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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: Blair Christian <blair.christian AT gmail.com>
  • To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [ocba] Pollination discussion...
  • Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2011 09:59:47 -0400

I saw a documentary on Netflix streaming last night called “Vanishing
of the Bees”http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Vanishing-of-the-Bees/70166291
It’s the first partial explanation I’ve seen for “CCD” (colony
collapse disorder).  It’s pretty informative and presents a big
picture of some issues in the US ag system and relates it to other bee
colony issues in other parts of the world. CCD is the American name,
but the same symptoms have occurred all over the world, starting at
least 5 years before US beekeepers made the press.
A main argument they make is that new pesticides which have sublethal
effects to bees are a big part of CCD.  These leave the bees more
susceptible to other issues (kind of analogous to how AIDS weakens the
immune system, where one doesn’t die directly from AIDS, but
indirectly from it because it compromises your immune system),
Specifically they point to two new products from a class of pesticides
called neonicotinoids that were introduced by Bayer and another
company and were related to bee colony deaths in Europe starting in
about 2000 (US CCD hit the news in about 2006).
I thought I’d pass it along since legitimate causes of CCD didn’t get
any press, just the hype beforehand.

I know there are some in-the-loop entomologists on this listserv.
Does anybody have any criticism of the science? Are there any
randomized studies? (I'm a statistician, so I know a little about
clinical trials) Apparently there is a loop hole for pesticide
companies. To show a pesticide is "bee safe" they only have to show
that it doesn't directly kill bees in some short period of time. As a
backlash, it looked like some commercial pollinators were actually
starting to deny farmers services based on the pesticides they use...

Lastly, a big question that I've always wondered about: Why are we so
focused on using honeybees for pollination? Honeybees weren't native
to the Americas. Are there any alternative pollinator programs out
there? Do we just use honeybees for pollination because they scale
well? From a more holistic and ecological perspective, it seems like
having multiple pollination species would be a big benefit. I love my
bees, but I'm just curious.




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