Bees Prefer Nectar Laced With Neonicotinoids 104
Taco Cowboy writes: Neonicotinoids are a class of neuro-active insecticides chemically similar to nicotine. Neonicotinoids kill insects by overwhelming and short-circuiting their central nervous systems (PDF). Shell and Bayer started the development of neonicotinoids back in the 1980s and 1990s. Since this new group of pesticides came to market, the bee population has been devastated in regions where they have been widely used. Studies from 2012 linked neonicotinoid use to crashing bee populations.
New studies, however, have discovered that bees prefer nectar laced with neonicotinoids over nectar free of any trace of neonicotinoids. According to researchers at Newcastle University, the bees may "get a buzz" from the nicotine-like chemicals in the same way smokers crave cigarettes.
New studies, however, have discovered that bees prefer nectar laced with neonicotinoids over nectar free of any trace of neonicotinoids. According to researchers at Newcastle University, the bees may "get a buzz" from the nicotine-like chemicals in the same way smokers crave cigarettes.
just say no (Score:2)
Every Creature Must Get Stoned... (Score:2, Troll)
Don't tell the NeoCons, they'll have all the bees rounded up and put in jail because getting buzzed is immoral if nobody is paying for it.
Re:Every Creature Must Get Stoned... (Score:4, Funny)
Those degenerate insects were born in a cell for crying out loud? What more proof do you need of their criminal nature?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I believe you must mean the Democans and Republicrats. I see no evidence that either has any intention of butting out of people's lives.
Oblig Simpsons (Score:2)
Unfortunatly... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Some bees call it BeeMeth
Somewhere there's a Youtube video of the bee dance step that means 'BeeMeth' in bee language.
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People and other living beings have a habit of craving the very things that ruin them.
Stop me before I post again...
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i see it as the genius of biochemical warfare by plants
our livers have been in an evolutionary arms race with plants for hundreds of millions of years. they make a substance that kills, maims, disorients, or deters us. one up plants. our livers do their best to mop it up. one up animals. rinse repeat
perversely, we've developed a taste for some of those substances. like cayenne pepper or horseradish, as a paradoxically enjoyable taste. or heroin or cocaine, as a disorienting drug
in a way, the plant still win
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I dunno, they might be a bit boring [deviantart.net].
sort of like Antifreeze and pets/wildlife (Score:4, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene_glycol_poisoning
Ethylene Glycol is also used in other engine maintenance fluids -most notable in de-icers, which is the source of most of the ethylene glycol which is released in the environment
However, except for the dumping of the de-icer, it is probably not as widespread in the environment as the neonics are
-I'm just sayin'
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This is why I always try to purchase the "Low Tox" [amazon.com] antifreeze for my vehicles. Should I ever be stranded in a remote location without water, I could survive for days just by cracking the draincock on the radiator. Plus, I don't have to feel as bad about parking my car over the storm sewer and emptying out the cooling system when I do a flush!
Re:sort of like Antifreeze and pets/wildlife (Score:4, Informative)
This is why I always try to purchase the "Low Tox" [amazon.com] antifreeze for my vehicles. Should I ever be stranded in a remote location without water, I could survive for days just by cracking the draincock on the radiator. Plus, I don't have to feel as bad about parking my car over the storm sewer and emptying out the cooling system when I do a flush!
Toss a few gallons of water in your trunk before you head to remote locations -- while the propylene glycol in the antifreeze may not kill you, the corrosion inhibitors and other ingredients plus possible oil and combustion product contamination is not going to be great for you.
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Toss a few gallons of water in your trunk before you head to remote locations -- while the propylene glycol in the antifreeze may not kill you, the corrosion inhibitors and other ingredients
The glycol is the corrosion inhibitor. That's its job as much as anti-freezing. That's why we use it even in climates without freezes, and not just a smaller package of corrosion inhibitors. You have to substantially change the properties of the water to retard corrosion.
You wouldn't drink the water in your engine even if it didn't have anything added to it, because with or without a corrosion inhibitor you will still have corrosion, and you don't want to be drinking heavy metals. Iron is not too bad, but A
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Toss a few gallons of water in your trunk before you head to remote locations -- while the propylene glycol in the antifreeze may not kill you, the corrosion inhibitors and other ingredients
The glycol is the corrosion inhibitor. That's its job as much as anti-freezing. That's why we use it even in climates without freezes, and not just a smaller package of corrosion inhibitors. You have to substantially change the properties of the water to retard corrosion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Propylene glycol oxidizes when exposed to air and heat, forming lactic acid.[9][10] If not properly inhibited, this fluid can be very corrosive, so pH buffering agents such as dipotassium phosphate, Protodin and potassium bicarbonate are often added to propylene glycol, to prevent acidic corrosion of metal components.
http://www.amsoil.com/lit/data... [amsoil.com]
Amsoil Low-Toxicity Propylene Glycol Antifreeze
Composition by Weight:
Total glycols >= 92 percent; Corrosion inhibitors and
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That stuff is relatively harmless. I'd not suggest using it as an emergency fluid supply for the reasons you and others mention and the fact that propylene glycol is the active ingredient in a number of bowel preparations used to clean the gut completely out before procedures. You'd be sick, nauseated, completely drained and in a world of butt hurt.
But you won't rust.
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Try catching it in a bowl, and then look at it and smell it. The antifreeze is the least of your worries.
So what you're saying is... (Score:5, Funny)
So what you're saying is... *sunglassses* they get a buzz out of it?
Yeeeaaaa- no.
One of many potential causes (Score:4, Informative)
Colony collapse disorder (CCD) has been linked in studies to insecticides, pollution, climate change, GMO crops, viruses, fungi, and on and on. Unfortunately, those are merely statistically correlative links and the actual cause of CCD has yet to be determined.
Re:One of many potential causes (Score:5, Funny)
Besides those things, hasn't CCD also been linked to the recent proliferation of digital image sensors?
(sorry, couldn't resist)
Re:One of many potential causes (Score:5, Interesting)
CCD is likely a multifactor agent. This is the reason it's been so hard to determine. I saw a discussion with bee keepers and the collapse goes like this.
The bees are fine all summer. When they seal up the nest for the winter and begin to subsist on the remaining stored honey (from what the humans didn't take) somewhere in the middle of the winter the bees start flying off and not coming back. At some point after this has begun the queen dies and no new queen is hatched. (new queens can be hatched easily by feeding one of the larva royal jelly). It's like the bee's suddenly go insane, most fly off into the wild and die, those meant to keep the hive going stop working (such as hatching new queens) and in no time at all the hive is dead.
They are having a hard time determining cause because their is no clear cause. The insanity thing is a totally new action that's never been observed in bee populations before, outside the wasps that lay larval in other insects brains. So they are examining multiple possible paths at the same time trying to figure out what is causing this bee insanity that's causing the collapse. Neonictids are suspects because they are potent CNS actors in some species, something that could explain the insanity. But it could just as easily be that the neonictids aren't the sole cause, they could be weakening the bees such that they are starving to death in the winter, or there could be a fungus that's attacking them while they are weakened.
Once they understand better how bee's react to neonictids and perform some controlled experiments with them they will have a better idea if they are the cause or related to it. There is reasonable concern here that the risk of the neonictids isn't worth the benefit's they provide. A collapse of bee's would be catastrophic to plant life. It's not just honey bees that are dieing either, reports are bumblebee's and other species of bee are dieing off as well. There is a real concern right now that there may be whole species of bees that are gone.
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Where's the beef?
Please google "beef..." as it will cut down the amount of snarkasm in your posts.
As for the HECO study, try google "heco nrel study".
Oh thats right, asking for stuff as Anonymous Coward "some one do it for me NOW or I'll throw shit".
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Yep. It's wierd because the symptoms can correspond with many different causes. For example, the climate change thing makes sense because bees can be tricked into thinking it's spring and start foraging or even swarming in the middle of winter when they really should stay in the winter cluster. The occasional warm day is good for them to be able to get out and void themselves, but longer periods of significantly fluctuating weather can be bad.
But it also matches other problems. Diseased or dying hives often
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Actually there's a pretty good trail being laid down:
http://missoulian.com/news/loc... [missoulian.com]
Not only that, but per this article (with stats), bee populations are stable to increasing despite CCD:
http://www.perc.org/articles/e... [perc.org]
The amount of honey being produced is a good indicator, given you can't make honey without bees.
This won't load for me but I imagine it goes into more detail:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/br/... [usda.gov]
And actually, you can demonstrate 'insanity' in any wild colony with an aging queen -- the bees bec
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The number of colonies isn't a good read, nor the amount of honey being produced for one simple reason. The beekeepers are doing everything they can to keep production level. They are producing new colonies at a breakneck pace. I've been told they've never produced this many colonies ever, the honey producers are literally replacing their entire stock of bees almost every year.
What's happening is pretty scary. It's being played up from both sides, the total freak out on the environmental side and the people
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Honeybees are technically an invasive species in North America; they were imported, not native. There are numerous other species, including small native bees, that did the pollination work before honeybees came along. Far as I have heard, populations of these native bees have not been affected by CCD.
Neonicotinoids are relatively expensive (4 years ago, Imidacloprid was $25/pound, about 5x the cost of permethins), and I'd guess despite being about a quarter of the insecticide market, that in ag they are pro
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It's not just in agriculture though. It's hard to find decorative plants that haven't been treated with it.
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"Neonicotinoids in bees: a review on concentrations, side-effects and risk assessment"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... [nih.gov]
"Many lethal and sublethal effects of neonicotinoid insecticides on bees have been described in laboratory studies, however, no effects were observed in field studies with field-realistic dosages."
As they say there's need for further study regarding synergistic effects and the like. But real exposure effects in the field are what counts, not just laboratory findings. Otherwise it's like fin
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Sure, but part of that is recognizing the extent of the real world exposure.Imagining it to be limited to a small portion of farmland is not realistic.
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Well, yes it is, since it doesn't have an infinite half-life and doesn't move around by itself. You're certainly not going to find it used in Montana wheatfields, yet CCD has affected bees here as well... so now what to blame?? Indeed, most of our acreage is never treated with anything, being non-arable grazing land or wilderness. Hasn't helped bees any.
I'd guess in addition to the viral and fungal agents that when they occur together have been determined as CCD causes already, there might be a genetic susc
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Apparently, wheat growers do [growinggeorgia.com] use neonics. Note that one way to use them is to pre-treat seed. The pesticide will persist in the plant for some time after.
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But Georgia isn't everywhere, and wheat isn't a bee-pollinated crop.
The relevant thing is that bees are affected without ever being anywhere near a treated area, in fact without being near an area treated for anything at all.
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The website was for a Georgia group, but the article was about a national group.
Pine trees aren't pollinated by me either, but I can't go outside in the spring without ending up covered in pine pollen (presumably grass pollens as well, but I can't see those).
That leaves your relevant thing highly questionable. A re-analysis is in order.
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Airborne particulates is a false equivalency.
I get the feeling you won't be happy until everyone admits your particular point of interest is the culprit, which isn't exactly a scientific method either. It's fine to look at every possible candidate. It's not fine to decide that's the culprit when it's not even present in many regions of interest.
Also, if neonics are the culprit, that should be very easy to demonstrate -- you should be able to reliably induce CCD in fairly short order just by isolating a hive
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Actually, I am just not willing to rule it out based on patent falsehoods. Whatever the answer, it won't be found by sweeping facts under the rug.
I get the impression that you'll convince yourself to believe nearly anything (even that nobody much uses neonics anyway) to 'debunk" an inconvenient hypothesis before it is even tested.
I note that you spoke of the "lack of neonic use on wheat" supporting your conclusion like it carried the weight of God's own word. As soon as I debunked that belief, it was sudden
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I'll take the validity of research at my alma mater above most anything else, because I know the quality of the research departments.
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Perhaps then, you should present that research as an argument rather than false claims about lack of neonic use on wheat. A shame you didn't.
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I did; I posted a link to it upstairs somewhere. Shame you didn't read it.
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I may well have, but not knowing where you went to school, how would I know what you're talking about?
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The link went to an article which mentioned research on CCD done at Montana State U (where I was once upon a time a biochemistry/microbiology double major) and U of MT. Didn't find a link to the actual paper offhand but didn't look that hard either; no doubt you can find it.
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I read the article. They have found what they believe may be *A* cause. They make no claim that it is *THE* cause nor do they claim to have fully characterized the contributing factors.
It is good research and may hold important answers but you seem to be reading more into it than the actual researchers are.
Drug Addicts (Score:2)
Maybe in the Winter they are jonesing for a fix that they leave to find it despite it being winter, and as a result die. Due to all the bees leaving, the hive becomes unsustainable. It could also be that I think bees also provide warmth, if enough leave the rest just freeze to death.
Drug users from an external observation point of view do all sorts of crazy things to try and get their next fix, particularly when their supply or their ability to get it (money) runs out. Could be as simple as that.
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Also after the fact I wanted to change my title to "Bug Addicts" :(
Ban on Neonicotinoids (Score:5, Insightful)
The EU banned three neonicotinoids that are judged especially high risk for bees 17 months ago. If this is causing/contributing to colony collapse disorder, evidence should start settling this question over the next year or two I would think.
Nightshades (Score:3)
So that's why I see bumble bees trying really goddamn hard to try to crawl inside of the little blossoms on my pepper plants* that they totally don't fit inside of at all.
It reminds me of myself, shaking down the couch for change for tobacco money before ATMs and credit cards became commonplace. Or rather, groping for the cigarette at the bottom of the recliner that I can see with a flashlight, but can't reach at all without looking like a monkey fucking a football and even then it isn't easy.
Or, as Rammstein said, "like an elephant in the eye of the needle." Whatever, you get my point.
*: Pepper plants, as all nightshades, produce nicotine in their foliage and presumably their flowers.
So that explains (Score:2)
Why bees tend to hang around right outside the doors of office buildings.
Who knew? (Score:2)
Dateline 2015: Scientists finally decode honeybee "dance" language. First message recorded:
"Man, I'm really jonesing for some of that nicotine-laced nectar. Can you watch the hive for a bit while I take a break? I'm gettin' the shakes."
Why are Bayer and Shell still operating? (Score:2)
They develop pesticides that wipe out the required beneficial insects world wide, why are their executives not in chains?
Re:The study was flawed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Grey, from the smog.
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The makers of neonicitinoid pesticides have billions in profits to protect, they will not let something like the death of our number one food crop pollinator get in their way
enhancing shareholder value or something like that
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I have a rhododendron in bloom outside my kitchen window. Normally it would be abuzz with bees. This year I see only houseflies and ants.
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And the unusual weather has nothing to do with it?
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Well, if I'm a shill, I am very poorly paid. I have noticed a lack of bees in my yard this year, too. Usually they would be all over the cherries and early bulb plants. But I have also noticed that it is cold out, except for one nice day where (surprise) the bees and wasps came out to play. The weather has since returned to "highs in the low 50s" and the bees seem to be chilling out.
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Shill or no, his post was a very unfair criticism of the study.
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Thanks to Bayer and Shell, good luck finding untainted samples...
So your knee-jerk response is to blame flawed science on "BIG EVIL KORPARASHUNS!!!!"
Tell us, what color is the sky on your world?
No, I'm well aware of how agribusiness works, and how commissioned salesmen actually do a lot of work to sell as much product as possible. Much of my extended family is in farming, either as farmers, or as those who sell products or services to farmers.
Farmers want the best yields possible. They assume that the products advertised to them are acceptable, and they use those products widely if they seem to solve the ill that the farmer was fighting against. As such, it's very likely that Bayer and Shell
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Farmers want the best yields possible. They assume that the products advertised to them are acceptable,
because being so irresponsible is easier than being responsible enough to do the research to determine whether the products are safe. But don't fool yourself; this is still irresponsible behavior. Society encourages it by taking away your farm and throwing you into the street where it's illegal for you to live if you have a bad season or two, which is just another reason we need MGI. Then people can better afford scruples.
Re:The study was flawed (Score:5, Informative)
The study compared Neonicotinoids laced pollen to sugar water. Which means it was not a fair comparison. There needs to be a comparison between Neonicotinoids laced pollen and unlaced pollen.
No, the study compared neonicotinoid-laced sugar water with sugar water:
(If you follow the "bees prefer nectar laced with neonicotinoids" link in the /. article and then the "the insects tended to eat more of the contaminated food" link from the article you get to after following that link, you can read the paper without going through a paywall.)
So, no, it's not a comparison between neonicotinoid-laced pollen and pollen, but it's also not a comparison between (neonicotinoid-laced) pollen and sugar water.
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Good catch, it is amazing how quickly people accept outright lies
I notice a rapid response to any negative articles on neonicitinoid products, it seems similar in tone and tactic to anti-global warming noise
Re:The study was flawed (Score:5, Insightful)
"The study compared Neonicotinoids laced pollen to sugar water."
What are you talking about??
From the actual paper in Nature: "bees of both species prefer to eat more of sucrose solutions laced with IMD or TMX than sucrose alone."
http://www.nature.com/nature/j... [nature.com]
Re:The study was flawed (Score:5, Informative)
The study compared Neonicotinoids laced pollen to sugar water.
The published study [nature.com] offered the bees a choice between a sucrose solution with neonicotinoids and another sucrose solution without neonicotinoids. It was a fair comparison.
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replying to undo mod. ignore.
Re:The study was flawed (Score:4, Interesting)
The Nature article examined the neurophysiological response of bees to three of the most common neonicotinoid pesticides. They determined that the bee taste system cannot detect these chemicals, and additionally the chemicals have no influence on the bee's ability to recognize sugar. This means the bees preference for food with these substances results from interaction with their central nervous system. Considering that nicotine is a CNS stimulant, this makes perfect sense.
You didn't like the conclusion of the article, so you read it with the single intent of refuting it. When you found one thing that you thought you could use as an attack, you picked on that. It did not occur to you that the people who do this kind of research are extremely knowledgeable and would would never make that kind of foolish error.
You have revealed your true colors. You are willfully ignorant and have no regard for the truth. You were effectively accusing the authors of fraudulent research. Accusing others of lying to achieve their goals shows that you are a dishonest yourself, because that is the logic of habitual liars.
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That doesn't mean it wasn't flawed.
Bees don't drink sugar water in nature.
The checking of the 'taste' of neonics is only one aspect that needs tested.
Is this masked by non-taste responses to normal nectar?
Re:The study was flawed (Score:4, Informative)
In the referenced Nature paper, the authors describe measurements they made on honey bee and bumble bee neurons in response to sugar with and without the neonicotinoid compounds. As I also stated, they also checked if the presence of the insecticides had any impact on the way the insects detect sugar. It did not.
Understand this: they inserted electrodes into nerve fibers that bees use to "taste" what they are consuming. Using these electrodes they monitored the nerve signals going to the bees brain. By varying the concentration of insecticides over a range starting at zero, they were able to show that there was no difference in the response related to the amount of the chemical they were testing. The paper has charts and graphs with error bars and correlation (p) values. It's real science done by real scientists, who know that their academic reputation depends on avoiding mistakes.
This is not a high school "science experiment" with a bunch of bees free flying in a cage with two sources of sugar and a student counting the number of bees going to one or the other. The experiment is based on a fundamental understanding at the neurological level of how bees function. It has nothing to do with nectar.
Your criticism is based on a level of understanding that is extremely childish. Are you actually that uninformed? You are not asking relevant question, but making assertions based in ignorance. Even given the generally low quality of analytical thinking shown on Slashdot, you lack of knowledge is pathetic. Normally I would say that you should look at the paper, but in your case I expect that there are too many big words that you would not understand.
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I'd really like to read the paper but unfortunately it's down. But for example, do the neonicotinoids add a UV signature to the liquid not present in the sugar water? That would have little to no influence in the case of flowers in nature (where they're not looking at the nectar, and there's all sorts of other chemicals in the nectar). What other chemicals are in the neonicotinoid solution (they're rarely pure, they usually have all sorts of other chemicals to increase their effect)? What's their cleaning a
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sometimes different bees may even fight with each other over what's good and what's bad information.
Hey! Bee Slashdot!
Re:The study was flawed (Score:5, Informative)
I think it's important to ask questions because there's been literally "dozens" of different things "definitively linked" with CCD. The public likes to seize on neonicotinoids, but they're probably one of the least supported of these many different "definitively linked" reasons. Whole countries have gone so far as to outright ban neonicotinoids, with no effect on CCD. France, for example, banned them. The next year they largely switched to blaming the condition on Asian Hornets [wordpress.com] when the decline rates didn't decrease.
The problem is that when you ban a certain pesticide, people start using others. And going from neonicotinoids to organophosphates is a massive step backwards in terms of general safety, not just to pollinators, but especially to more complex animals as well. But the biggest problem with the neonicotinoid theory is that neonicotinoids are only used in a small fraction of the areas where CCD exists. Bees can only fly several kilometers from the hive, they're not going cross-country and picking up every pesticide in every farmer's arsenal. It even exists among people who are in places where no pesticides at all are used.
It's easy for the general public to latch onto a particular cause. But once you learn more about beekeeping you realize how incredibly much out there is that can utterly f* up a hive. And which have in history regularly collapsed bee populations, far worse than the collapses we have today. Trachael mites once nearly obliterated beekeeping in Europe, saved mainly by the development of the Buckfast bee. Check out [wikipedia.org] this very inexhaustive list of bee pests and diseases. There's even some really counterintuitive effects in that small levels of some pesticides can actually increase hive survival rates, in that they're deadlier to bee pests like mites than to the bees themselves.
The public also tends to totally understand colony collapse disorder in the first place. Normal winter colony death levels are about 15% in most locations (though where I am it's higher). CCD raised the US average to about 30% at its peak. This is painful and expensive to beekeepers, but it has literally no impact on the ability to sustain bee populations. A new beehive can be started with just a queen and a handful of workers. Hives can be made to produce queens en masse through proper management. Hence people can mail order starter hives, and there's never going to be a threat to the ability to produce these starter hives - a single hive can make many dozens per year. Even normal hives not managed for breeding starter hives will naturally produce several swarms every year; beekeepers try to discourage and/or catch these swarms.
In all likelihood, neonicotinoids are one among many different stressors to bees in the modern era that causes CCD. Modern bees are much more "stressed" than bees in the past. We've created an environment where new bee pests and diseases have spread far and wide to bees that never would have encountered them in the wild. We raise them on corn syrup and sugar water in the winter (good for reducing dysintery and increasing honey yields, but robbing them of certain vitamins and minerals). We transport them on flatbed trucks hundreds or thousands of kilometers (these are animals that get confused if you move their hive a couple meters; their ability to navigate by sight is poor, they're best navigating by the sun and dead reckoning). And countless varieties of poisons, even unintentional ones, affect them every day of their lives. There's so many factors now that weaken hives that any "new" factor to an area can push them over the edge.
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It's easy for the general public to latch onto a particular cause. But once you learn more about beekeeping you realize how incredibly much out there is that can utterly f* up a hive. And which have in history regularly collapsed bee populations, far worse than the collapses we have today. Trachael mites once nearly obliterated beekeeping in Europe, saved mainly by the development of the Buckfast bee. Check out [wikipedia.org] this very inexhaustive list of bee pests and diseases. There's even some really counterintuitive effects in that small levels of some pesticides can actually increase hive survival rates, in that they're deadlier to bee pests like mites than to the bees themselves.
I completely agree with your point. One interesting point of speculation is that it's highly possible that Brother Adam (the developer of the Buckfast bee) was responsible for bringing Varroa to Europe. Brother Adam imported bees from around the world, and the first appearance of Varroa in the UK was not very far from where he operated.
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I agree it is important to ask questions. But the questions should not be of the strawman form, or asked from a position of apparent and obvious ignorance about not only the subject, but the very study being questioned. There is no added value, and in fact negative value, to ask that kind of questions.
Trying to think laterally about the issue and find other causes for the observed behaviour is completely different from ignorantly spouting off unfounded criticism of test methodology.
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I'm sorry, but calling flagging a "troll" because they misread an article is beyond the pale. None of their behavior was "trollish". Saying that a study is flawed is in no way shape or form engaging in "fraudulent research", aka, deliberately falsifying data to push an agenda.
The Nature article appears to be down. But I have to caution, studying bee behavior is very difficult. Many of our senses, bees lack or have only at low resolution. But they have a number of senses that we don't. They see UV. They see
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I know they're still pretty new, but has anyone looked into the health effects on bees of the new e-Neonicotinoids?
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Is this a Bayer or Shell astroturfer here to spread disinfo?
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