BEES FINALLY GET SOME PROTECTION FROM THE EU
Over the last decade or longer I have observed a sharp decline in honey bees visiting my garden and flower beds. There were times late in summer when my flowering sedum and other fragrant garden flowers were swarming with honeybees. The hum of their wings was so loud I could hear them from my back porch. Then, scrambling among the busy honeybees I would find only a few of the slower, bigger, black and yellow bumble bees. But over the last two decades or so honey bees have literally disappeared. The only bees now seen in my garden are our native clumsy, slow, bumble bees,
My local observations were mirrored and coincident with a world-wide documented massive decline in honeybees and other pollinators. Commercial bee keepers all across the USA and in Europe complained of die offs of their bee colonies. They reported that their hives collapsed when worker bees flew off from the hive but did not return. The result was the death of the queen the collapse of the hive. They termed this phenomena: “Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Bee keepers and some USA investigators at first attributed the “alarming” die off to a variety of causes: the parasitic mite (Veroa mite) which attaches it self to worker bees, a virus which sickens and kills bees, and a gut parasite. Few in the USA made the obvious connection between the widespread introduction of a new and widely-used neurologically active pesticide applied to crops that bees visited—-and the contemporaneous “alarming” die off of bee colonies.
Honey bees are useful not only for producing honey—that is simply a sweet byproduct of their actual importance to man. Bees are responsible for pollinating 90% of our commercial food crops which require insect pollinators....such as apples, peaches, pears, avocados, plums, lemons, and grapes. And “vegetables’ like squash, broccoli, carrots, okra, lima beans, peas, green-beans, are all pollinated by bees, as well as essential vegetable cooking oil crops like rapeseed (canola), and don’t forget coffee, and many many others.
The repeated poor harvest and failure of my little garden crop of summer squash, zucchini and grapes was no doubt in part the result of fewer insect pollinators and that effect was probably happening all over the world.
Recently, the European Commission’s (Standing Committee on Plants and Animals, Food and Feed) an influential arm of the EU, has drafted new regulations that if passed* would ban from outdoor use a whole class of pesticides that affect domestic and wild honeybees. The commission has made this decision based on a series of intensive studies on the impact of certain very popular and widely used chemical pesticides called “neonicotinoids” (“neonics”) on wild bees and butterflies in EU crop fields. The studies confirmed that the pesticides have a detrimental effect on bee and butterfly survival.
These chemicals mimic the effects of the biologically active chemical in tobacco—nicotine. Nicotine as every smoker and former nicotine addict knows affects the nervous system. Nicotine and nicotine-like chemicals used as plant pesticides are effective against a wide array of insect pests which attack crops.
Neonicotinoids (literally: “new nicotine-like pesticides “) affect the way animal neurons (nerve cells) transmit electrical impulses by blocking what might be termed the neuron’s “cut off” switch (a chemical known as acetylcholinesterase functions in this manner). The pesticide neonic mimics the “cut off switch” of neurons and its presence at the juncture between neurons permits these affected neurons to continue firing off impulses. Such an effect can cause an insect to go into a form of convulsion or at lower doses interfere with many of its bodily functions controlled by the nervous system .
Unlike higher organism (such as mammals and humans) insects have nervous systems which are essentially “hardwired”. In higher organism nicotine can alter the way nervous impulses are generated or transmitted. They might change the heart rate or increase nerve transmission but do not pose an existential threat In more primitive neurologically simpler organisms like insects altering the way the nervous systems works can cause the effected organism to go into convulsions, or perhaps in lesser doses stop its chewing actions of its mandibles, stop it form burrowing into a plant tissue, or as in honey bees, alter its nervous system so that it does not fly back to its hive.
These neonicotinoid are not sprayed on to crop plants. They are “systemic poisons” incorporated as a coating on the seed and as the seed germinates and the plant grows the chemical spreads throughout the entirety of the growing plant’s tissues. The roots, tubers, stems, leaves, flowers and fruit of these plants are all laced with the pesticide. Thus the plant is effectively protected from insect “grubs” which attack the roots, others which feed on the leaves and others which burrow into and attack the fruit. The nectar and pollen of neo-nic treated plants upon which bees feed are also contaminated with this pesticide and this is the route by which bees are affected.
These chemicals are highly popular with farmers who for certain crops can simply plant the seeds and wait for harvest, assured that the young plant will not fall prey to some very common bugs. They need not spray the crop intensively with other costly surface-active insecticides. Over the last 20 years this group of pesticides —the neonics” have become very widely used and for the above reasons understandably popular with farmers. Naturally the well-connected and politically powerful pesticide industry producers like Bayer and Syngenta and Nippon who created these chemicals are also in favor of their continued sale and continued profits from these sales.
But the last 20 years of more and more widespread use of these chemicals has resulted in the shocking decline of many species of pollinators—honeybees and butterflies—which are clearly effected by ingesting the neonic laced flower nectar and the neonic laced pollen.
Finally after two decades—something is being done to save our honey bees and all the crops that they so effectively pollinate. And who knows what effects the long term ingestion of these chemicals incorporated into the plant tissues and oils of crop have on humans? Are they biologically concentrated in plant oils? The producers and farmers are not concerned about these questions. We must thank the EU Commission on agriculture for their persistence and interest.
Now it is time for the US Department of Agriculture and the EPA to act in concert with the EU Commission and BAN THE USE OF THIS PESTICIDE
SAVE THE BEES AND BUTTERFLIES.
*The proposal passed on April 27, 2018.
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