US Beekeepers Fear For Livelihoods As Anti-Zika Toxin Kills 2.5M Bees (theguardian.com)

A new report suggests that an insecticide sprayed from airplanes to kill mosquitos carrying the Zika virus may in fact be killing bees, since the "fine mist" is "beaded with neurotoxin." Earlier this week, one beekeeper posted a video showing thousands of dead bees heaped around hives. Meanwhile, South Carolina hobbyist Andrew Mache wrote in another Facebook post that he had lost "thousands upon thousands of bees" and that the spraying had devastated his business. The Guardian reports: "The program head, Dr Mike Weyman, said that though South Carolina has strict rules about protecting pollinators, country officials were using the neurotoxin, Naled, under a clause exempting them in a 'clear and public health crisis.' South Carolina's protocol for Zika infections is to alert local officials of a carrier's residence, which they 'consider a ground zero,' Weman said. Local authorities then target the local mosquitos in a 200-yard radius, in this case with spray. Experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and independent universities say Naled is far safer than other chemicals. It breaks down rapidly and, in the very low doses at which it is prescribed, should not pose a risk to humans. 'In Louisiana, we use these products quite frequently to reduce mosquitos, but we don't see many non-target effects, because the doses are really small,' said Dr Kirsten Healy, a public health entomologist at Louisiana State University. 'A lot of people don't realize that we always have the environment in mind. We try to have products that have the lowest possible impact.'" The report adds that bees and other pollinators "contribute an estimated $29 billion to farm income" around the U.S.

Comments

Night vs Day

[Anonymous Coward]

Much of this fallout is because they sprayed during the day. If they had sprayed at night, a) they would have hit more mosquitoes since they're active then, and b) they would have affected fewer bees since they don't forage at night. Does anyone know why it was done during the daytime?

Re:Night vs Day

[sims 2]

Because that's when normal people work? I would assume most pilots wouldn't want to fly that low at night and those that would wouldn't be the lowest bidder.

This is serious business

[marmot7]

I am not sure everyone understands that we totally depend on viable bee populations for our own survival. We're abstracted from it but it's real. Plants --> Animals -->People eating. ^ System cut off at the knees by destabilizing bee population, a process that's already started so more pressued isn't the right input.

Re:This is serious business

[Anonymous Coward]

No we're not. First off, the majority of staple crops are not dependent on bees; corn, wheat, rice, beans, and soybeans are either wind or self pollinated, and crops such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, bananas, and cassava are not dependent on pollination of any sort. Even in crops that are not staples, there are still things that do well without bees, like tomatoes, peppers, persimmon, papaya, and crops not dependent on pollination for the edible portion, like onion, lettuce, carrot, spinach, broccoli ect.

Second off, why does everyone think that the European honey bee is the single species keeping the world together? Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas did pretty well without it for millions of years. They can continue to do so.

I'm not trying to downplay the actual problems that are caused when honeybees are hurt in various ways, and there are a lot of crops that would take pretty big hits without bees (although there are alternative pollinators...what do you think pollinated all New World crops prior to the Colombian Exchange?), but I'm tired of hearing this doomsday hyperbole about how humans can't survive without this species of bee every time this topic comes up.

In counterpoint to story from two days ago

[93 Escort Wagon]

And yet some people think we can wipe out, with surgical precision, just the Zika-carrying mosquito species ...

Re:How many bees is your childs life worth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think that DDT is not going to kill bees? Then you got it all wrong: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-7348.1948.tb07353.x/abstract

Without bees there is no food. That has a much bigger impact than the Zika virus on the human population.

Also, there are other solutions to limit the diffusion of the Zika virus such as Oxitec's "self-limiting" mosquitoes, which pass on a fatal gene to their offspring. Whereas targeted elimination of a mosquito strain (Aedes aegypti, the main carrier of the virus) may be considered controversial as the effects on the environment are yet to be demonstrated, it is true that Zika carrier mosquito strains are generally not native to the area where the genetically-modified strain is released (e.g., Brazil), making its eradication somehow more reasonable.
In any case, it seems a better solution then blindly spraying poisons as it is being done in the US.

No risk to humans so everything's fine.

[rnturn]

It breaks down rapidly and, in the very low doses at which it is prescribed, should not pose a risk to humans.

Uh... did they test it on other, you know, non-mosquito insects? Have they had their fingers in their ears for the past decade and didn't hear about declining bee populations?

This insecticide might not have a direct effect on humans. But the secondary effect of not having any damned food just might turn out to be rather important.

Re:How many bees is your childs life worth?

[AK Marc]

Without bees there is no food.

There are other polinators. And there are plants thriving in areas without large natural bee populations. The result would be bad, but lying about it just weakens your stance.

Vietnam

[stooo]

Agent Orange breaks down rapidly and, in the very low doses at which it is prescribed, should not pose a risk to humans. 'In Vietnam, we use these products quite frequently to reduce Crops, but we don't see many non-target effects, because the doses are really small,' said General A. Nonymous, a public health Military at Louisiana War Department. 'A lot of people don't realise that we always have the environment in mind. We try to have products that have the lowest possible impact.'"