Pesticide blamed for bee decline: industry denies it


Worker honey bees
Source: Wikipedia

The pesticide industry disputes that a widely used class of insecticides is adding to the reported decline in the world-wide bee population. That’s according to a story in TheIntercept.com.

The insecticides, called neonics, are the most widely-used class of pesticides in the world. They were banned in Europe in 2018, after longstanding safety concerns. A 2009 study showed that even the lowest levels of the pesticide hurt non-targeted insects, such as bees and other pollinators, according to The Intercept.

Neonics are still used in the U.S. today, mostly by farmers seeking to protect their crops. The Intercept reports, “[t]he chemical is found in soil samples from coast-to-coast, in waterways and in drinking water.”

Studies show that the pesticide impairs bees’ ability to navigate and forage for food, weakens their immune systems, and makes them prone to infestation by parasitic mites, says The Intercept. It also suggests that other insects that are not supposed to be impacted are affected, such as butterflies, dragonflies, earthworms, and other insect populations. Even songbirds were reportedly shown to lose weight after they consumed just a few seeds treated with neonics.

Soon after the studies began pointing to concerns with neonics, the leading producers–Bayer, Syngenta, and Monsanto–implemented a sophisticated effort to discredit the studies, while casting the pesticide companies as champions of the bees’ cause, according to The Intercept:

Lobbying documents and emails obtained by The Intercept show a vast strategy by the pesticide industry to influence academics, beekeepers, and regulators, and to divert attention away from the potential harm caused by pesticides. As a result, the global neonic industry generated $4.42 billion in revenue in 2018. In the meantime, the effects are being seen in massive die-offs. Certain insect species are nearing extinction.

Lee Fang, The Intercept

A spokesperson for one pesticide manufacturer says honey bee colonies have actually been increasing around the world and that the neonic products went through extensive tests before being approved for use. But The Intercept says the studies cited were all conducted by pesticide manufacturer employees or consultants.

Experts appear to agree that bee health is affected by multiple factors, but they disagree on whether pesticides are a major contributing factor.

Click on the link below to read the full article in The Intercept:

https://theintercept.com/2020/01/18/bees-insecticides-pesticides-neonicotinoids-bayer-monsanto-syngenta/

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7 thoughts on “Pesticide blamed for bee decline: industry denies it”

  1. I wonder if the attempts to kill the West Nile Virus had anything to do with this. Remember all the planes that dispensed insecticides to kill mosquitoes? I always thought it ludicrous to kill mosquitoes in mid-flight, when the obvious way to kill them would be to use the killing agent along estuaries and water areas where they populate. (I even thought that maybe “brucellosis” [which can be used as an aerosol] could have been used – which would have definitely killed the bees. And I thought this too because of the extremely fast rise of undiagnosed systemic disease in the U.S.)

    https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2018.00322/full

    “Bartonella evolved around 134 million years ago during Early Cretaceous Period around the time the flowering plants appeared in the middle of the dinosaur era (247). Segers et al. (248) suggest that the last common ancestor of the Bartonella was a gut symbiont of insects that produced its own amino acids and vitamins and that the adaptation to blood-feeding insects facilitated colonization of the mammalian bloodstream. Indeed, Bartonellaceae species were identified in honeybees (248, 249) and ants (250) filling the gap between the pathogenic Bartonella clade and more ancient bacterial symbionts. The honeybee strains of B. apis form a clade basal to species of the genus Bartonella (249). However, the B. apis genomes are almost twice as large (2.6 to 2.9 Mb) as the ant symbionts, suggesting that the association with the bee is more recent or that the association is less intimate (251). The phylogenetic trees show that the ant-related bacterial clade is a sister group to bee-related clade and other mammal-related Bartonella species (249, 252). Ants predate bees by some 35 million years in the order Hymenoptera which is 325 million years old itself (246). We can only speculate how the Bartonella ancestor adapted from a plant symbiont to gut symbiont through possible consumption routes and suggest looking into other “ancient” insect orders, like Archaeognata, or the orders that have maintained connection with water in their metamorphosis, like mayflies or dragonflies; and the ones that include sap-sucking insects.”

  2. My comment is not here .
    I guess you can’t write that
    The fox ? is in the bee house . Why are there ads about paying you for the things you are reporting.
    And why is there a long comment about the age of bees and ants and spraying for west Nile.
    This all started years ago
    Please don’t report just what is convenient.
    We are on your side and watch ..

  3. what can I say REMEMBER (AGENT ORANGE ) NO ONE CHECKED TO SEE HOW MUCH DAMAGE IT WOULD CAUSE UNTIL IT WAS TOO LATE . THE INDUSTRIES IN AMERICA WILL KILL US ALL. AND THE REASON WHY IT THERE IS NO ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE BIG INDUSTRIES WITH BIG MONEY TO PAY OFF THE GOV .BEEN TRYING TO SHOW WHERE THE FED GOV DUMPED A LOT OF MERCURY IN THE FL PANHANDEL IN THE SPRING OF 1996 . (AGAIN NO ACCOUNTABLE )AND WITH OVER 135,500 DEATHS FROM CANCER IN FL IN 2018 . ONE CAN BET THE FED GOV HAS BLOOD ON ITS HANDS ON THIS . TO SEE THIS IMFOMATION AND A LOT MORE . FROM MY 29 YEARS OF TRYING . LOOK AT MY FACE BOOK TIMELINE https://www.facebook.com/eadygeorgem , YES THERE IS A LOT THERE AND THIS (MERCURY ) IS IN THE MIDDLE . AND THE REST SHOWS YOU HAS HOW BAD IT WAS 29 YEARS AGO .

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