New scientific research suggests that pesticides have a lesser effect on bees than first thought. The debate took to the airwaves last week on BBC’s Radio 4, here’s the full transcript…

Charlotte Smith (Farming Today, BBC Radio 4): Insecticides may not be as bad for bees as previously thought, according to the American researcher who’d linked bee deaths with a type of insecticide, neonicitinoids. Dr Jeff Pettis from the US Agricultural Research Service now says the chemicals don’t appear to have as big an effect on bee health as he first thought. In the US honey bee numbers have fallen by a third and here too there’s been a decline in the bee population. Well as we’ll hear in a moment environmentalists and the pesticide industry disagree on the safety of neonicitinoid insecticides which are applied to seeds and so are taken up by the growing plant…

Dr Pettis first made the link between these chemicals and bee deaths after lab tests.

Dr Jeff Pettis (US Agricultural Research Service): In the lab it seemed clear there was this interaction between very low levels of one of the neonicitinoids and the pathogen. The pathogen went up when they were exposed. Surprisingly though when we went back to those colonies in the field and we had a number of replicates, ten replicate colonies of each one, and we looked at those colonies over time, ‘cause we continued to feed them the pesticide in the field, we didn’t see any change in nosema levels.

CS: So can we conclude that neonicitinoids are safe for bees?

JP: They’re safer than some of the older chemistries certainly. There’s one, one caveat to are they safer, they actually move systemically in the plant so plants, they can either treat the seed or you can treat the soil, the plant will take this up, the bees could be exposed in their pollen and nectar.

CS: Is it really that we don’t know enough about the effects of these insecticides so perhaps there’s an argument for applying the precautionary principle when it comes to using them on farms?

JP: The bulk of evidence over the past ten years in, in a variety of crops has been that bees in some cases are doing better next to crops that used to have other heavy pesticide use.

CS: Knowing what you know would you use a neonicitinoid insecticide?

JP: I might use it in place of a conventional, more conventional one that I know has higher toxicity. So in that sense yes, I think the, the prudent approach is to try to produce food using the, the best methods available. These compounds, they have replaced these more harsh chemicals that were really detrimental to bees, so it really is a balancing act.
I’m doing the research because I’m concerned, I’m highly concerned about pollinator health. But right now I think the balance has to tip in, in favour of their continued use in agriculture, mainly just because of the food production demands that we’re under.

CS: This is though something of a U turn on your original findings which linked neonicitinoids to damaging bee health.

JP: When I was asked about them a few years ago I was surprised by the level of response in, in the lab at very low levels. And with a bit of time in looking back at the colonies as a whole in the field and not seeing the same response, which I definitely would have predicted from the lab studies, it meant that things just aren’t as simple as sometimes they appear.

CS: So from your own research do you conclude that it is a good idea to use neonicitinoids or not?

JP: In light of the evidence that I have to date I would say their use on certain crops is still justified. I think we have to look almost crop by crop. I really can’t give a yes or no answer. It’s, it’s a gradient.

CS: Dr Jeff Pettis from the US Agricultural Research Service.

Listening to that are Matt Shardlow from Buglife, the invertebrate conservation trust, and Dr Julian Little who’s from Bayer Cropscience.

So Matt Shardlow this is all a balancing act.

Matt Shardlow (Buglife): One of the difficulties here is a scientific difference in how easy it is to do lab work and how easy it is to do field work and there’s an awful amount of evidence showing a range of effects in lab work where bees that are exposed to really tiny quantities of neonicitinoids, smaller than they would encounter in the field in pollen and nectar are, are massively impacted in terms of their health. The difficulty with field studies is that it’s much harder to get the information and to control the condition so that your results are scientifically valid. And Jeff Pettis’s …

Dr Julian Little (Bayer Cropscience): But that’s the reason why you have to do those field studies, because if we were just to take laboratory studies as Dr Pettis said earlier, if we’d have just taken the responses from the labs then we wouldn’t have insecticides out there. It’s not surprising in the end that insects …

MS: Julian if I could just finish, as I, as I, Julian …

JL: … are affected by an insecticide (indistinct).

CS: Dr Little you’ve, you’ve made your point, let Matt Shardlow finish his.

MS: So a lot of the studies haven’t been published, they haven’t been peer reviewed. They’re often done over two days and they’re not going to show chronic effects. The work that has been published has now been scientifically reviewed by James Cresswell of Exeter University and he found that even the published work wasn’t able statistically to show the impacts that you would predict from the lab work. And we also have to consider that some of the invertebrates that we’re looking at, for instance moths and butterflies which are also pollinating insects, are orders of magnitude more sensitive to these chemicals than the bees are.

CS: But what Dr Pettis made very clear is that there is no clear yes or no answer here. It’s shades of balancing. So given that we have to feed an increasing number of people don’t we have to just accept that we manage this risk and get on with it?

MS: Well I think those are very similar arguments to the arguments that were used just a few decades ago about DDT aren’t they, you know? And it does take a bit of time for the science to come about through independent means that shows the impacts are big on wildlife and on pollinators. Only yesterday we revealed that in the UK the numbers of incidents involving mass bee deaths from neonicitinoids is on the rise. It’s gone up from nought per cent in 2008 …

Dr Julian Little: No that’s (indistinct) clearly not true and …

MS: … to twenty seven per cent last year in 2010. And when we …

CS: But that’s tiny figures you’re talking there, isn’t it? You’re talking about fifteen incidents altogether and maybe three or four of them might be linked to neonicitinoids.

JL: The idea of saying neonicitinoids, you know, if we were to suspend their use we’d see a big improvement, well that was tried in France for nearly ten years. The result, no improvement whatsoever in bee health.

CS: I’m going to have to bring this discussion to a close. Dr Little do you have any concerns that you are taking risks with something we don’t fully understand yet ‘cause we haven’t given it enough time?

JL: What’s really interesting is that all of the work that’s being done in the field suggests that if used appropriately these products do not pose a risk to insects, important insects such as the honey bee.

CS: Matt Shardlow?

Matt Shardlow: When we put together the Buglife report in 2009 summarising the evidence Bayer and others in the agriculture industry were very keen to point out that there weren’t any mass deaths of bees as a result of these neonicitinoids, but we found out that there are. So you’ve got this accumulation of laboratory studies, very, very weak field studies that aren’t conclusive and then the incoming of new information about increasing bee deaths being reported through the Government. So we think there’s a picture here of, of a chemical where the evidence is building and building that these are causing a damage to the environment and to pollinators.

CS: Matt Shardlow from Buglife and Dr Julian Little from Bayer Cropscience in a rather echoey meeting room, apologies for that. It’s a subject I’m sure we’ll be coming back to.

The buzz about the disappearance of bees continues – it’s a frenzy of speculation, finger pointing and occasionally, research. Here’s a brief round-up of some recent cyberspace chatter on the subject…

Sorry, wrong number

Radiation from mobile phones is under the spotlight once more, CNN reports (with video) on an Indian university research project that involved attaching mobile phones to a hive and powering them up for two fifteen-minute periods each day. After three months, they found the bees stopped producing honey, egg production by the queen bee halved, and the size of the hive dramatically reduced. Additional coverage has revealed that the experiment studied only 4 colonies – 2 of which were used as control subjects. All-in-all an unconvincing piece of research. Sorry, wrong number.
 

Nalo meli

Pests and disease have made the news in Ireland, Scotland and Hawaii. In Ireland a report warns of the potential impact on regional agriculture as the varroa destructor mite threatens to reduce bee populations (bees are a major contributor to pollination). The BBC has reported on an outbreak of American Foulbrood (a disease that kills-off honeybee larvae) in Scotland, adding that in June, experts claimed three of the UK’s 25 bumblebee species had gone extinct, while half had suffered declines of up to 70%. The varroa destructor mite was already identified as a problem in Hawaii, where the Nalo meli (that’s Hawaiian for honeybee) now has to deal with the recently found and highly destructive small hive beetle.
 

Bee friendly

In the UK, 9 research projects will share 10m GBP as part of the nationwide Insect Pollinators Initiative (IPI). Projects will study the effects of various substances, including pesticides, that are believed to have potential influence on the survival of bee populations. Importantly, the studies recognise the need to make towns and cities more ‘bee friendly’, and aim to help identify the spaces and places where bees can thrive in the urban sprawl.  In the US, members of the public are being recruited to join a countrywide bee hunt. Bee hunters across the United States are asked to take pictures of pollinators and the plants they pollinate, and then upload them to the Discover Life website. An online database will keep track of trends in pollinator populations, hopefully illustrating the effects of climate change, pollution and invasive species.
 

Honey talks

The vast majority of bee coverage in the media focusses on the honeybee. This is no surprise when you consider that honeybee keeping (for agricultural pollination, honey and wax production) is a multi-billion dollar a year industry – money talks. But, let’s not forget the other pollinator species that help us grow our food and gardens – for example, the solitary bee.

The solitary bee is not commercially viable as it does not live in conveniently transportable colonies, but it is an important pollinator. As their name suggests, solitary bees live by themselves – they can do this because all females are fertile, unlike honeybees they do not serve and rely on a queen to produce eggs. Their solitary nature makes them an ideal species for at-home conservation projects – building a solitary bee house is as easy as drilling a few holes in a piece of wood (in fact, that’s how you make one). If you are feeling ambitious (and have a large garden) you could try to compete with this one (video) recently built in London…
 

 
If the reported decline of bee populations is news to you, no worries, click on our bee tag for a decent selection of info and news on bee decline and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD – a particular form of bee colony decline experienced in North America and Canada).
 

Everybody loves bees, and so do we. Bees pollinate our plants so that we can grow food, they fulfil a valuable role in ecosystems – they even make honey. As a species, the honey bee is suffering a reported global decline in population, a phenomenon termed ‘Colony Collapse Disorder‘ (CCD). The disappearance of honey bees is an issue that receives regular media attention – coverage that all too often feeds speculation and fails to deliver fact.

CCD is a problem; bees are a major contributor to the pollination of the plants that feed us. The world will have around 9 billion mouths to feed by the year 2050 – you don’t need to be a scientist or mathematician to realise that the sum of less food plus 2 billion extra mouths is an equation that does not balance in our favour.

Scientists and researchers continue to investigate the cause(s) of CCD, and many theories have been presented.Parasitic mites, pesticides and climate change are among some of the more frequently cited causes of CCD.

Some also suggest that bees are disappearing as a result of poor handling. Did you know that bees are commercially farmed? The commercial bee industry is worth an estimated 2.6 billion EURO and is quoted as being responsible for the pollination of 14 billion USD of seeds and crops in the US alone. There are an estimated 2.4 million bee colonies shipped around the US for commercial pollination – impressive numbers.

We cover CCD on this blog because of the frequent links made between the use of certain pesticides, and the disappearance of bees. Below we offer another round-up of recent online coverage of CCD, and in the spirit of encouraging debate, the search for facts, and seeing the whole truth, we present a range of opinions on the causes of CCD.

• Greenish pesticides bee-devil honey makers
• Bees and pesticides
• Researchers seek ’super’ bee cure for a deadly disorder
• Vitamin Bee (deserving of a special mention for it’s fantastic title)
• Bouquet for busy bee Mary after stinging Dail attacks
• Climate change linked to death of 90% of Vancouver Island honey bee population
• Ontario’s major bee losses blamed on varroa

If you have additional news to share, or you want to bee part of the debate, drop us a line below. Maybe you think CCD is not real, or perhaps exaggerated – maybe you have an entirely different view on the subject. Let us know.

Another round-up of online press and research covering the debate on Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), the name given to an apparent global decline in the pollinating bee population. Comments and link contributions are welcomed – look for the ‘Comments’ link at the base of this post.

Press

Trying to Diagnose the Disappearing Bees (Voice of Sandiego.org)
10 Possible Causes of Colony Collapse Disorder (About.com)
Scientists Untangle Multiple Causes of Bee Colony Disorder (Environment News Service)
Habitat loss and disease are bees’ bane, not pesticides (Farmers Weekly Interactive)
Pesticides blamed for killing bees (Telegraph.co.uk)
Global Honey Bee Population Increasing, Despite Local Losses (ecoworldly.com)

Mysterious decline in bee population creates worry (WorldFocusOnline via YouTube)

General reference

Colony collapse disorder (Wikipedia)
Colony collapse disorder – Possible causes and research (Wikipedia)

Research

Colony Collapse Disorder: A Descriptive Study
(van Engelsdorp et al. plosone.org)
Honeybee colony collapse due to Nosema ceranae in professional apiaries
(Higes et al. Environmental Microbiology Reports, via Wiley InterScience)
Distribution and decline of British bumblebees
(Williams / Natural History Museum UK)

As promised, here’s a summary of various reports and comments we’ve found online recently discussing the disappearance of honey bees in Europe and America.

• Hopes rise in puzzle of dying bees (Delaware Online)http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20090309/NEWS/903090314
• Don’t blame amateur keepers for declining bees (Guardian.co.uk)http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/05/beekeepers-endangered-bees
• ‘No proof’ of bee killer theory (BBC)
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7925397.stm
• Haagen-Dazs makes second gift for honeybee research and education (Penn State University)http://live.psu.edu/story/37918

BBC have produced a series of video reports recently on honey bees which you’ll find below.

• Amazing Facts about honey bees
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7925218.stm
• Putting the varroa mite under the microscope
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7925591.stm
• Beekeeper on losing his colony
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7925399.stm
• Bee mystery in Italy
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7613786.stm