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Roundup Weed Killer Could Be Linked To Widespread Bee Deaths, Study Finds (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: A new study [published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences] by scientists at the University of Texas at Austin posit that glyphosate -- the active ingredient in the herbicide -- destroys specialized gut bacteria in bees, leaving them more susceptible to infection and death from harmful bacteria. Researchers Nancy Moran, Erick Motta and Kasie Raymann suggest their findings are evidence that glyphosate might be contributing to colony collapse disorder, a phenomenon that has been wreaking havoc on honey bees and native bees for more than a decade. They hope their results will convince farmers, landscapers and homeowners to stop spraying glyphosate-based herbicides on flowering plants that are likely to be pollinated by bees.
"No large-scale study has ever found a link between glyphosate and honey bee health issues," Bayer said in a statement, adding that the new study "does not change that." Bayer noted the study relied on a small sample of individual bees and that it does not meet regulatory research criteria on pesticides stipulated by international guidelines developed by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development and other international organizations. Additionally, the company suggested it is "questionable whether the concentrations of the substance tested could at all be absorbed by bee populations in the open over a relevant period of time." According to the report in the journal, the researchers focused on honey bees and used "hundreds of adult worker bees from a single hive" and treated them with varying levels of glyphosate. Editor's note: In June, Germany's pharmaceutical giant Bayer purchased Monsanto, the company that developed Roundup.
"No large-scale study has ever found a link between glyphosate and honey bee health issues," Bayer said in a statement, adding that the new study "does not change that." Bayer noted the study relied on a small sample of individual bees and that it does not meet regulatory research criteria on pesticides stipulated by international guidelines developed by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development and other international organizations. Additionally, the company suggested it is "questionable whether the concentrations of the substance tested could at all be absorbed by bee populations in the open over a relevant period of time." According to the report in the journal, the researchers focused on honey bees and used "hundreds of adult worker bees from a single hive" and treated them with varying levels of glyphosate. Editor's note: In June, Germany's pharmaceutical giant Bayer purchased Monsanto, the company that developed Roundup.
Could it bee?
I think once we (at long last) manage to kill Bayer/Monsanto by whichever means, we'll have to drive a stake through its heart.
Such a disgusting monster.
Normally big companies don't bother responding to scientific studies. The fact that they did in this case, attempting a character assassination to boot, suggests they are scared. They might even have their own internal data supporting such results.
If that is the case, I can barely imagine the multiple international class action suits that will follow. It will make the smoking debacle look small.
This summer was especially bad. I had two wasp traps... just the little green cups they fly into and cannot get out again. In one weeks, there was AT LEAST 400 wasps. Both cups were nearly full. I have no idea where they all came from.
Please tell me where you live so I never accidentally move there.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Monsanto has announced their first GM, roundup resistant bees. Available soon. /s
I didn't have any problems finding weedkiller without it - glyphosate kills grass, so there's a whole line of "safe for your yard" products without it.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
and suddenly the research that proves it's harmful after all start to pop up. What a coincidence.
For once The findings have vastly worse implications than the headline. Namely, Round-up isn't poisoning the Bee's themselves it's impairing their symbiotic microbiome. You too have a microbiome, as does the every plant, the soil, and wasps too.
What's interesting here is that previous studies had found that ROund up did kill cells at high doses it wasn't the glycophase that was doing modt of it. It was the packaging "inert" ingredients many of which were detergent-like. It's not a surprise that detergents might harm isolates cells in high concentration.
this one finds the Glycophase itself harms some unknown bacteria that in turn makes the microbiome tank, and the bee's die.
That is a big deal. Much bigger deal than the previous findings.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I know we are not supposed to kill wasps, as they are pollinators and help to control insects
Actually, most wasps in North America - especially more northern states - are not pollinators. They are predators but they don't pollinate anything. And being as they are not limited in their ability to sting (as most bees are) they can be a much more significant threat to humans. In other words, fire away. Get the wasp killer from your local big-box store and go to town. Generally the sites where wasps (especially the exceptionally common paper wasp) build their nests are not attractive nesting sites for any kind of bee, so the collateral damage is generally pretty low.
The exception to the non-pollinating wasps are the wasps that pollinate figs (this is actually why figs are never vegetarian - you can't eat a fig without eating wasp eggs). If you live someplace where figs cannot grow, there is almost no chance that the wasps in your area pollinate anything.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It doesn't necessarily follow.
I know more about mosquito control, since I worked in that industry for decades, but in that field the common pesticides are chosen because they have low toxicity for non-target species and low potential for bioaccumulation because once deployed in the environment they break down rapidly into non-toxic byproducts. I assume that herbicides are approved using similar criteria.
Now herbicides are targeted at the plant kingdoom, and bees are in the animal kingdom. Glycophosphate in particular targets a metabolic pathway that is found in plants and fungi, but not animals. That tells you exactly zero about whether it's harmless to animals; it might kill animals in a completely different way. You have to conduct tests.
Tests show that glycophosphates have a high LD50 (i.e., low toxicity) for animals, but that's acute toxicity. It takes a lot of Roundup to kill an animal outright, but that doesn't mean it can't affect the animals behavior and reproduction in ecologically disruptive ways. If you exposed all humans to a drug which was harmless but made men impotent, human populations would crash even if the drug had an infinitely high LD50.
If this sounds complicated, that's because it is. But that's no reason to throw our hands up in the air and assume everything will be OK. At this point nobody's in any position to state anything definitive about the impact of glycophosphates on bees; this study has successfully opened a question we don't have an answer for yet. But if we study this problem, we'll get a definitive answer. Either way some people might not like that answer, but at least it's a rational basis for making policy.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Every year, there are hundreds of studies that attempt to prove the Roundup is the devil. So far there haven't been any smoking guns. At this point, I'm cynical.
Glyphosate has been in use since 1973 and bee colony disorder is a relatively recent phenomenon starting around 2006
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
According to the above wiki article Bayer's patent on glyphosate expired in 2000 and other companies jumped on the bandwagon and released their own pesticides using it so it's possible that it just had to reach enough critical mass for it to appear - but it was used so widely in crops which will sometimes hire bee colonies to pollanize the fields that I'd be surprised it didn't come up earlier.
Just plain wrong. I could find triclopyr-based products rather easy. There's also picloram-based products.
After looking at them all though, I ended up going with glyphosate. For what I was doing, it seemed about as dangerous as the other herbicides.
I still have a bottle of the concentrated stuff, which I use only as a stump killer. To be fair, I'd rather be exposed to people using herbicides like me - directly applied to the plant via brush, no spraying, no broad application - than like my neighbors, who spray it across their yards because front lawns are supposed to look like golf courses.
Certain species of wasps do feed on plant nectar as bees do. As such, they compete with bees for food resources. In some cases, they attack bee hives. And since they are much less efficient pollinators than bees, I'm siding with the bees.
Nuke the wasps.
Have gnu, will travel.
This headline and the comments it has created have me scratching my head. I and other farmers use a fair amount of glyphosate but I can't think of any time I'v seen it used on flowering plants. Glyphosate use is fairly staggering in quantity but nearly all of that is used on glyphosate-resistant crops to control weeds, and this by definition must be done when the crop and weeds are very small. In other words, weeks or months before flowering. If glyphosate were sprayed on a crop that was flowering it would abort flowers and destroy yield, if not making the plants very sick. So it wouldn't make any sense for a farmer to use glyphosate in this way to begin with. Something smells funny.
By the way we also have our own bees that we use for pollinating a glyphosate-tolerant crop.
In yards and around homes also, glyphosate is typically not sprayed on glowering plants. Why would it be? You wouldn't use glyphosate to remove dandelions from your lawn for example (if you do, you're in for a very dead lawn).
This study is highly problematic for this reason. The findings may well be true about toxicity to bees, but if glyphosate isn't used typically on flowering plants or weeds, then the study is somewhat pointless, if interesting. Certainly it cannot inform any policies over the use of glyphosate, except to urge that it not be used on flowering plants, which it already isn't.
In the end, however, those calling for the end of glyphosate will probably get their wish as over-use of glyphosate is rapidly ending the effectiveness of that chemical. And everyone will end up paying for that in increased food costs.
Yes, it opens the question. But because the question is opened, and on the thin evidence there is, I think we're likely to see revised guidelines on how Roundup is to be used so as to minimize honeybee exposure to it.
I.e., don't spray on flowering plants that bees are actively visiting. I don't think this is a crippling restriction (or much of a practical restriction even) on Roundup, so it may be a slam-dunk guideline revision even though the evidence is shaky.
--PM
Wasps are beneficial insects. They hunt other insects, including insects that threaten crops. They will not sting you unless you aggravate them.
Sometimes you aggravate them just by existing. Once, wasps made a nest under a plant in my yard, and then whenever you'd water they'd get angry and come out looking for victims. Another time they made a nest over the back door and then they would dive-bomb my head and often get stuck in my hair when I walked outside. So really, that's bollocks.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually, it would be phylumist...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Well, I think even if we did away with a lot of the chemicals, the US could still easily feed itself, and that's all that matters to us you know.
I mean, if the famers can sell all their goods domestically, that's all we need to do, eh?
That's the way it was done in the past....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
How do you know it is safe for the environment? And cow shit is not so environmentally safe. Runs off into water ways and causes all kinds of problems.
Except it's not. It was a conclusion based on a group of 15 bees, which gave bees unusually large doses of glyphosphate, and found that the heaviest dose of glyphosphate had no statistically significant effects, unlike the mild dose. The data actually argues that we should give bees more glyphosphate in order to neutralize any effects.
They try to explain this away by arguing that maybe they were having some bias in capturing G-10 bees, well, because "bees exposed to glyphosate may exhibit impaired spatial processing"... without giving any evidence for or even a mechanism through which this could happen. What they wrote is literally the equivalent of writing re. humans "If you take some antibiotics that kill only a fraction of your gut bacteria, you're going to wander off in confusion and die". The whole study also contradicts the authors' previous work, which blamed CCD on antibiotics given by beekeepers.
The whole premise is kind of silly to begin with. Glyphosphate kills flowering plants. Bees adjust where they forage based on where flowers can be found. Bees are not going to have any interest whatsoever hanging around a field that's been sprayed with glyphosphate. Glyphosphate also does not stay on the surface; it's highly soluble and washes into the soil, where it binds tightly with soil particles.
But of course, the study said something negative about glyphosphate, so of course everyone covered it, in as apocalyptic terms as possible.
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
As a general rule, wild figs contain wasp pollinators. Most F. carica (domestic / common fig) cultivars, however, are parthenocarpic. Sorry to ruin that for you ;)
That said, while the fruits are parthenocarpic, they're not apomictic. They don't contain viable seeds. If you have a fig that contains viable seeds, even if it's of a parthenocarpic cultivar, it very likely contains a fig wasp.
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
Why does Bayer simply go into defense-mode and try to dismiss the study all together? At the least, for PR, they should be a bit more receptive and let people know that, you know, bees are good, that they would like to make sure their product doesn't kill them off en mass, that they may throw even just a *tiny* bit of cash toward research, and maybe, just maybe, adjust their product(s) to maybe counter these possible negative impacts of using Roundup.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
You're likely to get a more educated jury pool in San Francisco, where that trial was held, than in a lot of other parts of the country, but even with that jurors usually don't have the background to really be able to evaluate the science. Both sides in a case like this generally put up scientific experts that come to exact opposite conclusions on things like causality, so jurors often have to base their decision on higher-level factors like who they think is more credible and what outcome they think is more fair.
(1) Stop watering the plant and drowning the wasps, and they will stop attacking you.
(2) I've had wasp nests under the roof of my house. They don't ever bother me, because I ignore them.
(3) I'm more scared of Africanized honeybees than wasps. Those suckers don't just sting. They kill.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall