It took 18 years to understand pesticide link to decline in bees!
Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study
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Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study
#52You can download the study[0].
If you look at the model in equations (2), (3) and (4), you can see that they force fit the decrease in population of the bees on the neonicotinoid exposure. Because the decrease of the population in this model is only linked to pesticides, you need a very careful analysis of the confidence intervals and the quality of the fit or you can fall into the spurious correlation trap[1].
Also "The authors acknowledge that their study finds an association and doesn't prove a cause and effect link between the use of neonicotinoids and the decline of bee populations.". Which is good, it means they know the limits of this study.
The other case is that around 2005, we had a shift to produce more biofuels by doing more extensive single crop farming. This also had devastating effect on the biodiversity needed for the bees, insects and the birds.
The last point is, why bees are going very well in Australia even so Australia is the most extensive user of neonics?
The issues with bees is really a hard problem, most likely a combination of many factors, so I do not want people to jump on a single factor (the neonics) then claim victory and move to other things even so neonics are most likely not the main factor.
This year was bad for our bees, 8 hives, just 1kg honey per hive...
[0]: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160816/ncomms12459/pdf/nco... [1]: http://tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=1597
Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study
#53The strange thing is that the response will be "OK so lets create poisons that kill all insects EXCEPT bees".
That's probably not practical, but in practice it is also not really needed. Usually when someone has a problem with insects they just need to kill a few particular species. Doing that is actually feasible. There are three broad approaches to killing insects. #1. Mechanically disrupt them. E.g., rip their heads off or squish them or similar. This may seem impractical at first, bringing to mind images of immigrant lab…
Mechanical disruption can sometimes be done pretty easily with machines. If you blow air on the Colorado potato beetle it will freeze and fall to the ground, so you can pick it up before: https://patents.google.com/patent/EP0348751A1/en
Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study
#54It took 18 years to understand pesticide link to decline in bees!
Breaking: Insecticide Kills Insects!
Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study
#55You can download the study[0]. If you look at the model in equations (2), (3) and (4), you can see that they force fit the decrease in population of the bees on the neonicotinoid exposure. Because the decrease of the population in this model is only linked to pesticides, you need a very careful analysis of the confidence intervals and the quality of the fit or you can fall into the spurious correlation trap[1]. Also…
A neighbour who used to keep hives here (France) until a few months ago has had them repeatedly wiped out by fungal infections, as the combination of hot and damp then suddenly cold then hot again isn't normal for this part of the world. They had four false springs here this year - crops suffered too, and foresters are having a heyday taking dead trees out of the forest.
Like you say, pesticide use alone is unlikely to be the issue - hell DDT and friends are far less friendly to insects, and we're used far longer - so it's likely a whole host of anthrogenic factors which are wiping out the bees, much like many other species.
We're pretty much the worst thing since the cambrian-ordovician extinction event for biodiversity.
Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study
#56If neonicotinoids are causing a long-term decline in bee populations, why does their introduction correspond with a global increase in beehives?
Where are you getting your global numbers? Because the USDA Honey Production Survey data tells a different tale.
In 1989-1990 US honey Bee colonies were at about 3.5M. Neonicotinoids were introduced in the 1990's and since then the US Bee colonies declined to an all time low in 2012 (below 2.5M colonies). Since 2012 there was a small but steady uptick to just above 2.5M colonies; however, that is still down 1M and nearly 33% total since the introduction of Neonicotinoids.
In fact, the biggest decline was from 1990-1996 when the number basically dropped from 3.5M to 2.5M. My understanding is Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) wasn't even acknowledged by the Government until 2006, which is odd because the decrease from 1996-2006 may have only been 2.5M to ~2.35M. Then again in 2006 our Government was championing the strength and stability of the housing market, so maybe they are just not the most proficient at interpreting numbers and data.
As to wild/ferral honey bees, they may be endangered but I assure you they do exist in the US. In fact my parents just has a wild hive removed from their property resulting in 80lbs of honey (including the comb). You can check out Willy the Bee Man, he runs the largest wild bee removal business in South Florida and his website includes some videos of the removals.
Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
This response is precisely what has made insecticides so incredibly dangerous for world agriculture. Documentaries like "The Vanishing of the Bees" and "More than Honey" do a great job highlighting just how criminally negligent the agriculture industry as a whole has been to bees. What I haven't seen is an analysis of how devastating the large-scale destruction of insect populations is to the world's ecosystem. We ar…
Could you be more specific as to how pesticides have been criminally negligent to bees? This specific article is about neonicotinoids, which were introduced to replace pesticides with far worse impacts on the environment. Is there a source you can find that shows neonicotinoids as used in the wild being calamitous for bees? I can find sources for you with commercial beekeepers pollinating canola crops seed-treated wi…
> Is there a source you can find that shows neonicotinoids as used in the wild being calamitous for bees
The Swedish Board of Agriculture recently released a systematic review of scientific literature [0].
Bumblebees are more sensitive to subletal effects of neonicotinoids than honey bees [1][2]. There's a great variation in sociality, seasonality and living for various species of bees, which means the effects of neonicotinoids will vary between species [3][4][5].
A big issue is also that most studies only look for residue of neonicotinoids in plants or in the bee to figure out how calamitous they are. Even though many of the most used neonicotinoids have a high LD50 in bees [6], there are very few studies that look at the effects of the bees of the exposure. Instead of just looking at the individual level, more studies are needed that look at effects on sub-individual, hive and population level.
In rapeseed, there has been negative effects on the growth and reproduction of the bumblebee Bombus Terrestris linked to neonicotinoids [7][8]. And in [8] they also showed that Osmia Bicornis failed to create hives by rapeseed fields where clothianidin were used, but in average created 2.88 hives by non-treated fields.
--- [0] http://www.jordbruksverket.se/download/18.1a3130fb152332440f...
[1] Cresswell JE, Page CJ, Uygun MB, Holmbergh M, Li Y et al. (2012b) Differential sensitivity of honey bees and bumble bees to a dietary insecticide (imidacloprid). Zoology 115: 365-371.
[2] Cutler GC, Scott-Dupree CD (2014) A field study examining the effects of exposure to neonicotinoid seed-treated corn on commercial bumble bee colonies. Ecotoxicology 23: 1755-1763.
[3] Thompson HM, Hunt LV (1999) Extrapolating from honeybees to bumblebees in pesticide risk assessment. Ecotoxicology 8: 147-166.
[4] Williams NM, Crone EE, Minckley RL, Packer L, Potts SG (2010) Ecological and life-history traits predict bee species responses to environmental disturbances. Biological Conservation 143: 2280-2291.
[5] Brittain C, Potts SG (2011) The potential impacts of insecticides on the life-history traits of bees and the consequences for pollination. Basic and Applied Ecology 12: 321-331.
[6] LD50 for imidacloprid, thiamethoxam and clothianidin for the honey bee Apis Mellifera is 0.02-0.08 μg per bee. For acetamiprid and thiacloprid it's 8.1-39 μg per bee. EFSA 2012.
[7] Goulson D (2015) Neonicotinoids impact bumblebee colony fitness in the field; a reanalysis of the UK’s Food & Environment Research Agency 2012 experiment. PeerJ 3: e854.
[8] Rundlöf M, Andersson GK, Bommarco R, Fries I, Hederström V et al. (2015) Seed coating with a neonicotinoid insecticide negatively affects wild bees. Nature 521: 77-80.
Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study
#58It took 18 years to understand pesticide link to decline in bees!
That's what lobbying, PR, and soliciting influence through large grants can buy you.
Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study
#59We have known this the last 20 years, people just don't give a fuck unless the after-effects are cutting into their profit.
I will miss the bees. I will not miss the people.
Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study
#60We have known this the last 20 years, people just don't give a fuck unless the after-effects are cutting into their profit. I will miss the bees. I will not miss the people.
Also, it is fungicide what is the big issue here. It has the same effect on bees as if you were constantly washing your hands in sanitizers. You remove the beneficial bacteria (or in the case of bees, fungi AND bacteria) from their hives, so disruptive and aggressive fungi can invade and destroy them from the inside.
I've read this in an article when I was 11 years old. The problem, as in most cases, are the humans. Some days I am wishing for a huge ecological disruption, famine and another Spanish flu to wipe 50-70% of the globe, even though I know I too might be one to go in such an event.
In fact, that is what the Gates Foundation is expecting to be a coin-flip scenario in their lifetime, which is what, the next 20 years or so! So yeah, prepping in a WW2 bunker with broadband internet and half a year of supplies in the mountains doesn't sound so crazy after all. When shit hits the fan, shoot on sight and salt the meat.