Studies Link Pesticides To Bee Colony Collapse Disorder 128
T Murphy writes "Neonicotinoid pesticides, designed to attack insects such as beetles and aphids, have been shown to harm bees' ability to navigate back to the hive. While initially assumed safe in low enough, non-fatal doses for bees, two papers have shown that may not be the case. Although the studies don't directly study the Colony Collapse Disorder, the scientists believe these pesticides are likely a contributing factor."
Well, those scientists should "bee" careful! (Score:1)
From 2010 (Score:5, Informative)
Following France and Germany, last year the Italian Agriculture Ministry suspended the use of a class of pesticides, nicotine-based neonicotinoids, as a "precautionary measure." The compelling results - restored bee populations - prompted the government to uphold the ban. Yesterday, copies of the film 'Nicotine Bees' were delivered to the US Congress explaining the pesticide's connection to Colony Collapse Disorder. Despite the evidence, why does CCD remain a 'mystery' in the US?
http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/nicotine-bees-population-restored-with-neonicotinoids-ban.html [treehugger.com]
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Little bland on details (Score:2)
It looks like there are still more studies needed if we really want to understand what is going on here.
The treated bees were about two to three times more likely to die while away from their nests, and the researchers said this was probably because the pesticide interfered with the bees' homing systems, so they couldn't find their way home.
That seems like quite the leap in logic, but I don't have the actual study in front of me. That pesticide harms bees sounds like a REALLY obvious conclusion, I kinda li
Re:Little bland on details (Score:5, Insightful)
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Need the Rubber Stamp of PROOF! (Score:2)
Cell Phone Radiation (Score:2)
WAIT! I thought colony collapse disorder was caused by cell phone radiation...the science was settled. Everyone agreed. How can this be? (bee?)
How could we have possibly suspected... (Score:2)
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In my brain place I know we need bees (Score:2)
"may not be the case"? (Score:2)
The trees are still really pissed off. . . (Score:2)
Re:In Other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the importance of bees to agriculture, I think the potential of any link between pesticides and colony collapses warrants both extreme concern and funding.
But hey, maybe you're looking forward to do the day we eat nothing but algal cultures or soylent green.
Re:In Other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the importance of bees to agriculture, I think the potential of any link between pesticides and colony collapses warrants both extreme concern and funding.
But hey, maybe you're looking forward to do the day we eat nothing but algal cultures or soylent green.
I'm looking forward to the day when we use logic and reason instead of emotion and fear to get science funding and sway public opinion.
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Why do advertisers use sexy models? Because it works.
Why so scientists use FUD? Because it works.
You can't stop it anymore than you can stop teens from sneaking-out and from having sex. It's human nature to do what works to achieve the objective desired.
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Why so scientists use FUD? Because it works.
And it destroys scientific literacy in the process.
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Why so scientists use FUD? Because it works.
And it destroys scientific literacy in the process.
Not as much as vaccines. They destroy scientific literacy more than anything.
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Monsanto bees!
Re:In Other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm looking forward to the day when we use logic and reason instead of emotion and fear to get science funding and sway public opinion.
I am not sure if you are including this situation in your thinking. The logical move is to find alternative pesticides that do not harm the bees. Bees pollinate our crops in most areas of the world. We need them.
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I am not sure if you are including this situation in your thinking. The logical move is to find alternative pesticides that do not harm the bees. Bees pollinate our crops in most areas of the world. We need them.
The logical move is to actually do a study before announcing that the pesticide is destroying bee colonies. Once we decide to start looking for an alternative to something that isn't proven to be doing harm we take away resources that could be used to find the real problem if it turns out our initial assumption was wrong. While we are all busy looking for a bee friendly pesticide we could be ignoring a fungus or a mite, giving them time to do even more damage.
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They haven't announced that pesticides are destroying bee colonies, so your point is moot.
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The logical move is to actually do a study before announcing that the pesticide is destroying bee colonies.
Agreed. And the logical move is to get funding in order to perform the study. Research like this usually means getting funding from the government (i.e. politicians). So, the logical move by the scientists was to point out and say, "hey someone found a possible relationship here, we should investigate this further." And that's exactly what happened.
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No, the logical move is to develop sustainable agriculture practices that don't need to rely on pesticides. By definition, any pesticide is poison, and will certainly affect something else down the line. Even if we find an alternative pesticide that does not harm the bees, it will harm something else.
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Hey, fun fact, there are currently ~7 billion people alive today, largely due to industrial agriculture practices such as pesticides. Without them we could not produce nearly as much food as we do as cheaply as we do. So, keeping that in mind, what do you suggest we do in the interim while waiting for pesticide-free agriculture practices to develop?
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Hey, there, snarkopotamous. Did I say to stop all current agricultural practices RIGHT THE FUCK NOW so we can all step as one into the bright utopian future?
No, I did not.
It's this type of blatant refusal to address issues coherently and the related knee-jerk argumentativeness that keeps progress from being made.
Fun fact: a hell of a lot of those 7billion people who are alive today are very slowly and painfully starving because the system that IS in place doesn't adequately meet their needs anyway.
Also, ch
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I'm looking forward to the day when we use logic and reason instead of emotion and fear to get science funding and sway public opinion.
There are several Utopian cults who promise what you seek, it is delivered right after the Kool-Aid is served.
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Logic and reason say that bees are critical to agriculture and doing nothing about colony collapse, not investigating possible causes, could have dire consequences.
Is spelling out those possible consequences an appeal to emotion and fear? Maybe. If it wasn't needed then the plain and obvious logic would have already had the effect you desire.
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I'm looking forward to the day when we use logic and reason instead of emotion and fear to get science funding and sway public opinion.
Well, here's hoping the public starts responding to logic and science more than fear and PR. Bees pollinate 90% of the worlds crops, and they're dying out quickly. We need to identify why they're failing and then protect them or else we're going to face big food shortages. I don't care how it gets sold to the public or even IF it gets sold to the public. It's fine with me if tax dollars are spent on this research without the public even realizing it, so long as that doesn't jeopardize it.
If that sou
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I'm looking forward to the day when we use logic and reason instead of emotion and fear
This applies to everything, but it isn't likely to happen anytime soon.
I'd be glad if we used logic and reason for a lot of things, not just science:
* Education
* Health care
* Public policy
* Foreign policy
* The military
I could list so much that I would run out of space.
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More likely we'll get a panic and a grossly inappropriate reaction. Tar and feather some chemists!
It's Not as Simple as You Make It Out to Be (Score:5, Informative)
Considering the importance of bees to agriculture, I think the potential of any link between pesticides and colony collapses warrants both extreme concern and funding.
Well, I don't think you read the article. There's a complicated situation here. It's not that the toxin is killing the bees directly but:
“So far, they mostly require manufacturers to ensure that doses encountered on the field do not kill bees, but they basically ignore the consequences of doses that do not kill them but may cause behavioral difficulties,”
So we have this situation where we believe a non-lethal dosage of this pesticide ruins the bee's ability to navigate back home which is a very serious problem. The real issue is that there's no way to quantify this and study it prior to releasing or approving a pesticide. So you have this situation where these folks are saying "we want to use technology to better our productivity in agriculture" and then you are levying unfathomable responsibility on the corporate giants who are developing said technologies. It's not as black and white as you make it out to be. I mean, how do you know that the pesticide doesn't make the bee a murderous backstabber in the colony years down the road?
I'm hesitant to comment on anything like this anymore, it got pretty ugly last time I asked follow up questions [slashdot.org].
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Human analogy:
Alcoholics don't die immediately.
Re:It's Not as Simple as You Make It Out to Be (Score:4, Interesting)
I must have missed the part where the GP was laying responsibility at the corporations' feet for not figuring this out prior to putting the pesticide on the market.
What I read was the straightforward and common sense argument that once science discovers a negative side effect of this pesticide that was previously unknown, and could plausibly contribute to the serious problem of colony collapse, that we should investigate it.
Considering the importance of bees to agriculture, I think the potential of any link between pesticides and colony collapses warrants both extreme concern and funding.
What's not as simple about that as it was made out to be?
Are you saying maybe we shouldn't investigate the possible link between pesticides harming bee's ability to navigate and colony collapse? I guess because if a link was confirmed this could hypothetically mean we would want to make corporations have to be more thorough and test pesticides for non-lethal effects even though it is difficult and ? So to prevent that horrific future from coming about, we should refrain from figuring out of the link exists?
Well whatever, I don't care. The link should be investigated. When we know the truth then we can worry about the ramifications for future policy.
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He said "it's not that simple" in response to "this should be investigated" (which does not imply the research itself would be simple), followed by a screed about how corporations would find it inconvenient to do so in the future. So... I inferred a meaning, and asked if this was what he meant. If that's not what he meant then "it's not that simple" in response to "this should be investigated" makes no sense. If he wants to clarify, he can feel free.
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They did it by tagging individual bees with transmitters and observing their habits outside the nest. Notice past tense as this is the research they already did. RTFA maybe?
The next step, which is what was under discussion in this thread, is associating this effect with colony collapse syndrome. And that you'd do by correlating collapses with the use of this pesticide, and by looking to see if the effects observed in these studies (less food coming into the nest, more bees dying while away from the nest)
Re:It's Not as Simple as You Make It Out to Be (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, there are perfectly valid ways to quantify these things, they just didn't WANT to and nobody made them.
Even before modern science, herbalists knew to watch how animals behave after ingesting something rather than just seeing if they live or die.
You see a man drink a glass of something on the table. He retches instantly and falls to his hands and knees and crawls away slowly babbling about the queen of grapes going to war with the California raisins. The next day he's fine. Conclusion, the substance in the glass is a perfectly good milk substitute for the school lunch program?
babbling? (Score:1)
Not sure what that guy drank, but I think it warrants further investigation as some of the users on this site may also be drinking it... :-)
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Conclusion, the substance in the glass is a perfectly good milk substitute for the school lunch program?
Sadly, the answer is yes in some places. It's not milk in the school lunch that's being replaced, but something much more vital.
Re:It's Not as Simple as You Make It Out to Be (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a troubling aspect of this thinking, and that's that people expect there to be a single smoking gun and either the pesticides are it, or there aren't.
Living beings don't fit neatly into that. They process a large variety of inputs and can adapt to a number of stressors and heal; in fact, in machine culture we seem to take it for granted that living systems are at 100% because we're used to machines that are either working or very conspicuously broken.
Bees have been shipped about fields, worked harder than even their natures. They're exposed to crops now genetically modified to include pesticides in their pollen. The sprays being used are increasingly pushed into use for profit without review. This leaves them in such a weakened state that if a mite finishes them off, you can't say it was just one factor.
If you want a resilient system, you've got to pay attention to all of these factors.
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You Sir, Brilliant!
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It's not that hard to quantify:
In parts of Europe, certain pesticides were banned. In those parts of Europe, bees came back.
Correlation isn't causation, but there's also a good theory of the mechanism, there's observed evidence of the mechanism at work with controls, and FFS the burden of proof is on the people folding the money.
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So we have this situation where we believe a non-lethal dosage of this pesticide ruins the bee's ability to navigate back home which is a very serious problem. The real issue is that there's no way to quantify this and study it prior to releasing or approving a pesticide.
That's not the case. It is absolutely possible to test bees for adverse effects with low, nonlethal doses before giving approval for widespread use.
Re:In Other words... (Score:4)
No problem, corn is wind pollinated so we'll still be able to live off of corn chips and high fructose corn syrup!
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Mmmmm soylent green.. Its whats for dinner.
Nope (Score:2)
Sadly, while soylent green is predominantly people, another key ingredient is honey.
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Dear me, I'll just have to go for Soylent Green Pringles then :)
You're looking at the consequences all wrong (Score:2)
If we lose bees, we do not lose all our crops overnight.
What happens instead is that the number of humans we have to devote to food production increases dramatically. Without bees or a decent substitute for bees, we would have to pollinate crops by hand, which is a very labor-intensive process. While this will not result in human extinction overnight, we are talking about a very drastic change in the kinds of civilizations we are capable of having. The less of your population you have to devote to food prod
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And the other pollinators, but they're just as numerous or effective. While you're right that near extinction of bees would not cause an overnight crash, in the long term it would certainly be among the nastier things humans have done to themselves.
Re:In Other words... (Score:5, Informative)
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It's typical conservative projecting. They think everything is a scheme to make money because with them pretty much everything is a scheme to make money. They think science is about power because everything is about power.
Also, the tendency to embrace simple answers to complex problems completely precludes understanding statements that essentially mean "I don't totally understand this situation, but I have knowledge/experience/research that makes me believe it might have something to do with X. It should
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I didn't see anything calling for a ban. Just a possible link. I haven't even seen anyone saying they should ban it. I personally think it should be used more sparingly than it was before since there is a potential link since bees are so important to agriculture and the Colony Collapse disorder is a real major concern. If research shows that there is no real connection I don't
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Of course if you follow your logic. We would ban everything until we can prove it is safe.
I love it when "by that logic..." statements don't even try to follow the logic that was presented, but this one is even better because there was no logic regarding banning products provided at all!
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My, that is a very nice man made of straw you have there!
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God help you actually RTFA.
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We have a hypothesis so we want people to panic and give us funding
While I think it's unfair, I realize this has become the conventional meme for looking at all scientific results, but you should understand that colony collapse already has people panicking. If things continue to get worse, farmers that rely on bees are going to be wasting a lot of money soon.
Well, except this is just one more study... (Score:2)
Several studies in the last year have indicated the same thing.
The evidence is stacking up pretty heavily at this point.
Nobody has panicked - these studies have been ongoing for the last couple years since the hypothesis was formed.
But, yes, there is some urgency in nailing it down before it starts affecting crop output.
Re:In Other words... (Score:4, Informative)
> We have a hypothesis so we want people to panic and give us funding so we can actually see if there is a direct relationship
> between Colony Collapse Disorder
If you have been following the colony collapse story, you would already know that many entomologists suspect neonicotinoids as a possible part of the problem. Since pollination is a huge deal for agriculture, a lot of people really want to know the answer to CCD so it's not necessary to conjure up weird hypotheses to get funding. If you read any of the articles, you would also know that respected entomologists reviewing the papers thought they were well done.
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And why is that wrong? It's the only way to get any science funded these days. I suppose they could go the whole evangelical "God wants you to give me your social security check" route, but that has a few ethical issues.
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I should mention that I am old enough to remember when idiots like you were dismissing the systemic impa
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Re:This stuff is in your GMO food (Score:5, Informative)
The food was modified by the owner (corporation) to produce the pesticide internally.
Wrong. It's a systemic insecticide, not related to GMO. You seem to be confusing this with BT.
Anyway, it's possible this is one of many factors involved in Colony Collapse. The scientists seemed careful to not repeat the "drinking 12 bottles of Hair Dye causes cancer in Canadian mice" study.
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Monsanto's GMO corps are resistant to Roundup. So the GMO crops are relevant, Roundup is one of the pesticides that harms bees.
It's also true that Monsanto is ruthlessly aggressive towards farmers that don't toe the party line and use their seed.
Re:This stuff is in your GMO food (Score:4, Informative)
RoundUp, last I checked, was an herbicide, not a pesticide.
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Huh? Herbicide is a subset of pesticide. It kills pesty weeds, with a weed being a plant growing where it is unwanted.
And for safety, glyphosate is usually considered safe though there are reports of a couple of 100 ml causing death. The real danger is in the surfactants used to help the glyphosate penetrate the waxy cell covering. These aren't covered by the FDA as they aren't an active ingredient.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate#Effects [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_(herbicide)#Toxicity [wikipedia.org]
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So Monsanto-provided labels are God?
Not being a pesticide has nothing to do with being good or bad for you. It just isn't a pesticide.
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Stop making shit up.
People who make shit like that up should be banned from the internet for a month.
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>>>People who make shit like that up should be banned from the internet for a month.
Read the first amendment.
Or the enumeration of rights in your State constitution.
Nobody's speech may be censored.
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The First Amendment protects your right to speak, but it certainly doesn't mean there can't be consequences. Go look up libel.
Nor does it require any private company to give you a platform to make shit up. I guess he should have stated it as "People who make this shit up should be banned by all of the companies that provide Internet services for a month".
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Depends, are you talking about Mitt Romney's definition of a company?
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According to the most recent survey by Websters, the word "drug" is used by 30% of english speakers. It is common usage and you have no right to tell this minority how they are "allowed" to talk.
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Many Citations Needed (Score:5, Informative)
The food was modified by the owner (corporation) to produce the pesticide internally.
False. These are water soluble pesticides [wikipedia.org] that are included in the watering of plants and are easily translocated into the plant tissue as it grows. Alternatively they are applied to the soil or doused on seeds.
This is not the same as "roundup ready plants" which are GM plants that are resistant to roundup. You sound confused and appear to be bent on spreading fear about harm to humans who consume these plants.
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So I can't blame the pesticides for why I get lost sometimes?
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>>> there has never been a case of a consumer suffering a harmful effect
According to the FOX, CNN, and MicrosoftNBC who are funded and controlled by the corporations. Yeah we can trust them.
I did a bit of research (something you could have done yourself) and Neonicotinoid does indeed come already sprayed onto the seeds. In fact Monsanto is now advising farmers to plant about 80% GMO and 20% non-GMO, in order to provide a "safe harbor" for the bees to find some clean food that is not poiso
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And before you tell me to do my own research, you brought it up, you defend it.
I dont even know if you're right, or wrong. But your claiming we cant trust all major news sites about a story that could impact every human on the face of the planet is a major red flag.
Not to mention Neonicotinoid being sprayed on seeds is not 'GMO'. Its standard pesticide. So...yeah, balls in your court champ.
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He's confusing the refuge areas of Bt corn. How it works is that, with the insect resistant Bt corn, you are supposed to leave an area of non-GE crop where the pests can breed. this way, any pests that are able to survive in the GE field (in other words, those with resistance to the trait) will be much more likely to mate with a non-resistant one from the refuge area, and since resistance is usually a recessive trait, their progeny will not be resistant. Otherwise you'd have resistant ones mating with re
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You clearly don't even know what GMO means. Maybe you should start your "research" there. Hint: it involves Genetically Modified Organisms.
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But the truly humorous things is that a large portion of the worlds crops are also fertilized by bees... So, perhaps in the end, either solution ends up in the same place.
Though I think we should hire little immigrant children to run around in bee costumes, with q-tips. Take that, bees!
(I kid... mostly)