The Mystery of the Honeybees

"Give me spots on my apples, just leave me the birds and the bees now. Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got til it's gone.." -Joni Mitchell

By now, you've probably heard about the mysterious die-offs of honeybees throughout North America, Canada, and parts of Europe. There have been many theories about the cause of this phenomenon, often called "colony collapse disorder". The Organic Consumers Organization has an excellent site that has compiled information and news articles about the crisis: http://www.organicconsumers.org/bees.cfm

The latest culprit is the pesticide imidacloprid, manufactured by Bayer AG. This insecticide is used not only by farmers, but also by many homeowners as well. The brand names are Admire, Advantage, Gaucho, Merit, Premise and Provado. It is also used in some brands of flea collars.

This is from the Kalamazoo Gazette, Thursday May 24th: "A member of a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, imidacloprid is a synthetic derivative of nicotine and works by impairing the central nervous system of insects, causing their neurons to fire uncontrollably and eventually leading to muscle paralysis and death...

`These things (imidacloprid insecticides) do a great job on termites, fleas, ticks, but people forget honeybees are insects, too,'' said Jerry Hayes, president of the Apirary Inspectors of America and an entomologist with the Florida Department of Agriculture.In the mid-1990s, imidacloprid was implicated in a massive bee die-off in France in which a third of the country's 1.5 million registered hives were lost. After beekeepers protested, imidacloprid was banned for several uses, including treatment of sunflowers and corn seed.

The possibility that neonicotinoids are at the heart of the bee die-off implies a far more complex problem because of their widespread use. Every year these chemicals are applied to hundreds of millions of acres of agricultural lands, gardens, golf courses and public and private lawns across the United States.

Their use on major crops nearly tripled between 1964 and 1982, from 233 million pounds to 612 million pounds of active ingredients. And since then, their use has exploded. By 1999, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported 5 billion pounds of pesticides used on U.S. crops, forests, lawns, flowers, homes and buildings.

Because of imidacloprid's emergence as a primary player in pest management, a painful paradox has developed in the recent debate. Neonicotinoids are needed by farmers and growers to maintain the health of crops, many of which also require pollination by honeybees."

I will post any further developments on this issue as I discover them. Meanwhile, please think twice before using pesticides! I think we are really going to miss the bees once they are gone.