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  • From: Blair Christian <blair.christian AT gmail.com>
  • To: "<ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>" <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>, durham-county-beekeepers AT googlegroups.com
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Bee Dieoff in Canada (30M bees)
  • Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2013 15:30:50 -0400

After a couple phone calls with some Canadian officials, I opted for
an informal discussion (as opposed to formal request for copies of
official documents) with the Ontario provincial apiculturalist, Paul
Kozak. I only had 5 minutes for this first conversation, but I can
call him back when he has time (this afternoon or next week)....
Here's the general story.

My main interest was in trying to get some facts from a first person
source about reported bee kills in Ontario in the spring of 2012 and
2013. There are about 100,000 hives (pretty sure it's hives and not
beeyards) in Ontario (there is some small change in jargon). Winter
mortality was about 40% in 2011/2012 winter and about 15% 2012/2013 (I
think I got the years right). During 2012, there were about 40
beekeepers who lost about 250 beeyards (He was in a hurry to get to a
meeting, but I think I got it right). So far in 2013 there have been
about 140 bee yards that have had kills (I think that's right). Last
year, 70% of the samples had clothianidin in them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothianidin
One note was that weather played a role, the drier the weather, the
farther the dust could travel. He also mentioned something about
similar problems or working with someone in Illinois. (Purdue is in
Indiana, the source of another neonic paper about corn planting dust).

It appears that clothianidin dust from systemic pesticide seed
coatings is the culprit. (there are some semantics there and I don't
have the official report from the PMRA about 2012 losses). But that's
only 70% of the samples. He can tell you all about the symptoms,
about beekeeper management, etc. He was one of the most knowledgable
entomologists I've spoken with in a long time. It's kind of scary
listening to him describe poisoned bees.

Related, here is the web page from the Ontario beekeepers (more
primary source data):
http://www.ontariobee.com/issues-and-advocacy/ongoing-issues-and-actions/spring-2012-bee-poisonings
Summary
Representing Ontario’s beekeeping industry, The Ontario Beekeepers
Association requests that:
- Regulators immediately reassess the bee safety of all neonicotinoid
pesticide products and suspend all conditional registrations until we
understand how to manage the risks posed by these products to honey
bees and other pollinators.
- Beekeepers are compensated by the government for losses to crops,
bees and equipment caused by deaths, chronic disease, or toxic
residues in equipment caused by the use of neonicotinoid pesticide
products from the crop year 2012 and forward.
- Independent research should be undertaken to determine threats of
long-term soil, water and pollinator toxicity and whether the
substitution of less toxic pesticides or integrated pest management
practices can eliminate the threat to honey bees and other
pollinators.

FYI: Here is the "Purdue paper" about neonics:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0029268
One interesting note was that adjacent forage (dandelion) also had
clothianidin present in its nectar samples.

So those are mostly facts from primary sources... Reading through the
Goulson paper
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2013.00658.x/abstract
if the half life of these neonics is really on the order of 3 years as
he suggests, (compared with 3-141 days for glyphosate,
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0100-204X2003001100012&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en
)
and combined with the data that more corn is being planted in Ontario
(ontariobee.com, "Even if acute bee poisonings are not seen at the
same rate in 2013, the issue of pesticide poisoning from NNIs will
continue to of great concern to Ontario beekeepers. Acreage devoted to
corn continues to increase and represents almost 25% of Ontario’s
field crops. The long-term effect of applying water-soluble NNIs on
soil and the water table is not known.") there seems to be a real
problem here...

Hopefully I got mostly facts across here without putting in too many
opinions of my own, and that it's informative to you all. If anybody
wants to get more information, I can pass on contact info for the
PMRA, Paul Kozak, etc. Everyone was very helpful for the most part.
I have another written request in with the PMRA to get a copy of their
report of the 2012 bee kills. I'll let you all know when/if I get a
copy.

Best,
Blair



On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 2:20 PM, Blair Christian
<blair.christian AT gmail.com> wrote:
> I didn't hear back from the Canadian officials, so I called PMRA again
> today and they were trying to decide how to respond. So I sent them a
> longer email describing how I wanted to know facts from the source
> about bee kills due to pesticides. The gentleman I spoke with was a
> little taken aback and was not sure exactly how to respond (eg what
> privacy issues were at play with the data) and said he would pass on
> my email and get back to me.
>
> FYI: If you want to look at self reported Canadian bee mortality data
> (like our Bee Informed survey), then check this out:
> http://capabees.org/
>
> Best,
> Blair
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 4:08 PM, Blair Christian
> <blair.christian AT gmail.com> wrote:
>> I agree that something is going on. But I think it's more complicated
>> that we expect. For example, if seed treatments are to blame, then
>> there should be huge beekills where ever there is corn + seed
>> treatments + bees. Like in Ontario last year (there were similar
>> complaints). Like in Kansas (there are not complaints). But if you
>> look at the data and talk to the beekeepers in Kansas, it appears that
>> is probably some interaction effect or at least a confounding between
>> that type of planting and bee kills (check the section in Randy
>> Oliver's paper where he looks at USDA data on corn planting and
>> reported bee mortality). I don't know how much to trust all these
>> reports, but my feeling is that if there was a direct link everywhere,
>> (eg ever instance of corn + seed treatments + bees = dead bees), that
>> the conversation would be over. But it seems like bee kills take more
>> than just bees + pesticides. In statistical jargon, the effect I
>> worry about is called "confounding", where you blame something
>> correlated with the actual cause.
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding
>> It appears that there were very similar events last year as well:
>> http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/cps-spc/alt_formats/pdf/pubs/pest/_fact-fiche/bees-incidents-abeilles-2012-eng.pdf
>>
>> For the record, I put in a call today to Debby Scott, MINISTRY OF
>> AGRICULTURE AND FOOD, RESEARCH AND CORPORATE SERVICES DIVISION. I
>> figured that would be the best way to get some real data about bee
>> kills in Ontario. (left message; recording said they'd return my call
>> within 24 hrs)
>> http://www.infogo.gov.on.ca/infogo/office.do?actionType=telephonedirectory&infoType=telephone&unitId=UNT0000330&locale=en
>> I also called the Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency in
>> Ontario: (left message; recording said they'd return my call within 48
>> hrs)
>> http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/contact/cps-spc/pmra-arla/infoserv-eng.php
>> I wanted to get the data about reported bee kills in Canada. The
>> question I have is: if the use of these pesticides started many years
>> ago, why are we just hearing about them now? Is there a reporting
>> bias? (did the bee kills happen for years and they never made the
>> news? or have the bees been fine until recently?) I think crying
>> wolf before we have all the evidence will make us lose
>> credibility/weaken our bargaining power as beekeepers.
>>
>> I encourage everybody interested the big picture of bee health to read
>> up on the biggest collection of 2012-2013 bee loss data I've seen,
>> Randy Oliver's report. Then you have some facts to refer to (whether
>> they're true or not, having the names of reports or names of peer
>> reviewed scientific papers shows you know something about the current
>> research, gives you a lot of credibility and is more likely to get you
>> answers)
>> https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bzxus2rq3XxPR0ZmTWZMV1h0NTQ/edit?usp=sharing
>>
>> There is something going on. But it appears to be more like cancer
>> than like aids in my poor view of the world. (Cancer is just a label
>> for a huge class of problems with similar symptoms, not necessarily
>> similar causes- there are genetic (BRACA gene in breast cancer) causes
>> of cancer, and environmental causes of cancer (asbestos); while AIDS
>> has a clear cause but may have different symptoms (pneumonia, Kaposi's
>> sarcoma, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_defining_clinical_condition
>> ).
>>
>> Everybody agrees we should separate pesticide exposures from bees as
>> best we can, and that there is a history of bee kills. But that trend
>> is decreasing (but not zero). My guess is that there are many
>> different interactions, that current bee problems are more death by a
>> thousand cuts (nosema, varroa, viruses, many different
>> pesticides/insecticides/fungicides, changes in weather patterns/more
>> extreme weather events) type problems instead of a single cause. In
>> my opinion, we are experiencing more variation in weather patterns
>> now-- why aren't we talking about that? Specifically, look at the
>> North Atlantic oscillation
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_oscillation (in brief, a
>> difference in pressure between Iceland and the Azores)
>> and a measure of it over time in December (figure 5):
>> http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2010
>> (Just a guess), but that kind of change in variation is going to have
>> direct effects on the variation in nectar flows and pollen
>> availability, possibly creating more dearths and more extreme nectar
>> flows (the kind that have been known to cause a honey bound broodnest
>> for example). Both of those types of extremes cause stress of
>> different types, making the bees more susceptible to other stresses.
>>
>> But I'm usually wrong when I try to make big connections like that.
>> Instead, I think we should focus on all the little things we can learn
>> from data like the Bee Informed survey, preliminary loss data this
>> season- it's interesting that the biggest losses were among
>> commercial, not backyard beekeepers:
>> http://beeinformed.org/2013/05/winter-loss-survey-2012-2013/
>> "...The difference between average loss and total loss is explained by
>> the respondent pool: while a majority of the respondents (95%) were
>> backyard beekeepers, they managed a small fraction of the colonies
>> represented in the survey (6%). For this reason total loss (which is
>> more heavily influenced by commercial beekeeper losses) is more
>> representative of national losses."
>>
>> And last season, "Of beekeepers who reported losing at least one
>> colony during 2011-12, the leading self-identified causes of mortality
>> were weak condition in the fall and queen failure."
>> http://www.ibra.org.uk/articles/US-honey-bee-winter-colony-losses-2011-12
>>
>> It's not that I disagree that pesticides are a problem, but rather
>> that we (and the media) should be spending equal amounts of
>> press/discussion on the other problems that are more severe and more
>> likely to affect our bees. If anybody wants to grab a beer and have a
>> heart to heart, I'm all for it. If anybody wants to get some data and
>> have a hackathon, I'm all for that too. Extra food for thought:
>> http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/06/cost-benefit-analysis-and-state-secrecy
>>
>> Best,
>> Blair
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 1:56 PM, Just Bee <marty AT justbeenc.com> wrote:
>>> Thanks Tom,
>>>
>>> I had seen this case before and I like the way this author tied the Perdue
>>> study to this case. It's not the only case out there, they are growing.
>>>
>>> What I like most is his last phrase..."time to make the connections". I
>>> agree with that and have been saying that for years.
>>>
>>> It's getting clear from these multiple cases, the Perdue study and Bayers
>>> own actions that this IS a problem for our bees! They are now spending
>>> time
>>> and resources (millions) to address this "issue".
>>>
>>> WHY? if neonics are not bad for bees why spend a dime. They are now
>>> talking
>>> about trying to redesign the entire corn planting mechanism so this will
>>> no
>>> longer be an issue. WHY neonics are not bad for bees....right?
>>>
>>> The "connection" I'd prefer people to make is the simple one!
>>>
>>> If these confirmed cases, the Perdue study and Bayers own actions and
>>> investment to fix this "issue" shows neonics are bad for bees...WHY is it
>>> so
>>> hard to admit the neonics (in their engineered intent state) inside the
>>> plant are ALSO bad for bees? I just don't get that. If its bad on the
>>> ground
>>> after some talc powder rubs on it...how is it magically ok up on top in
>>> the
>>> nectar and pollen??
>>>
>>> Seriously...how? Cause they say so?
>>>
>>> I'm a fan of connections...proves ones point eventually, but the bees keep
>>> dying while folks keep waiting to do so. That part I'm not a fan of.
>>>
>>> Marty
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>
>>> On Jul 1, 2013, at 1:01 PM, "Thomas Grizzle" <griz AT mindspring.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I hope you can see this link…I do not know think this can be considered
>>> definitive, just one more piece of the puzzle.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/07/01/over-30-million-bees-found-dead-in-elmwood-canada/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Tom
>>>
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