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More Than 40% of US Honeybee Colonies Died In a 12-Month Period Ending In April

Posted by samzenpus on from the won't-somebody-please-think-of-the-flowers? dept.

walterbyrd writes: The Agriculture Department released its annual honeybee survey Wednesday and it doesn't look good. More than 40% of U.S. honeybee colonies died in a 12-month period ending in April. While the precise cause of the honeybee crisis is unknown, scientists generally blame a combination of factors, including poor diets and stress. Some bees die from infestations of the Varroa mite, a bloodsucking parasite that weakens bees and introduces diseases to the hive. Environmental groups also point to a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids. In April, the Environmental Protection Agency said it would stop approving new outdoor uses for those types of chemicals until more studies on bee health are conducted.

25 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. It's not limited to the US by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Informative

    Same problem in Europe.

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    1. Re:It's not limited to the US by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Interesting

      My parents have a small bee farm. They lost their colonies... Because it was too cold of a winter this year, and they froze.
      Global climate change, as created a lot of atypical, and more extreme weather conditions. I doubt there is a single issue, but a wide set of issues. I know it is complex and hard to put in a headline, so you vilify someone. But reality is there are not so many villains but the actions of many people. Often a combination of good intentions.

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    2. Re:It's not limited to the US by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Same problem in Europe.

      Complete bullshit! The EU banned the pesticides US farmer use, and lo-and-behold, bee colonies stopped dying.

      Blame the farmers if you want, but ask why they're happy to kill and destroy the ecosystem first. They're being fucked over by the massive supermarket suppliers.

    3. Re: It's not limited to the US by drunk_punk · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Just curious... You're parents don't regulate temperature in any way?

    4. Re:It's not limited to the US by pastafazou · · Score: 4, Informative

      Complete bullshit is right! How is it that some regions that use neonics are not suffering any bee colony deaths at all? Australia is one of the heaviest users of neonics, yet their bee colonies are quite healthy. Canada's prairies also use neonics, yet their bees are doing absolutely fine. Neonics were in use for 15 years before these bee colony deaths began to appear. Certainly not very much correlation at all between usage of neonics and bee deaths. It's quite likely that the real culprit is the varroa mite, and the bee viruses it carries. The mite has become a serious problem in both the US and Europe, and the spread of the mite correlates much better with the spread of CCD.

    5. Re:It's not limited to the US by Dixie_Flatline · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Australia uses the neonics differently, as I recall. Something about the way they spread the pesticide makes it less likely to interfere with bees.

      That said, it's an insecticide. It's meant to kill insects, and they're generally pretty indiscriminate. It's also fairly likely that even if it's a sub-lethal dose for bees, it's a lethal dose for different beneficial insects.

      I think there are multiple causes--varroa mites have been around for decades without causing such widespread colony collapse. We've got a changing climate and agricultural monocultures, as well as stress from neonics (which it turns out honeybees may prefer over non-treated nectar).

      Looking for single causes is usually hopeless. But we can control our use of pesticides, so it's one of the things on the chopping block. One way or another, we have to bring this problem under control.

    6. Re:It's not limited to the US by caseih · · Score: 4, Informative

      In Australia and western Canada, neonic-coated seads are typically placed in the ground via a gravity-fed metering system (box drill), or via an air drill that blows the seed into the ground behind shanks that open the soil. So dust particles laden with neonics get buried in the soil where bees won't be exposed directly to them. In the midwest US and eastern Canada, where the crops are predominantly things like soybeans or corn, they use vacuum planters which suck the seeds from storage one at time and drop them into the ground. Unfortunately the vacuum planters blow a lot of dust from the seeds into the air. So neonic-laden particles get blown everywhere and we know they affect bees and any other insect. So it could very well be that widespread use of vacuum planters is a part of the problem. Unfortunately air drills don't work very well for row crops that do best with rows of singulated seeds.

      The Alberta Bee Keepers Commission refuses to back any attempt to completely ban neonic use in Canada as it would decimate their industry. Fewer crops means fewer bees are required by farmers.

      The reason neonics are used is that when the plant is young, the neonics are taken up through the plant and make the plant toxic to pests that would eat the little leaves, killing the plant. On one of my dry bean fields last year was seeded without neonic seed treatment, and we did see some yield reduction from pests eating the plants at an early stage, including from works eating the shoots underground. If there's a chance neonics can be used safely, then for sure they are a huge benefit.

      There is the other issue of neonics present in the pollen, leading to bees getting a bit of a buzz. It's not clear to me how much neonic there is in the flower at that late stage of the plant's growth, or what the consequences of that are. Bees around here are heavily used to pollinate hybrid canola, all of which was treated with neonics. So it's really hard to say what the consequences are.

      It's true we can control the use of pesticides, and we should and do. This doesn't have to mean an outright ban. A complete ban would mean the return to more toxic insecticides being sprayed at more regular intervals on a crop, which none of us wants.

    7. Re:It's not limited to the US by bmajik · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Someone else covered this but is buried.

      Bee colonies do not freeze in the winter. They starve.

      We've been keeping bees in North Dakota, which is colder than wherever you are, for 7 years. All 3 of our colonies survived last winter. One is strong enough that we've split it this spring to try and prevent a swarm.

      The way that bees operate in winter is amazing. The bees form a sphere, with the queen near its center. They vibrate their wings and bodies to create heat. The bees on the outside of the sphere obviously lose heat the fastest. The bees on the inside stay the warmest. The sphere of vibrating bees constantly turns itself inside out, over and over, so that the cooler outer edge bees return to the warm core and replenish their warmth, while the warm bees from the core circulate out towards the edges after they've recuperated.

      This consumes lots of energy (and food).

      As the cluster of bees does this, it moves upwards in the hive, consuming stored honey.

      When they get to the top of the hive, they stop migrating. If they run out of honey, they die.

      We use 2 deep supers and 1 medium honey super to over-winter our bees.

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    8. Re: It's not limited to the US by Anguirel · · Score: 3, Informative

      Bee Keepers don't need to regulate temperature in any way. The bees do that for themselves (in the wild as well as in keeper's hives). They do need enough honey to make it through the winter, though.

      --
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  2. What is normal and how many were born? by BitZtream · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Over a 200 year period, 100% of the humans on the planet die ... of course, more are born to replace them so the population actually grows ... making that number that looked super duper scary ... pretty much normal.

    So ... 40% in and of itself doesn't mean anything to me if Bees only live 2-3 years anyway.

    How many new colonies were formed and how was the total population effected in the end.

    The title and summary give no indication that something is wrong, only the indication that someone wants a sensationalist headline.

    Facts please ... you know, news for nerds.

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    1. Re:What is normal and how many were born? by JSC · · Score: 4, Informative

      Reading the article reveals this... "In an annual survey released on Wednesday by the Bee Informed Partnership, a consortium of universities and research laboratories, about 5,000 beekeepers reported losing 42.1 percent of their colonies in the 12-month period that ended in April. That is well above the 34.2 percent loss reported for the same period in 2013 and 2014, and it is the second-highest loss recorded since year-round surveys began in 2010."

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    2. Re: What is normal and how many were born? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I am a beekeeper. 30% of feral bee colonies do not survive naturally and is also the number I try to maintain to keep genetic diversity. With that said other beekeepers and myself do not report this as loss to the DOA and count this as the price of doing business. I am right in line with this number with 10% loss on top of what I dispatched.

    3. Re:What is normal and how many were born? by silentcoder · · Score: 3, Informative

      The normal lifespan of a bee colony is measured in decades or in rare cases even centuries.

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    4. Re:What is normal and how many were born? by vikingpower · · Score: 5, Informative
      Son of a former beekeeper speaking here.

      In summer, a typical worker bee lives for about 6 weeks. 8 weeks, maybe 10, if she has one of the rare posts of guardians at the bee colony's entry, or is one of the even fewer bees that feed the queen. Bees literally work themselves to death. The replenishment rate is, during summer, 100%; this is taken care of by the queen. A typical bee colony has between 10,000 and 40,000 bees in high summer, then goes into winter with about 1,000 bees, clumped around the queen to keep her warm, and comes out of winter with 400 to 600 bees. We are talking about apis mellifera carnica here, the so-called Italian bee, which is the variety most commonly used by beekeepers.

      An entire colony dying in spring or early summer is, normally, an extremely rare event, and indicates either an epidemy, or severe poisoning. Varroa mites are a known cause, but are a largely contained phenomenon now, at least in professional bee-keeping circles. What remains, is ... poisoning. Neonicotinoids or something else.

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  3. Re:Take A Bow For Your Accomplishments by Tx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's not proven that any particular pesticide or agro-chemical is to blame. The fact that urban bees are thiving in cities such as Paris and London, despite all the pollution in those environments, is inteesting. One mooted possibile reason is that cities have lots of different species of plants in their gardens and parks, blooming at differing times, so that there is always nectar available from some of them. In the countryside by contrast, with modern, vast, single-crop farms, it may be that there is only one species of plant in the bees environment, and once that crop finishes blooming, in sometimes a pretty small window of time, there is no more nectar. So it could be farming practices and lack of rural biodiversity that are to blame, at least in significant part.

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  4. Indeed. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The fact that urban bees are thiving [treehugger.com] in cities such as Paris and London, despite all the pollution in those environments, is inteesting.

    Where the carpet bombing of these pesticides is not done.

    Interesting indeed.

    1. Re:Indeed. by pastafazou · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, there's no carpet bombing of neonics, that's not how they're applied.

    2. Re:Indeed. by bugs2squash · · Score: 4, Funny

      They are painstakingly rubbed into the fur of each bee individually.

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      Nullius in verba
    3. Re:Indeed. by xevioso · · Score: 3, Funny

      Exactly. It takes a while but it is worth it; the bee actually really loves to be massaged and have his tummy rubbed.

  5. Paywalls? You amateurs by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Slashdot must be getting kickbacks from the NYT because all the story links go to their paywall now. But a nerd would go right to the source because the NYT is a fat fucking waste of time any more. They're the next CNN or Faux News, they just sensationalize other people's news. Too bad this ain't News for Nerds any more.

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  6. Re:Holy Fuck by Carewolf · · Score: 5, Informative

    Take a bee colony and stick them in a deep freeze and see how many survive. In case anyone missed it, the U.S. and Europe experienced record cold this winter. How fucking stupid do you have to be to not put 2 and 2 together?

    Europe had an exceptionally warm and mild winter this year.

  7. Re:Take A Bow For Your Accomplishments by caseih · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In Alberta, where there are more commercial bee keeping operations than anywhere in Canada, of honey and other types, and where neonic use is higher than in many other places. Bees are simply are not having the problems seen elsewhere. The bee keepers association here in Alberta is strongly opposed to an outright neonic ban because it would severely hurt their pollination and honey business. Without neonics there would be a lot less Canola and other crops to pollinate.

    Now, this isn't to say that neonics aren't a big part of the problem of bees dying elsewhere. It could have to do with how the neonics are being used. In Alberta they are used when treating the seeds with fungicide, and typically they are placed in the ground with a gravity-fed drill, or an air drill that blows them into the ground. So all the neonic residue gets placed under the soil. In other places, they use vacuum planters (corn, soybeans) which blows neonic-laden dust into the air. So it could be this that contributes to the problem.

  8. Re:Take A Bow For Your Accomplishments by BlackPignouf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    While "innocent until proven guilty" is typically the right approach, "huge assholes until proven otherwise" has always been extremely accurate for Monsanto.

  9. Re:Holy Fuck by gnaac · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not al of the US had record cold this winter either. Yes, the North East portions had a lot of cold and snow, but in the Pacific NW there was an exceptionally mild aka warm) winter with very little snow. Snowpack in the mountains is 25% of where they normally are this time of year. Lowest snowpack on record according to this article: http://www.wunderground.com/ne...

  10. Groups a bit slower than the others. by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 4, Informative

    Post to Submission that originally linked to paywall

    2009
    Scientists Isolate and Treat Parasite Causing Decline in Honey Bee Population
    http://science.slashdot.org/st...

    2010
    Mystery of the Dying Bees Solved
      "As it turns out, the fungus N. ceranae that was thought to be killing off bee colonies had a partner in crime — a DNA-based virus that worked in tandem with N. ceranae to compromise nutrition uptake" Note: (N. ceranae = Parasite)
      http://science.slashdot.org/st...

      2012
      Studies Link Pesticides To Bee Colony Collapse Disorder
      http://science.slashdot.org/st...

    2015
    It's the pesticides!