There are so many things to worry about right now. The elections are coming up, the mega-drought that is hitting our country in the grain belt and beyond, the potential or actual loss of civil rights, of voter's rights, and other First Freedoms.
It just seems like, some days, that the whole world is crashing in all around me. But I just cannot lay down and give up. Oh I want to some days. This morning I would have rather stayed in bed, but I got up before 6 and made sure the animals were watered, and then I set to watering my poor dying pollinator islands. Hoping desperately that there will be blooms on these plants next year for my bees, and for the indigenous pollinators that visit as well.
It's bad enough that we have dealt with extreme droughts 2 years in a row. What this means is a dearth of flowers, dearth meaning shortage or absence [in the extreme]. This is on top of a loss of wild forage due to new construction. And best of all the use of NeoNicotinoid Pesticides as both a major agricultural pesticide application to crops like corn and potatoes, soy, and cotton, but also residential applications to keep that pretty green, chemical golf lawn.
Just in case, if you do not know what Colony Collapse Disorder is, then here is a link to get you started.
So what's the big deal about this? Well NeoNicotinoids appear to be particularly deadly to bees. It hits them in two ways. Since NeoNictotinoids are systemic pesticides that are taken up inside of the plant through the roots, the plant exudes this chemicals through the pollen, nectar and guttation [perspiration droplets] which are all collected by various pollinators, but that in bees, in particular, we know it depresses their immune system. It is like giving bees AIDs. Then the bees die of all sorts of other diseases, which gave the chemical companies involved, plausible deniability with regards to the part they played in this mess.
Researchers found that bees deliberately exposed to minute amounts of the pesticide were, on average, three times as likely to become infected when exposed to a parasite called nosema as those that had not. The findings, which have taken more than three years to be published, add weight to concern that a new group of insecticides called neonicotinoids are behind a worldwide decline in honey bees, along with habitat and food loss, by making them more susceptible to disease. Guardian UK Jan 29, 2012
However, study after study, in addition to a long line of incriminating evidence shows that NeoNicotinoids are killing our Bees--and personally, I hypothesize that these chemicals are killing a lot more than just honey bees and bumble bees.
So we have explored the first mechanism in which these chemicals slowly kill bees. There is a second, more acute means that this chemical kills bees. Before corn in planted, the kernels are dipped in Neonicotinoid pesticides. It is my understanding that when you buy corn seed, that this is why the kernels are sometimes pink instead of gold or amber. Now the pesticide is sticky, so to keep the kernels from sticking to the mechanical planting machines, this pesticide laden corn is then dipped in talc. The powder counteracts the sticky factor. Only thing is, it soaks up high concentrations of the NeoNicotinoids. As the seeds are mechanically planted, that pesticide laden talc is blown out over the fields, and it is at such high concentrations than what is exuded by the plants that take this chemical up, it most likely kills whatever it comes into contact with--in the field, be it insect, bird, fish, even earthworms, and ladybugs.
This is why there are so many abandoned hives that happen in the spring and fall corresponding with corn planting dates. These hives are loosing all of their adult forager bees, and so there are no mature bees that can gather food to feed the newly hatched nurse bees, the queen bee or the brood. Bee Keepers open their hives to find a very small cluster of nurse bees around a starving queen in an empty hive box. It's double whammy for bees that live near these large agricultural centers. First the slow death of eating minute amounts of poison in the nectar and pollen, depressing their immune system on a daily basis, leaving them stressed and vulnerable during the hard work of gathering nectar and pollen, as well as stressed for the winter cluster. Their diet of poison beginning as an egg, a queen and drone fed on this poison from day one.
A queen bee can lay up to 2000 eggs a day, but all that work and all those babies require massive amounts of pollen and honey for food. Making bee bread, and honey requires millions of visits to flowers, bees the help evaporate the moisture from the acquired nectar to turn it into honey, bees to perform duties like cleaning the hive out--such as removing dead bees, fending off or removing intruders like ants or beetles, and defending the hive from robber bees, and wasps, or even skunks or opossums.
Honey Bees from one healthy hive can visit up to 100,000 flowers during daylight hours.
The alert I received regarding this Public Comment period with the EPA was from Beyond Pesticides Action Network.
EPA’s recent decision to deny the petition recognizing that honey bees face “imminent hazard” and requesting the suspension of the pesticide linked to bee die-offs is a blow to beekeepers and over one million citizen petition signatures worldwide. This decision puts beekeepers, rural economies, and our food system at risk. EPA believes the bees are alright, but with hives still averaging losses over 30%, bees are crying out for help. With one in three bites of food reliant on honey bee pollination, it’s imperative that EPA act now!
Eventually we will get to a point where our Honey Bees will be adversely affected, because the systemic losses will be so great [cumulatively speaking] that their genetic diversity will suffer. We will loose the diversity of a global population to such a degree, that inbreeding will become a problem, and that means yet another vector for immune deficiencies, slower or a lack of genes to draw upon for adaptation, and other genetic defects.
EPA has opened a 60-day public comment period on the agency’s decision to deny the request by beekeepers to immediately suspend the use of clothianidin, a pesticide that poses harm to pollinators.
The emergency legal petition to EPA was filed in March 2012 by 25 beekeepers and environmental organizations, and cites significant acute and chronic bee kills across the United States linked to neonicotinoid pesticides, particularly the insecticide clothianidin. The petition asks the agency to suspend all registrations for pesticides containing clothianidin. The petition establishes that EPA failed to follow its own regulations when it granted a conditional, or temporary, registration to clothianidin in 2003 without required data establishing that the pesticide would have no “unreasonable adverse effects” on pollinators.
This loss of genetic diversity isn't just an issue for Honey Bees,
it's an issue for Bumble Bees as well.
And this isn't just an American problem, though with all the agricultural issues we face due to extreme droughts alone are enough.
"Pollinator decline has become a worldwide issue, raising increasing concerns over impacts on global food production, stability of pollination services, and disruption of plant-pollinator networks," wrote Cameron. "In accordance with the goals of the United Nations convention on biological diversity to reduce the rate of species loss by 2010, such efforts to elucidate the causes and ecological impacts of bumble bee decline, in co-ordination with informed conservation strategies, will go a long way to mitigating further losses." Guardian UK
Keep in mind that NeoNicotinoids were formulated to target the
Lepidoptera Order--butterflies and moths. But we have discovered that it kills butterflies and moths, and bees, beetles, earthworms, and birds.
No one to my knowledge has studied it's impacts on bats--which is something I wonder about A LOT! It also kills mosquitoes, so to some degree--it is effective against the
Diptera order as well. I wonder, since it leaches into water as well, what it's affects are on the Odonata order--that would be dragonflies and damselflies.
Bees, Flies, Butterflies, Moths, and Birds--Does that about cover it? Oh, and um fish!
Be sure and read None Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: A World Without Birds.
‘Any insect that feeds on the crop dies. Any bee or butterfly that collects pollen or nectar from the crop is poisoned. Neonicotinoids behave like carcinogens, and easily contaminate ground and surface water. There could be dire long-term consequences of environmental pollution with these insecticides, and my fears were confirmed by extensive research,’ says Tennekes...‘An ecological collapse is already taking place before our eyes,’ Tennekes told the Ecologist. ‘Numerous bird species do not find enough food for their chicks as insects are being exterminated by pesticides. Insects are vital in ecosystems. In fact, we need them for human survival.’ The Ecologist
The Pesticide Action Network has a lot to say on this matter as well.
Here is a timeline regarding NeoNicotinoids and Colony Collapse Disorder in Honey Bees and Bumble Bees. I have included some material on other animals due to my *personal suspicions. This timeline starts in 1994, and shows that bee keepers in the US were suspicious enough about this new pesticide and the sudden catastrophic loss in their commercial hives, that law suits were launched early on. Some refused to truck their bees to certain crops, knowing they would loose their bees for sure. It's well worth the read. It contains lots of links.
The latest and greatest on this subject:
Analyses of bees found dead in and around hives from several apiaries over two years in Indiana showed the presence of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are commonly used to coat corn and soybean seeds before planting. The research showed that those insecticides were present at high concentrations in waste talc that is exhausted from farm machinery during planting.The insecticides clothianidin and thiamethoxam were also consistently found at low levels in soil -- up to two years after treated seed was planted -- on nearby dandelion flowers and in corn pollen gathered by the bees, according to the findings released in the journal PLoS One this month. Science Daily: Jan 12 2012.
Corn Insecticide Linked to Honey Bee Die Off: Science Daily, March 14, 2012. This story covers the issue of the Talc cloud from treated corn seed killing bees in the field:
These machines forcefully suck seeds in and expel a burst of air containing high concentrations of particles of the insecticide coating. In an effort to make the pneumatic drilling method safer, the scientists tested different types of insecticide coatings and seeding methods. They found, however, that all of the variations in seed coatings and planting methods killed honeybees that flew through the emission cloud of the seeding machine. One machine modified with a deflector to send the insecticide-laced air downwards still caused the death of more than 200 bees foraging in the field. The authors suggest that future work on this problem should focus on a way to prevent the seeds from fragmenting inside the pneumatic drilling machines. Science Daily Mar 14, 2012
Bumble Bees harmed by NeoNicotinoids: March 29, 2012. This article also mentions a study on honey bees:
Compared to control colonies that had not been exposed to imidacloprid, the treated colonies gained less weight, suggesting less food was coming in. The treated colonies were on average 8% to 12% smaller than the control colonies at the end of the experiment. The treated colonies also produced about 85% fewer queens. This last finding is particularly important because queen production translates directly to the establishment of new nests following the winter die-off. Thus, 85% fewer queens could mean 85% fewer nests in the coming year."Bumblebees pollinate many of our crops and wild flowers," Goulson said. "The use of neonicotinoid pesticides on flowering crops clearly poses a threat to their health, and urgently needs to be re-evaluated." In the other Science report, a French team found that exposure to another neonicotinoid pesticide impairs honeybees' homing abilities, causing many of the bees to die. Mickaël Henry of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) in Avignon, France, and colleagues tagged free-ranging honeybees with tiny radio-frequency identification or "RFID" microchips that were glued to each bee's thorax. These devices allowed the researchers to track the bees as they came and went from their hives. The researchers then gave some of the bees a sublethal dose of the pesticide thiamethoxam, which has been sold under the brand names Cruiser and Platinum. Science Daily March 29th 2012
Back in 2010, The Grist covered a leaked EPA document that showed the administration of the EPA allowed NeoNicotinoids to be registered in the US, despite the fact that their own scientists raised numerous red flags.
This year, in March, 1.25 Million people petitioned the EPA to ban NeoNicotinoids due to it's irrefutable links to Colony Collapse Disorder and general pollinator decline. That is in addition to petitions filed by organizations. You would think that this would have a profound effect on a government agency that works FOR THE PEOPLE, but 1.25 million people are not an adequate collective, even with professional bee keepers and scientists, to counteract the influence of agri-chemical lobbies. So we really truly need more people to make their displeasure known to the EPA regarding this matter.
Our food is more important that Bayer's profit margin.
Our environment which is dependent upon pollinators is also more important that Bayer's profit margin.
Bayer as a chemical and drug company makes so much money already on so many different products, that there is no reason that they cannot step away from this product in order to save us all. We shouldn't have to starve or live in a flowerless, fruitless, buzzless world just because of their incredible, unbelievable, swollen greed.
According to Bloomberg:
Bayer CropScience recently announced the removal of almonds from the pesticide label for imidacloprid -- another neonicotinoid -- in California, thereby eliminating the use of the product in almond orchards, in response to concerns by the scientific community about the product's impacts on honeybees.
So this company has conceded that there is a problem, this action certainly gives credence to the connections made by bee keepers and scientists--and yet they fight to keep this on massive corn crops [92.3 acres], soy, cotton? And who knows what else. All blooming crops visited by both domesticated and indigenous pollinators.
Multiple studies have been released this year, showing that NeoNicotinoids are the main cause of Colony Collapse Disorder. That these chemicals are the reason we loose 30 percent or more of our domestic bee population each year.
The EPA Tells Pollinators To Buzz Off!
EPA’s recent decision to deny the petition recognizing that honey bees face “imminent hazard” and requesting the suspension of the pesticide linked to bee die-offs is a blow to beekeepers and over one million citizen petition signatures worldwide. This decision puts beekeepers, rural economies, and our food system at risk. EPA believes the bees are alright, but with hives still averaging losses over 30%, bees are crying out for help. With one in three bites of food reliant on honey bee pollination, it’s imperative that EPA act now! Comments must be received on or before September 25, 2012.
Here is the EPA page regarding the status of Clothianidin registration, including the petition. There is quite a bit of information on this page for interested parties.
Please visit the Beyond Pesticide Action webpage and send your comment in today. If our insect population crashes, if our pollinator population crashes, we--the entire human population and animal population will suffer terrible consequences. It would tear a hole in our terrestrial food web that we might never repair.
...it’s imperative that EPA act now! Comments must be received on or before September 25, 2012
11:40 AM PT: Here is a shortcut to the electronic means of commenting.
http://www.regulations.gov/...
Provided by US Homeopath. But I strongly recommend that interested parties who have the time and inclination, send a postcard to a physical address instead:
Submit your comments, identified by docket identification (ID) number EPA-HQ-OPP-2012-0344; FRL-9355-1, by one of the following methods:Show citation box
Federal eRulemaking Portal: http://www.regulations.gov. Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. Do not submit electronically any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute.Show citation box
Mail: OPP Docket, Environmental Protection Agency Docket Center (EPA/DC), Mail Code: 28221T, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW., Washington, DC 20460-0001.Show citation box
Hand Delivery: To make special arrangements for hand delivery or delivery of boxed information, please follow the instructions at http://www.epa.gov/.... Show citation box
Additional instructions on commenting or visiting the docket, along with more information about dockets generally, is available at http://www.epa.gov/....
More information can be found here: https://www.federalregister.gov/...
If you want, copy my timeline or parts of it. I put it up for you to use for just such an occasion.