Bees Dying From Pesticide By Bayer

Bayer on defensive in bee deaths
German authorities look into allegation that RTP maker's pesticide harms environment

Critics claim that clothianidin is to blame for devastated bee colonies.

Sabine Vollmer, Staff Writer

Bayer CropScience is facing scrutiny because of the effect one of its best-selling pesticides has had on honeybees. A German prosecutor is investigating Werner Wenning, Bayer's chairman, and Friedrich Berschauer, the head of Bayer CropScience, after critics alleged that they knowingly polluted the environment.

The investigation was triggered by an Aug. 13 complaint filed by German beekeepers and consumer protection advocates, a Coalition against Bayer Dangers spokesman, Philipp Mimkes, said Monday.

The complaint is part of efforts by groups on both sides of the Atlantic to determine how much Bayer CropScience knows about the part that clothianidin may have played in the death of millions of honeybees.

Bayer CropScience, which has its U.S. headquarters in Research Triangle Park, said field studies have shown that bees' exposure to the pesticide is minimal or nonexistent if the chemical is used properly.

Clothianidin and related pesticides generated about $1 billion of Bayer CropScience's $8.6 billion in global sales last year. The coalition is demanding that the company withdraw all of the pesticides.

"We're suspecting that Bayer submitted flawed studies to play down the risks of pesticide residues in treated plants," said Harro Schultze, the coalition's attorney. "Bayer's ... management has to be called to account, since the risks ... have now been known for more than 10 years."

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Natural Resources Defense Council is pressing for research information on clothianidin.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved the pesticide in 2003 under the condition that Bayer submit additional data. A lawsuit, which the environmental group filed Aug. 19 in federal court in Washington, accuses the EPA of hiding the honeybee data.

The group thinks the data might show what role chlothianidine played in the loss of millions of U.S. honeybee colonies. Researchers have been puzzled by what is causing the bees to disappear at what is considered an alarming rate. The phenomenon, known as colony collapse disorder, threatens a $15 billion portion of the U.S. food supply.

In the U.S. diet, about one in three mouthfuls comes from crops that bees pollinate.

Scientists are looking at viruses, parasites and stresses that might compromise bees' immune system. In the past two years, Congress has earmarked about $20 million to boost research.

Clothianidin, sold under the brand name Poncho, is used to coat corn, sugar beet and sorghum seeds and protect them from pests. A nerve toxin that has the potential to be toxic for bees, it gets into all parts of the plant that grows from the coated seeds.

In 1999, French regulators banned an older relative of Poncho and subsequently declined approval for clothianidin. French researchers found that bees were a lot more sensitive to the pesticides than Bayer CropScience studies had shown.

Three months ago, German regulators suspended sales of chlothianidine and related chemicals after the family of pesticides was blamed for the destruction of more than 11,000 bee colonies.

The Julius Institute, a state-run crop research institute in Germany, collected samples of dead honeybees and determined that clothianidin caused the deaths.

Bayer CropScience blamed defective seed corn batches.

The company said that the coating came off as the seeds were sown, which allowed unusually high amounts of toxic dust to spread to adjacent areas where bees collected pollen and nectar.

Bayer paid about $3 million in damages, Mimkes said.

Pollinator Protection

1/26/08 Cell Phones Disrupt Sleep - What Do They Do To Dormant Bees?

Arnetz, who spoke to AFP in a telephone interview from the United States, said he and a team of researchers from Sweden's Karolinska Institute and Wayne State University in Michigan had found that mobile phone radiation appeared to cause insomnia, headaches and concentration difficulties. Over a period of 18 months, the scientists studied 35 men and 36 women between the ages of 18 and 45, intermittently exposing some to 884 MHz wireless signals, the equivalent of the radiation received when talking on a cell phone. Others meanwhile were placed in the same conditions but received only sham exposure. "The ones who were exposed reported headaches, it took longer for them to fall asleep and they did not sleep as well through the night," Arnetz said, claiming his was the largest study so far on the subject.

If this exposure can disrupt our sleep, what does it do to bees near cell towers, heavy cell phone users and users of other wireless equipment - including wireless internet?

http://www.pollinator.org/

From the looks of this map, all but 14 states are reporting colony collapse disorder of their European honey bee population...
Map of U.S. States Reporting Colony Collapse Disorder

The following is a 5 page pdf of FAQs on CCD
http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/FAQ/FAQCCD.pdf

Article:
Mystery Ailment Strikes Honeybees
By GENARO C. ARMASThe Associated PressSunday, February 11, 2007; 11:17 PM
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- A mysterious illness is killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production, the livelihood of beekeepers and possibly crops that need bees for pollination.
Researchers are scrambling to find the cause of the ailment, called Colony Collapse Disorder.

Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states. Some affected commercial beekeepers _ who often keep thousands of colonies _ have reported losing more than 50 percent of their bees. A colony can have roughly 20,000 bees in the winter, and up to 60,000 in the summer.

"We have seen a lot of things happen in 40 years, but this is the epitome of it all," Dave Hackenberg, of Lewisburg-based Hackenberg Apiaries, said by phone from Fort Meade, Fla., where he was working with his bees.

The country's bee population had already been shocked in recent years by a tiny, parasitic bug called the varroa mite, which has destroyed more than half of some beekeepers' hives and devastated most wild honeybee populations.

Along with being producers of honey, commercial bee colonies are important to agriculture as pollinators, along with some birds, bats and other insects. A recent report by the National Research Council noted that in order to bear fruit, three-quarters of all flowering plants _ including most food crops and some that provide fiber, drugs and fuel _ rely on pollinators for fertilization.

Hackenberg, 58, was first to report Colony Collapse Disorder to bee researchers at Penn State University. He notified them in November when he was down to about 1,000 colonies _ after having started the fall with 2,900.

"We are going to take bees we got and make more bees ... but it's costly," he said. "We are talking about major bucks. You can only take so many blows so many times."

One beekeeper who traveled with two truckloads of bees to California to help pollinate almond trees found nearly all of his bees dead upon arrival, said Dennis vanEnglesdorp, acting state apiarist for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

"I would characterize it as serious," said Daniel Weaver, president of the American Beekeeping Federation. "Whether it threatens the apiculture industry in the United States or not, that's up in the air."

Scientists at Penn State, the University of Montana and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are among the quickly growing group of researchers and industry officials trying to solve the mystery.

Among the clues being assembled by researchers:

Although the bodies of dead bees often are littered around a hive, sometimes carried out of the hive by worker bees, no bee remains are typically found around colonies struck by the mystery ailment. Scientists assume these bees have flown away from the hive before dying.

_ From the outside, a stricken colony may appear normal, with bees leaving and entering. But when beekeepers look inside the hive box, they find few mature bees taking care of the younger, developing bees.

_ Normally, a weakened bee colony would be immediately overrun by bees from other colonies or by pests going after the hive's honey. That's not the case with the stricken colonies, which might not be touched for at least two weeks, said Diana Cox-Foster, a Penn State entomology professor investigating the problem.

"That is a real abnormality," Hackenberg said.

Cox-Foster said an analysis of dissected bees turned up an alarmingly high number of foreign fungi, bacteria and other organisms and weakened immune systems.

Researchers are also looking into the effect pesticides might be having on bees.

In the meantime, beekeepers are wondering if bee deaths over the last couple of years that had been blamed on mites or poor management might actually have resulted from the mystery ailment.

"Now people think that they may have had this three or four years," vanEnglesdorp said.

Mid-Atlantic Apiculture: http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/index.html
Penn State University Entomology Dept.: http://www.ento.psu.edu/
American Beekeeping Federation: http://www.abfnet.org/

From Organic Gardening - May 2007

1/3 of North American food supply derived directly from (rather than created for food for other foodstuffs) plants requiring "active" pollination (rather than self pollination)
More than 100 crops are grown in North America that require active pollination
It's estimated pollinators help create over $3 billion in crops for US growers.
Worldwide estimates - $40 billion.
2005 was the first year since 1955 that bees were imported to assist in pollination of crops due to low numbers of bees.
24 states reporting Colony Collapse Disorder within its borders.