EPA: No Single Cause For Colony Collapse Disorder

alphatel writes "Citing a wide range of symptoms, a federal report (PDF) released yesterday has concluded that no single event, pesticide or virus can be held responsible for CCD in North American bee colonies. Meanwhile, Europe has moved towards banning neocotinids for two years. EPA's Jim Jones stated, 'There are non-trivial costs to society if we get this wrong. There are meaningful benefits from these pesticides to farmers and to consumers, as well as for affordable food.' May R. Berenbaum, head of the department of entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a participant in the study, said, 'There is no quick fix. Patching one hole in a boat that leaks everywhere is not going to keep it from sinking.'"

Comments

One hole at a time

[Anonymous Coward]

Patching one hole in a boat that leaks everywhere is not going to keep it from sinking

But it is one less hole to worry about.

Re:One hole at a time

[RoknrolZombie]

No shit...it's obvious that not doing anything at all isn't going to fix the problem. Normally I don't support banning things because they "might" be affecting something else, but under these circumstances I'd say it might be worth some experimenting to see what might *help*. FFS, the more we sit and wait to see what's going on, the fewer bees we have to do their job. I realize other animals pollinate as well, but they don't do it nearly as efficiently as bees...and frankly, I think this problem is much easier to solve than the problem of how to get our fucking food to grow in five years.

Re:One hole at a time

[denzacar]

what it's like in other parts of the country or the world. But to many people, more expensive food is the same as no food at all.

Fortunately, EU countries where neocotinids have been temporarily banned, tend not to be among such countries.
No, not even Greece.

Re:One hole at a time

[__aaltlg1547]

We're talking very marginally more expensive food if we ban a class of insecticides, as opposed to much more expensive food if crops fail because they were not pollinated. Soybeans, despite what you're read, will not be much affected by bee loss. They self-pollinate.

Re:One hole at a time

[khallow]

In the history of mankind, it has never been a BAD idea to ban a pesticide.

The obvious counterexample is DDT. It got banned and as a result malaria wasn't eradicated. This link claims 50 million lives lost due to the ban since the 70s.

Re:One hole at a time

[Steeltoe]

Support for your line of thinking:

Salon: Without honeybees, we may cease to be
The report concludes, “imidacloprid seems to be a substance particularly ’fit for the precautionary principle’.” It cites the chemicals’ ability to harm honeybees and wild bees at minute doses and its persistence in the soil for several years. Additionally, it notes that after Italy temporarily banned neonicotinoids in several crops, reports of high honeybee mortality decreased from 185 to two.

The line of thinking to keep doing harm without testing wether bans might work, for short term profit, is frankly both suicidal unscientific.
Doing harm in the name of profit is evil.

Re:One hole at a time

[Anonymous Coward]

You're suggesting that the only way we will ever stop malaria is to poison mosquitoes into extinction?

That's very short term thinking.

50 million lives were lost because they weren't "rich enough" to deserve our health care or research funding. It's as simple as that.

Re:One hole at a time

[Runaway1956]

Consider the facts surrounding this insecticide.

First - it is DESIGNED to kill insects. That is it's purpose.
Second - it was approved for use based on flawed research, conducted in Canada only, in an area that had no honey bee populations to be affected. Private research, conducted by Bayer - research that should never have been admitted as "science".
Third - the colony collapses happen most frequently in areas that use this specific insecticide.
Fourth - there is data that supports the ban - Steeltoe posted a link above: http://www.salon.com/2013/03/21/without_honeybees_we_may_cease_to_be/

    "Additionally, it notes that after Italy temporarily banned neonicotinoids in several crops, reports of high honeybee mortality decreased from 185 to two."

Re:One hole at a time

[icebike]

I've heard of, even seen (on TV) places in China where there are no bees anymore. These are agricultural regions that were reliant upon bees to pollinate their crops.

They went to manual pollination. No shit, actual farmers spend 2-3 weeks every year, hand pollinating their crops. It only works because the average income level is comparatively low there. And let's face it, the choice was do the job by hand or get out of farming. Without outside assistance there are many plants that cannot pollinate themselves, or only do so poorly.

Not this again!!!

They were hand pollinating long before they killed off the bees trying to eradicate a different pest.

They were hand pollinating in situations there bees wouldn't have helped at all because in order to obtain high yield the crops required cross pollination between three related varieties of pears that flower at different times. They had been doing it for years to improve the crop.

Only much later did they accidently eradicate the bees, trying to save these same pear crops from a different pest.
But bringing in new bees wouldn't have helped due to the long time between the flowering of the three varieties.
They had not been relying on bees at all for years.

Read about it here.

Lets not get our stories mixed up, mKay?

Hand pollination is also done in the US, especially when breeding new varieties of corn or apples, where its very important to know exactly what went into the mix. Its actually not that unusual.

Re:One hole at a time

[dryeo]

Not this bullshit again. DDT was never banned for malaria prevention, just every other use and is still used for indoor treatment for malaria carrying mosquitoes though I doubt they make wallpaper out of it any more. Pesticides are like anti-biotics, use them only when needed as immunity is built up in the target population which is one of the main reasons that DDT isn't used as much for malaria prevention, just as penicillin isn't used much anymore for infections.
The Stockholm convention banned DDT for all uses except malaria carrying mosquito control though they did discourage it. Currently the World Health Organization does encourage using DDT for indoor use to control mosquitoes in malaria infected areas. Press release, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr50/en/
And staying on topic, I had a pesticide application ticket many years ago. It was stressed to only use pesticides as a last resort, to use what was effective, and no more and one of the main dangers was how sensitive bees were to insecticides compared to most insects. Fish were also very sensitive to some insecticides and herbicides so you'd have chemicals with a low LD50 yet a high LC50 level. Toxicity can be very complex.

Re:One hole at a time

[dryeo]

You're suggesting that the only way we will ever stop malaria is to poison mosquitoes into extinction?

It works.

No it doesn't (exception being smallpox) as almost always a resistant strain develops

50 million lives were lost because they weren't "rich enough" to deserve our health care or research funding. It's as simple as that.

Nonsense. The developed world doesn't have malaria now because they drove it to extinction in the wild via DDT and similar pesticides.

Actually the important thing was mechanical. Draining swamps is very effective to control mosquitoes along with judicious usage of pesticides, ideally a variety to prevent immune strains.

No, See, We're going too need a Villain here.

[rmdingler]

This would have gotten a lot better play on Slashdot if Monsanto had played a larger and more definitive role in the CCD....

Jim Jones?

[Ultra64]

As if anyone is going to listen to him again.

Complex system has multiple modes of failure

[slew]

News at 11...

Sink the boat

[fox171171]

There is no quick fix. Patching one hole in a boat that leaks everywhere is not going to keep it from sinking.

Yes, much better not to patch any holes at all, and let the boat sink, than to risk patching a hole that wasn't leaking. Hell, maybe we should drill a few more holes, just to be sure.

There are meaningful benefits from these pesticides to farmers and to consumers, as well as for affordable food.

There are meaningful benefits from these bees to farmers and to consumers, as well as for affordable food.'

There, fixed that for you.

I think it would be better to be condemned for doing something and failing, than to be be damned for standing back and watching it happen.

Hello, Nirvana fallacy

[SuperBanana]

'There is no quick fix. Patching one hole in a boat that leaks everywhere is not going to keep it from sinking.'"

Hello, nirvana fallacy.

For those who aren't familiar, the basic explanation of the nirvana fallacy is rejecting a solution because it isn't perfect/ideal. In this case: rejecting a ban on the pesticide because there are other additional causes of colony collapse disorder that wouldn't be affected by such a ban.

Idiotic, and amazing that a scientist could utter it.

Re:Hello, Nirvana fallacy

[hawkingradiation]

It kind of occurs to me that they would most likely say that there is no evidence if there was none. Since they didn't say there was no evidence, I suppose there is some. I would also point out that there is an active lawsuit (first google hit) going against the EPA and possibly this is the reason for the article. I also read that there was at least one paper on the cause of colony collapse disorder. Don't know if they/it can be found on Google Scholar here. Bayer crop science is the villan for promoting the use of this. Anyway you look at it, the disappearance of bees may be good for selling one particular seed, but in general very, very bad for the rest of nature and most other agricultural industries too. Think of how Biologist Jonas Salk said: "If all insects on Earth disappeared, within 50 years all life on Earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the Earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.”. This does not mean that all humans have to disappear in order for life to survive however. I would prefer a balance.

A little background info...

[Anonymous Coward]

A little background info for aspiring entomologists. Neonicotinoids are an interesting class of insecticides. They are valued because they have relatively low mammalian toxicity but they are very effective against insects. Neonics are systemic insecticides, i.e., they get inside plants and are distributed into all plant tissues. Neonicotinoid residues found in pollen and nectar are consumed by flower-visiting insects such as bees. Concentrations of residues can reach lethal levels in some situations. Neonicotinoids can persist in soil for months or years after a single application. After plants absorb neonicotinoids, they slowly metabolize the compounds. Some of the breakdown products are as toxic or more toxic to honey bees than the original active ingredient. Honey bees exposed to sublethal levels of neonicotinoids can experience problems with flying and navigation, reduced taste sensitivity, and slower learning of new tasks, which all impact foraging ability. Keep in mind that neonicotinoids were on the market for about 10 years before colony collapse disorder was noticed.

corn syrup?

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Read an article recently that said they have evidence to suggest that feeding bees corn syrup to replace the honey that they would normally eat weakens their immune system because the honey contains all sorts of good biological things that are remnants from the plants they harvest the nectar from. Instead, we steal their honey and feed them factory produced high fructose corn syrup. Pesticides, insecticides, corn syrup.. It's no wonder they're dying....

Difference between US/EU

[devent]

I really like how this really shows the difference between policy making in the US and the EU:
EU: maybe those pesticides are really hurting the bees, so we going to ban them for 2 years and see if it's help.
US: there are many stuff that hurts bees, but behind the pesticides are big cooperations so we rather do nothing.

"non-trivial costs to society" meaning the big cooperation don't like to take the hit on profits if there is a ban.

Tobacoo got it wrong

[bussdriver]

Big Tobacco delayed progress with FUD for decades but where they finally tripped up is that they didn't fund research into other causes of lung cancer. By conflating the whole issue with tons of information about contributing factors and flat out admitting they were a contributing factor they could continue to this day!

If you ever came in contact with Asbestos, ate poorly, lived in a polluted city, failed to get X minutes of aerobic exercise and then smoked... (I'd love the aerobic part since smokers tend to hate aerobic exercise; I'm sure their stats would be low on that "contributing factor")

So many holes around me, I want to fill them all!

[VortexCortex]

Oh, well, there's so many holes in this boat, and patching one of 'em takes, you know, effort -- Well, a different kind of effort than I'm used to anyway. So, I think we should just try spending all our time bailing more water -- It won't keep us from sinking eventually, but, I mean, I'm a card carrying member of the water bailer's union, and the Bucket Supply Store gives me a percentage of the sales on referrals... Meh, I'll probably be dead before the boat sinks, so, yeah. Screw the boat, just bail faster!