpeace scientific report<\/a> identifies seven priority bee-killer pesticides\u2014including the three nicotine culprits\u2014plus clorpyriphos, cypermethrin, deltamethrin and fipronil. The three neonicotinoids act on insect nervous systems. They accumulate in individual bees and within entire colonies, including the honey that bees feed to infant larvae. Bees that do not die outright, experience sub-lethal systemic effects, development defects, weakness and loss of orientation. The die-off leaves fewer bees and weaker bees, who must work harder to produce honey in depleted wild habitats. These conditions create the nightmare formula for bee colony collapse.<\/p>\n

Bayer makes and markets imidacloprid and clothianidin; Syngenta produces thiamethoxam. In 2009, the world market for these three toxins reached over $2 billion. Syngenta, Bayer, Dow, Monsanto and DuPont control nearly 100 percent of the world market for genetically engineered<\/a> (GE) pesticides, plants and seeds.<\/p>\n

In 2012, a German court criminally charged Syngenta with perjury for concealing its own report showing that its genetically modified corn had killed livestock. In the U.S., the company paid out $105 million to settle a class-action lawsuit for contaminating the drinking water for more than 50 million citizens with its \u201cgender-bending\u201d herbicide Atrazine<\/a>. Now, these corporate polluters are waging multi-million-euro campaigns to deny responsibility for bee colony collapse.<\/p>\n

In May, the European Commission responded, adopting a two-year ban on the three\u00a0neonicotinoid pesticides. Scientists will use the two years to assess the recovery rate of the bees and a longer-term ban on these and other pesticides.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the U.S. dithers and supports the corporations that produce and market the deadly pesticides. In May, as European nations took action, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved the neonicotinoid pesticides, in spite of a U.S. Department of Agriculture report warning about the dangers of the bee colony collapse.<\/p>\n

Also in May, President Obama, signed the now infamous \u201cMonsanto Protection Act<\/a>\u201c\u2014written by Monsanto lobbyists\u2014that gives biotech companies immunity in federal U.S. courts from damages to people and the environment caused by their commercial compounds.<\/p>\n

Solutions Exist<\/b><\/p>\n

Common sense actions could restore and protect the world\u2019s bees. Experienced bee keepers, apiculturists, farmers, the European Commission and the Greenpeace report, Bees in Decline<\/i><\/a> have outlined these solutions:<\/p>\n