Controversial pesticides can decimate honey bees, large study finds

[bwallace23350]

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/controversial-pesticides-can-decimate-honey-bees-large-study-finds

Europe's largest field trial of controversial insecticides called neonicotinoids has delivered a split verdict on the danger they pose to bees. The ?2.8 million, 2-year-long study of 33 sites in the United Kingdom, Hungary, and Germany, described this week in Science, provides the first real-world demonstration that agricultural use of these common pesticides can hurt both domesticated honey bees and wild bees. But on German farms, the honey bees did just fine, suggesting that in some situations colonies can weather the toxicity.

[bwallace23350]

In Germany, they saw no lasting effects in honey bee colonies near the treated crops. But in Hungary, colonies near oilseed rape treated with clothianidin had, on average, 24% fewer workers the following spring. (Thiamethoxam had no effect.) U.K. trends were similar, but not statistically significant.

Richard Pywell, an ecologist at CEH, thinks the German honey bees might have fared better because the colonies were generally healthier than in the other two countries. Wildflowers growing near the German fields might also have provided extra resources that could have made the bees more resilient. "What this study might be telling us is that the bigger impact on the pollinators is not the pesticides but the larger landscape," says Peter Campbell, head of product safety research collaborations at Syngenta in Reading, U.K. (Both Syngenta and Bayer CropScience, which helped fund the trial, encourage farmers to plant wildflowers around fields.)

Wild bees are thought to be more vulnerable than honey bees to neonicotinoids; some earlier studies showed that exposed wild bees and bumble bees have depressed reproductive potential. The CEH researchers found that similar signs of harm correlated with higher levels of the chemicals in nests. They also found that the nests contained low levels of imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid that hasn't been used in Europe since the moratorium. That suggests neonicotinoids persist in the environment and are taken up by wildflowers, exposing bees years later?"a cause for concern," Pywell says.

[bwallace23350]

I say ban them. Even if the harm was negative on honey bees it appears to be harmful to are important but wild friends.

[little john]

There's an article re: this study at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40382086

The article comments that one of the consequences of the existing temporary ban on the use of neonics is that farmers have begun applying multiple doses of pyrethroids instead.  I wonder which is the lesser of the two evils ?
LJ

[bwallace23350]

Yeah. More environmental poison but I am no scientist or farmer but we probably do need them to grow enough food for everyone.

[BeeMaster2]

My concern is not only what it is doing to bees but what is ist doing to us.
It is a very powerful. Nerve agent and because it is in almost all of the corn grown here, it is in every processed food we eats a sweetener.
I suspect it has a lot to do with the nincreased number of cases of Altimers. (MIs spelled, I can't remember how it is spelled). 
Jim

[tjc1]

I think it's spelled 'oldtimers'...

[BeeMaster2]

Thanks Tj, I resemble that. 

[Hops Brewster]

I spell it 'a..' ummm,  'al....'  if someone reminds me, I'll go look it up.

[Dallasbeek]

An early symptom is forgetting how to spell it.