Pesticide-Ridden Pollen Kills Honeybee Larvae Within Hives, New Regulations Urged
Source: EcoWatch
A group of scientists is urging the US Environmental Protection Agency to change its pesticide regulations after a new study revealed that four pesticides commonly used on crops to kill insects and fungi also kill honeybee larvae within their hives.
Honeybees are vital to to flowering crops and recently their numbers have been declining worldwide as disease and the mysterious colony collapse disorder take their toll.
"Our findings suggest that the common pesticides chlorothalonil, fluvalinate, coumaphos and chloropyrifos, individually or in mixtures, have statistically significant impacts on honeybee larval survivorship," said Chris Mullin, a professor of entomology at Penn State University. Mullin, Penn State entomology professor Jim Frazier, and colleagues from the University of Florida, published their research in the journal PLOS One.
"This is the first study to report serious toxic effects on developing honeybee larvae of dietary pesticides at concentrations that currently occur in hives," Mullin said.
Read more: http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/5789/20140127/pesticide-ridden-pollen-kills-honeybee-larvae-within-hives-new-regulations.htm
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BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)save the beees!
d_legendary1
(2,586 posts)I use honey from bees to make my BBQ sauce! And I refuse to use that Monsanto crap corn syrup as a substitiue!
bucolic_frolic
(43,146 posts)They use them for a few years, then the toxic effects are known, so they
ban them, and the new derivatives are available.
ColumbusLib
(158 posts)The human race depends on those bees- they pollinate much of our food. I hope they ban these pesticides ASAP!
DainBramaged
(39,191 posts)peoli
(3,111 posts)SeattleVet
(5,477 posts)it's available from a link here, along with additional background and current status information and prior years' reports:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/News/docs.htm?docid=15572
lovuian
(19,362 posts)going to go extinct
840high
(17,196 posts)niyad
(113,278 posts)at least in large part, for the bee colony collapse. but, of course, cannot possibly suggest that big ag/big chem/big pharma has ANYTHING to do with colony collapse, increases in certain illnesses, etc., etc.
modrepub
(3,495 posts)but that's not how it's done. EPA's budget is like $8B/year of which only a fraction goes into testing chemicals. There are probably a gazzilion chemicals that have little or no testing done before they are commercially used. The spill in WV and studies like this should be a call to action to change the process of how we develop and use chemicals but sadly the corporate entities out there wouldn't allow it. In fact there is model legislation out there to prohibit any holds on use of chemicals without scientific evidence of harm. Finding scientific harm is awfully hard when you minimize funding available to do tests.
Dopers_Greed
(2,640 posts)But please, think of the poor chemical companies' balance sheets. They have a duty to their shareholders, ya know.
DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)K&R
Matilda
(6,384 posts)A link to this article was tweeted from the Netherlands to me - how climate change is affecting Australian honeybees. What is true for Australia today will also be true elsewhere. To make matters worse, we have a Prime Minister who doesn't believe in climate change and so has no intention of taking action to deal with it. That is probably why we're not reading this in the Australian (Murdoch) print media.
Bees are vital to the ecosystem, and we ignore what is happening to our detriment.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-reese-halter/australian-honeybees-unable-to-make-honey_b_4670475.html
lovuian
(19,362 posts)they will go extinct ...if pesticides still continue
The Reality is hitting .....Honey maybe a rare delicacy ...in the future
America is in extremely bad situation .......Don't Mess with Mother Nature should be a Bumper Sticker on every car
Hun Joro
(666 posts)mdbl
(4,973 posts)This is part of the evolution of the stupid human race, a subset of homo sapiens that consume the world's resources to the detriment of all others. It is like a virus killing off it's host, except in our case, the host will continue, just not as something sustainable to us.
juajen
(8,515 posts)Wonder what it's doing to human larvae?
7962
(11,841 posts)wildbilln864
(13,382 posts)DainBramaged
(39,191 posts)Bayer cares about the bees.
Or at least thats what they tell you at the companys Bee Care Center on its sprawling campus here between Düsseldorf and Cologne. Outside the cozy two-story building that houses the center is a whimsical yellow sculpture of a bee. Inside, the same image is fashioned into paper clips, or printed on napkins and mugs.
Bayer is strictly committed to bee health, said Gillian Mansfield, an official specializing in strategic messaging at the companys Bayer CropScience division. She was sitting at the centers semicircular coffee bar, which has a formidable espresso maker and, if you ask, homegrown Bayer honey. On the surrounding walls, bee fun facts are written in English, like A bee can fly at roughly 16 miles an hour or, it takes nectar from some two million flowers in order to produce a pound of honey. Next year, Bayer will open another Bee Care Center in Raleigh, N.C., and has not ruled out more in other parts of the world.
There is, of course, a slight caveat to all this buzzy good will.
Bayer is one of the major producers of a type of pesticide that the European Union has linked to the large-scale die-offs of honey bee populations in North America and Western Europe. They are known as neonicotinoids, a relatively new nicotine-derived class of pesticide. The pesticide was banned this year for use on many flowering crops in Europe that attract honey bees.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/12/business/energy-environment/accused-of-harming-bees-bayer-researches-a-different-culprit.html?_r=0
Matilda
(6,384 posts)is that they - and their children and grandchildren - will suffer the consequences along with every other living thing if the ecosystem is destroyed. They seem to have the idea that if they can make enough profit now, it will somehow shield them from the results of their actions.
Or do they, perhaps, simply close their eyes and ears to reality?
anti partisan
(429 posts)The problem is that the action, while decisive and assures us that they have solved the problem, has a problem.
Try this.
In Europe, they use neonics and have CCD. Hence neonics cause CCD. We have proven our point--that's what the physical sciences are taken to be about these days, proving our point. Sadly, we make a prediction. Use neonics = cause CCD.
Canada uses the same neonics on the same crops. We predict they must have CCD. They do not. Our prediction was false. Crap. Or maybe there's something special that makes neonics more lethal in Europe than in Canada. We can invoke special conditions. Hey, it happens.
Switzerland didn't use neonics. However it suffered from CCD as much as Germany did. So perhaps neonics + whatever is causing the CCD in Switzerland causes CCD.
That sounds like "that plus $2 gets you a cup of coffee." Perhaps we could buy William of Ockeghem a cup of joe next time he stirs and have him catch us up on his medieval thinking again, since it's superior to our own conception of how physical sciences work.
ronnie624
(5,764 posts)than issues that pertain to the destruction of our biosphere. Noticeably absent from the recommendation list, are the names of the most vociferous adherents to party politics and promoters of the status quo. This illustrates clearly the foolishness of the priorities of the most influential elements in American politics.
Response to peoli (Original post)
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