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Honeybee colony losses over the last seven years. Image: Engelstorp et al.
One-Third of U.S. Honeybee Colonies Died Last Winter, Threatening Food Supply
May 11, 2013 http://www.pakalertpress.com/2013/05/11/one-third-of-u-s-honeybee-colonies-died-last-winter-threatening-food-supply/
Nearly one in three commercial honeybee
colonies in the United States died or disappeared last winter, an
unsustainable decline that threatens the nation’s food supply.
Multiple factors — pesticides, fungicides, parasites, viruses and malnutrition — are believed to cause the losses, which were officially announced today by a consortium of academic researchers, beekeepers and Department of Agriculture scientists.
“We’re getting closer and closer to the
point where we don’t have enough bees in this country to meet
pollination demands,” said entomologist Dennis vanEngelstorp of the
University of Maryland, who led the survey documenting the declines.
Beekeepers lost 31 percent of their
colonies in late 2012 and early 2013, roughly double what’s considered
acceptable attrition through natural causes. The losses are in keeping
with rates documented since 2006, when beekeeper concerns prompted the
first nationwide survey of honeybee health. Hopes raised by drop in rates of loss to 22 percent in 2011-2012 were wiped out by the new numbers.
Honeybee colony losses over the last seven years. Image: Engelstorp et al.
The honeybee shortage nearly came to a head in March in California, when there were barely enough bees to pollinate the almond crop.
Had the weather not been ideal, the almonds would have gone unpollinated — a taste, as it were, of a future in which honeybee problems are not solved.
“If we want to grow fruits and nuts and berries, this is important,” said vanEngelstorp. “One in every three bites [of food consumed in the U.S.] is directly or indirectly pollinated by bees.”
Scientists have raced to explain the
losses, which fall into different categories. Some result from what’s
called colony collapse disorder, a malady first reported in 2006 in
which honeybees abandon their hives and vanish. Colony collapse
disorder, or CCD, subsequently became a public shorthand for describing
bee calamities.
Most losses reported in the latest survey,
however, don’t actually fit the CCD profile. And though CCD is largely
undocumented in western Europe, honeybee losses there have also been
dramatic. In fact, CCD seems to be declining, even as total losses
mount. The honeybees are simply dying.
“Even if CCD went away, we’d still have
tremendous losses,” said entomologist Diana Cox-Foster at Pennsylvania
State University. “CCD losses are like the straw that breaks the camel’s
back. The system has many other issues.”
Studying these issues isn’t easy. In
real-world agricultural settings, it’s hard to run the rigorous,
every-last-variable-controlled experiments on which definitive
conclusions are founded. These experiments can be run in labs and
small-scale test fields, but whether those accurately reflect real-world
complexity is debated.
Amidst the uncertainties, scientific attention has settled on a group of culprits,
the most high-profile of which is a class of pesticides known as
neonicotinoids. These were developed in the 1990s, rushed to market with
minimal studies of potential harms, and subsequently became the world’s
most-used pesticides.
In the last several years, it’s become
evident that neonicotinoids are extremely toxic to honeybees and, even
in small, sub-lethal doses, make bees more vulnerable to disease. The
European Union recently limited neonicotinoid use, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing their use.
Pesticide companies
have fought the restrictions, arguing that neonicotinoids are unfairly
blamed. Most non-industry scientists say the question isn’t whether
neonicotinoids are a problem, but where they fit into a constellation of problems.
“Different studies indicate that this
class of pesticide is rather harmful to the bees,” said honeybee
pathologist Cédric Alaux of the French National Institute for
Agricultural Research, who said the E.U.’s restrictions are sensible.
“However, we should not be too naive and think that it will solve the
bee problem.”
Just as important as neonicotinoids, and perhaps more so, are Varroa destructor
mites. First detected in the United States in 1987, the mites weaken
bees by sucking their hemolyph, the insect analogue of blood, and also
transmit viruses and other parasites. A recent USDA report called Varroa “the single most detrimental pest of honey bees.”
The report also noted that neonicotinoid exposure alters immune system function in Varroa-infected bees and makes bees more vulnerable to infection by Nosema ceranae,
another parasite implicated in honeybee losses. It’s possible that
neonicotinoids used on crops don’t usually kill bees outright, but
weaken them enough for other stresses to become lethal.
Agricultural entomologist Christian
Krupke of Purdue University likened the effects to “living in an area
with extreme levels of smog, causing your body and immune system to become overtaxed so that a common cold progresses to pneumonia.”
Krupke noted that although
neonicotinoids are the most common poisonous chemicals in honeybee
environments, they’re far from the only chemicals. Cox-Foster and
vanEngelstorp stressed that point, referencing research that found 121 different pesticides in honeybee hives. On average, each hive contained traces of 6 pesticides, and sometimes several dozen.
Research on pesticide interactions is in its infancy, but combinations may be extremely harmful
to bees, amplifying what the chemicals would do alone. “I worry that
the neonicotinoid attention is distracting from the other pesticides
that have clear effects, and might even have stronger effects. Things
like fungicides are completely unregulated for bees,” said
vanEngelstorp. “I think we need to keep the pesticide investigation
broader.”
‘We’re getting closer and closer to the point where we don’t have enough bees.’
Another, less-appreciated aspect of honeybee life also gained attention in the winter survey
and new USDA report: what they eat. Though commercial bees are trucked
on pollination circuits around the United States, most beekeepers have
home bases in the upper Midwest, an area that’s undergone significant
changes in recent years.
Rising food prices led farmers to plant
crops in fields previously considered marginal or set aside as
grasslands. Honeybees forage in those grasslands, and can’t get the nutrition they need from flowering crops alone.
Add the record-setting drought of summer
2012, and bees were hard-pressed for nourishment. Malnourishment could
in turn make bees more vulnerable to pests and infections, or exacerbate
the effects of pesticides.
“The drought, the possible combination of factors that went with it, was clearly a big problem for a lot of beekeepers,” vanEngelstorp said. “In some cases, it was a combination of Varroa and these malnourished, pesticide-exposed bees.”
Commercial bees pollinate dozens of crops,
and though colonies can be replaced, continuing losses could soon
render beekeeping economically unviable. Researchers are trying to breed
more resilient bees, but the combination of chemicals, nutrition and disease will likely prove insurmountable by genetic improvements alone, said Cox-Foster.
She said native pollinator habitat needs
to be left intact or re-established; a field that goes unplanted, or a
roadside left unmowed, can be thought of as insurance against commercial honeybee loss. Dennis vanEngelstorp recommended that, as a rule of thumb, 10 percent of land mass should be managed as pollinator havens.
Pesticides can also be used more carefully. Rather than being applied broadly, across entire fields and locales, they can be precisely targeted to outbreaks. Other unnecessary uses can be averted.
“Many entomologists and pest management professionals
have been saying for years that there is no pest management
justification for using these insecticides on virtually every crop grown
in North America,” said Krupke. “Yet, the opposite trend is occurring.”
The honeybee catastrophe could also signal problems in other pollinator species, such as bumblebees and butterflies, that are not often studied.
“Thinking of honeybees as our canary in the coal mine, a monitor for environmental conditions,
is very appropriate,” Cox-Foster said. “With honeybee colonies, you
have the ability to open them up and see what’s going on. There are many
other species needed for pollination, but with most of those, we don’t
have the ability to see what’s happening.”
Update 5/9: Francesco Nazzi, an entomologist at Italy’s University of Udine who studies the interactions of pests, parasites
and honeybee immune systems, said he feels neonicotinoid pesticides
“are not the major cause of widespread colony losses but one of many
different causes, whose incidence may vary according to the local
situation.”
Nazzi pointed to surveys of honeybee losses
in Canada, China, Israel, Turkey and western Europe, which have varied
widely by locale and circumstance, with no clear explanation. In the
European Union, where neonicotinoid use will be decreased but not
eliminated for the next two years, Nazzi does not expect to see any
clear, black-and-white effect.
Evidence about potential
neonicotinoid harm, though, is “convincing enough to suggest caution,”
he said. “One may say that a broader ban may not be sufficient on its
own to ‘save’ the bees, but it could help.” Nazzi said the crucial
question is whether neonicotinoid is even needed. “At least in Italy, in
most cases, their use is actually uncessary,” he said.
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