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Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#61

Post by pvaldes »

whyenot wrote: post #44
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Very low toxicity to mammals. What is the difference between killing us directly and destroying the food web and ecosystem we depend on to survive?

* Most of the food crops we depend on both directly and indirectly are grasses and are wind pollinated (corn, wheat, etc.). * There is no evidence of neonics disrupting food webs or destroying ecosystems. How do you even "destroy" an ecosystem? that doesn't make any sense, at least with an ecologist's definition of "ecosystem." There has also been a coevolutonary arms race between plants and insect pests going back m…

> How do you even "destroy" an ecosystem?

Easy. Wiping the key groups, like top predators or pollinators

In any case, destroying is not the right verb here, "changing" the ecosystem would be a better fit. Often for worse.

> There is no evidence of neonics disrupting food webs

There's plenty of evidence. This article is just one more. No wild bees and other pollinators -> no apples, plums, peaches, pears, onions, lattice, pumpkins, carrots, peas, peanuts, caffe, honey... I think that this qualifies as a case of "food web in trouble".

> Most of the food crops we depend on both directly and indirectly are grasses and are wind pollinated (corn, wheat, etc.)

Yes human diet is mostly based in cereals. The problem is that a lot of areas in N of Europe, Russia USA or South America aren't suitable to temperate or tropical cereals like corn or rice, because weather. Thus they need either spend gas for bringing cereals to the population, or rely on potatoes, apples, cabbages and other crops that stand frost and short summers. The 'big' cereals can be also difficult in desertic or high mountain areas, because they need a lot of water and soil is too poor. Legumes and other desertic crops (fruit tree cacti for example) are awesome in this cases. If you use all the water in culturing lattice, the wild organisms suffer obviously.

Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#62

Post by tudorw »

pvaldes wrote: post #61
whyenot wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Most of the food crops we depend on both directly and indirectly are grasses and are wind pollinated (corn, wheat, etc.). * There is no evidence of neonics disrupting food webs or destroying ecosystems. How do you even "destroy" an ecosystem? that doesn't make any sense, at least with an ecologist's definition of "ecosystem." There has also been a coevolutonary arms race between plants and insect pests going back m…

> How do you even "destroy" an ecosystem? Easy. Wiping the key groups, like top predators or pollinators In any case, destroying is not the right verb here, "changing" the ecosystem would be a better fit. Often for worse. > There is no evidence of neonics disrupting food webs There's plenty of evidence. This article is just one more. No wild bees and other pollinators -> no apples, plums, peaches, pears, onions, latt…

Destroy is fine,lots of ecosystems collapse if you remove one link in the chain, they don't have time to evolve a solution. They just die.

Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#63

Post by pvaldes »

madaxe_again wrote: post #55
Loic wrote: post #52

You 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…

Not to mention the expansion of the killer bee asiatic vesp in France.

Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#64

Post by madaxe_again »

pvaldes wrote: post #63
madaxe_again wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not to mention the expansion of the killer bee asiatic vesp in France.

Yup - this sort of thing has happened before (parasites spreading outside of their natural range - i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylloxera), but as far as I'm aware this is the first time we've seen it happening due to climatic shifts, rather than direct human involvement (gee, let's import cane toads to get rid of those pesky beetles).

No amount of biosecurity can defeat threats that travel on the wind.

Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#65

Post by Aelinsaar »

refurb wrote: post #34
Aelinsaar wrote: post #31

"We're shocked!" -No One Seriously though, outside of a few desperate libertarians on the internet who needed not to believe it, I've never met a serious person who didn't see that likely connection.

There is evidence that neonicotinoids are harmful to bees and there is also evidence that they aren't. Why makes you so sure it's a slam dunk explanation? Hell, even the EPA and Dept of Agriculture conducted a massive study and said it's pretty far down the list of factors in the decline of the honey bee population. [1] http://www.usda.gov/documents/ReportHoneyBeeHealth.pdf

Just to see if I'm still batting a perfect game here, do you describe yourself as "Libertarian"?

Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#66

Post by pvaldes »

pvaldes wrote: post #63
madaxe_again wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not to mention the expansion of the killer bee asiatic vesp in France.

s/vesp/wasp/

Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#67

Post by jly »

tptacek wrote: post #3

If neonicotinoids are causing a long-term decline in bee populations, why does their introduction correspond with a global increase in beehives?

If this is true, then it's likely just due to more beekeeping activity - commercial and hobby - due to the awareness of this issue and rapidly growing agricultural demands.

Beekeepers tend to use annual colony losses for whatever reasons as a measure of overall apiary health. These are increasing (sometimes dramatically). For example, a commercial apiary may count 10% as normal and expected losses overwintering, while we are currently seeing upwards of 40-45% annual losses. The numbers can be replenished but this takes time and money and is the worrying unnatural trend that is being discussed. The absolute number of active hives at any given time is not necessarily a useful metric to measure declines.

Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#68

Post by dbcurtis »

tzs wrote: post #19
hoodoof wrote: post #5

The 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…

Is #1 really so safe? Here is my anecdote:

When I was growing up in fly-over land, we had small, harmless little ladybug beetles. The most benign of all the flying insects in the territory. Then some how an aphid that attacks soy bean plants got imported from Asia, no one knows how for certain. It attacks the stems of the plants and destroys their ability to transport moisture through the stem. Pretty devastating to the plant.

So Very Wise People imported an Asian ladybug to feed on the aphids. Very large in comparison to the native species. And they bite. And they leave dirt trails when they come into the house. They have helped mitigate the aphid problem, but the native species is pretty much gone now. And the Asian ladybugs move into your house for the winter and invade everywhere and leave their dirt everywhere. And bite.

So, net result: One destructive, invasive species somewhat tamped down, but farmers still spray insecticides for it when it gets out of hand (based on population measurements in growing bean fields). One native species wiped from the ecosystem and replaced with a nastier and more populous non-native species. Net it all out: 2 for the invaders, 0 for the home team.

There aren't really any simplistic answers. Chemicals aren't great for the non-target species (including the farmers that apply them), but imported predators have unanticipated side-effects as well. Not growing soybeans anymore is an option, I suppose, but not so great either.

Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#69

Post by will_brown »

Loic wrote: post #52

You 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 last point is, why bees are going very well in Australia even so Australia is the most extensive user of neonics?

Well we know since the introduction of Neonicotinoids in the US the honey bee colonies numbers are down from about 3.5M to just above 2.5M. I do believe the good news is that the largest drop was from 90-96 (3.5M to 2.5M) and then a steady decline until 2012 (~2.35M) and since then a steady uptick back to just above 2.5M.

My understanding is that CCD is not a disease at all, but more likely is a symptom, and that symptom is associated with neonicotinoids as concluded by this study and others before it.

I can't really speak to Australia, or other countries where the total numbers might be up since the introduction. However, lets acknowledge bees, especially wild bees, are difficult to inventory. Looking at the US data, we know managed colony decline started simultaneously with the introduction of Neonicotinoids and the largest decline was in the first 6 years followed by slow steady decline for 12 more years and then the more recent slow but steady increase since 2012.

Here in the US we have thousands of honey bee species, we really don't even bother identifying/naming them all, and there are about 5x the number of species globally. It really isn't far fetched to conclude certain species were susceptible to effects of Neonicotinoids and others are resistant, such is a story we see in nature regularly. Everyone's favorite example is the Panama Disease[1] that wiped out the dominate commercial banana on a global scale, leading to the resistant banana species we see in the store today, and now of course new strains of the Panama Disease are threatening the modern commercial bananas (which some experts guess will be extinct in 5 years).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease

Re: Pesticide link to long-term wild bee decline in 18 year study

#70

Post by refurb »

Aelinsaar wrote: post #65
refurb wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is evidence that neonicotinoids are harmful to bees and there is also evidence that they aren't. Why makes you so sure it's a slam dunk explanation? Hell, even the EPA and Dept of Agriculture conducted a massive study and said it's pretty far down the list of factors in the decline of the honey bee population. [1] http://www.usda.gov/documents/ReportHoneyBeeHealth.pdf

Just to see if I'm still batting a perfect game here, do you describe yourself as "Libertarian"?

That's your reply to a well thoughtout counter argument?
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