More Bee Studies

The impact of the palette of both insecticides and fungicides appears cumulative and supportive in terms of suppressing honey bee populations.  As posted before, we need to retreat from all this.  We have gone from occasional to a full press treatment regime that is impossible for the bees to avoid or obviously survive.

As well, just why these toxins in the hives are over winter at all.  Can we not endure that the last generation is running clean?  The collapse takes place during winter and surely it is possible to have healthy bees going into winter?  Toxic or not, summer time is not collapse time.

As I have posted before, conversion to organic methods will become mainstream fairly quickly from now on and all this will be resolved.

Scientists name possible culprit in honey bee deaths: agricultural chemicals

The most lethal pesticide found in the pollen samples was chlorothonatil.

Jonathan Marker | Thursday, July 25, 2013

http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/scientists-name-possible-culprit-in-honey-bee-deaths-agricultural-chemicals/#ixzz2aAopVyKV

It seems the honey bee is fighting a losing battle these days, and the future for this important ecological regulator is now looking grimmer.  In addition to colony collapse disorder and disease, scientists have discovered a third element in what is now a trifecta of death for honey bee populations: agricultural chemicals, especially fungicides, are suppressing the immune systems of honey bees, causing a diminished response to the effects of deadly parasite.

Honey bees pollinate flowers that ultimately fruit and turn out seeds. Honey bees have their honey harvested from man-made beehives, while farmers either rent or raise their own colonies increase crops yields through more adequate pollination.  In the winter of 2012-2013, commercial beekeepers lost 31 percent of their colonies – double what is considered “acceptable” by industry standards.

In an effort to understand why honey bee populations are facing such extraordinary decimation of their colonies, scientists traveled from Maine to Delaware to collect pollen samples from honey bee hives. When the pollen was taken back to laboratories to analyze which flowering plants were the primary pollen sources for the honey bees, and what agricultural chemicals were present in the pollen and the honey. As a control, the scientists introduced pesticide-laced pollen granules to healthy bees, and then tested their resistance to infection with Nosema ceranae – the parasite linked to colony collapse disorder.

Scientists discovered that the collected pollen samples from Maine to Delaware had 9 distinct agricultural chemicals – insecticides, fungicides, miticides, and herbicides. According to study researcher Dennis van Engelsdorp, “We don’t think of fungicides as having a negative effect on bees, because they’re not designed to kill insects.  But there are no such regulations on fungicides, so you’ll often see fungicide applications going on while bees are foraging on the crop. This finding suggests that we have to reconsider that policy.”

The most lethal pesticide found in the pollen samples was chlorothonatil, which, when pollen samples containing the substance were fed to honey bees, decreased their resistance to the Nosema ceranae parasite by 300 percent.  In addition, the scientists discovered that the honey bees were pollinating flowering plants that provided their respective colonies with little nutritional value, rather than blueberry and watermelon crops that they were observed foraging from.

The study, “Crop pollination exposes honey bees to pesticides which alters their susceptibility to the gut pathogen Nosema ceranae,” was published on July 23 in the online journal PLOS ONE.