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Colony Collapse Disorder Linked To Pesticide, High-Fructose Corn Syrup
hondo77 writes "Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health '...have re-created the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder in several honeybee hives simply by giving them small doses of a popular pesticide, imidacloprid.' This follows recently-reported studies also linked the disorder to neonicotinoid pesticides. What is really interesting is the link to when the disorder started appearing, 2006. 'That mechanism? High-fructose corn syrup. Many bee-keepers have turned to high-fructose corn syrup to feed their bees, which the researchers say did not imperil bees until U.S. corn began to be sprayed with imidacloprid in 2004-2005. A year later was the first outbreak of Colony Collapse Disorder.'"
- Big Corn
While the pesticide stuff is pretty obvious, I'm more skeptical about the HFCS link, especially if they're claiming its Monstanto GMO corn causing it. Or something silly. Yes, sugar is a poison, and HFCS is vile, but it's going to take another few studies to convince me.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
The summary should be: "CCD Linked to Pesticide"
I get the feeling including HFCS so prominently in the story is more about triggering an emotional response in readers.
While the pesticide stuff is pretty obvious, I'm more skeptical about the HFCS link
I know this is Slashdot but if you read the article the explanation becomes very clear. Some bees are fed with HFCS and the syrup itself is derived from crops treated with the pesticide and so it is present in low levels in the syrup and apparently only very low levels are needed to generate CCD.
I thought it was fungus.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
in 3, 2, 1
Pretty soon once bee keepers start sourcing non-pesticide-laced feed for their bees.
If I were a milk producer and fed my cows a concoction that caused 90% of them to drop dead at the same time every two years I'd sure as hell look for a new feed source -- it could be fairly expensive even and the fact that I don't want to risk fundamental failure in my ability to survive would mean it's still a good deal for me.
The bees can tell the difference!
This would appear to indicate that the substance in question does not occur in tobacco nectar, nor anywhere else in nature:
"The invention of imidacloprid, the most important neonicotinoid insecticide, was initiated by replacement of the framework of nithiazine with an imidazolidine ring."
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Imidacloprid is considered neonicotinoid, but its biochemical effects should not be compared to natural nicotine. Just as humans do, insects have a couple of different types of receptors for the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, including a nicotinic receptor. Insect physiology favors the nicotinic receptor pathway such that some insectides which are mildly toxic to humans are extremely poisonous to insects. Nicotine can activate these receptors temporarily, which is responsible for its physiological effects. However, imidacloprid irreversibly binds to the nicotinic receptor, which blocks acetylcholine transmission and leads to the insect's death. It appears that sublethal concentrations may still cause significant impairment, similar to myasthenia gravis.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
But parasites can't be pinned on Humans so it's no worth mentioning.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
sugar syrup, cane or beet, was used
The same pesticide IS in every food you eat. Not because of HFCS, which doesn't contain that much (except if you're an insect), but because they spray the same pesticide on everything. There is 50-1000 PPB in your fresh greens, 10-40 PPB in your mashed potatoes, 0.0004 in your tap water (averaged over the USA, as high as 0.01 BBP in farm lands, and 0.1 from well water in farm land). When you buy organic, the levels are still only lower, not gone. It persists in the ground for years upon years. But don't worry, they've tested the LD50 so they know how much it takes to kill a person instantly, and presumably anything not instantly fatal is harmless. Sure, it causes birth defects in rats, but rats aren't people.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Okay, so we've learned that HFCS that is derived from corn treated with a pesticide is responsible for causing CCD. And from the articles, it appears that bees that aren't fed HFCS (laced or not) don't seem to be collecting enough of the pesticide via their natural habits.
Great! Great news. Yay! Whoo-hoo, and all that jazz.
So why are we feeding the bees HFCS or sugar water?
A former beekeeper pointed out that they're fed HFCS and sugar water in late winter when the hives run out of honey. (In case you didn't know, bees don't make honey just for human benefit. It's supposed to be their food.)
So the next logical question would be, "Why are they running out of honey in late winter?"
Answer: Keepers are taking too much.
So! CCD isn't necessarily caused by a pesticide, it's caused by HUMAN GREED when idiot bee keepers harvest too much honey for a quick profit, and then try to keep their bees limping along on garbage. If they weren't stealing the winter food supply, and restrained themselves to taking only the summer surplus, then CCD would most likely never have happened. (Using sugar water USED to be a last-gasp, keeper-has-shit-the-bed-and-has-to-fix-it method of helping your bees survive your lack of proper planning? But now it's become canon.)
Once again, the cause of the problem is human greed and stupidity.
[End Of Line]
...in which bees are fed glucose instead of going foraging. They are not going out and pollinating the environment and bringing back bio-rich foodstuffs. They are being fed an effectively sterile product from a monoculture, that enhances a monoculture world - bio-feedback with a bad outcome.
I used to keep bees, but after the FDA approved this class of insecticides (~2004) none of my colonies made it over the winter. The law is that bee-lethal insecticides cannot be used where bees are present, but FDA made an exception for these "systemic insecticides" despite documented evidence of bee harm. I learned about this by 2006 and believe one of my neighbors was an early adopter of this bee poison. I am still waiting for FDA to reverse this approval.
CCD started getting press soon after, as beekeeping started to dwindle. The cause was controversial, because it wasn't a simple poisoning; the affected bees just disappeared from the hive. The history, and FDA test documents, we're really pretty clear. Bayer and other manufacturers have fought long and hard to keep selling their poison. This study is just one more in a long series. Sometimes they get coverage, usually not.
The /. comments are interesting, because HFCS has little to do with the story. Bees get the insecticide from nectar and pollen from dosed plants, including fruit trees, that circulate it throughout their system. The test added the insecticide to the HFCS that the bees were being fed, and the authors commented on the difficulty of measuring its concentration in the syrup and speculated on the amount in commercially available corn syrup. The GMO corn doesn't seem to actually have anything to do with the story. I am amused that an issue that is important to me is getting so much play for the worst of reasons.
crap. I am a confused person, apparently. The role of arsenic is different than I thought it was.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Is the FDA on board with pesticide being passed thru at detectable levels in a supposedly simple processed food product?
Very likely yes. This article lays out the european limits for it in food as ranging from 0.02 mg/kg in eggs to 3.0 mg/kg in hops. While this is not proof that the US FDA has a non-zero limit usually Europe tends to be more conservative with food regulations (at least they are with things like growth hormones).
Nicotine sulfate has been used for a long time as an insecticide (Black Leaf 40 was a well known trade name.). Tobacco plant parts contain nicotine, but not the honey and pollen.
The neonicotinoids are a bit different. The arrangement of atoms in nicotine is used widely in living things for some of the chemicals that make them run. That's why putting something similar, like nicotine sulfate or the neonicotinoids into them messes them up. It takes the place of nicotinic chemicals and screws up the systems in the cell based on them.
Insects tend to be more sensitive to some of these nicotinic poisons than mammals and such. This was one of the reasons for adopting neonicotinoids. They are much less toxic to humans and some other animals than many of the other things used as seed coating insecticides. (Remember dieldrin and aldrin?)
Nope, there was a correlation between those viruses and funguses and CCD, but no causal like.
They researchers give the bees TINY amounts of this pesticide, and POOF, they can create CCD on demand.
So we know this pesticide causes CCD, and the most likely vector is via HFCS. Bee keepers start feeding bees HFCS in 2005-2006, right when CCD started occurring.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I'd really love a citation for this. Herbicide passed through grass, through cows, through another generation of grass, through different cows, and still proved fatal to plants after it was composted? Not believable.
It is an irreversible agonist that binds to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and first activates then blocks them. At high doses it will paralyze muscles. At these low doses it would more likely act by interfering with cognition. Because it is irreversible, it likely has a cumulative effect.