“…there were no entomologists on his tiny research team”
Lu is the Dr. Doom of bees. According to the nutritionist–but not clear to most other experts in the field– colony collapse disorder (CCD), which first emerged in 2006, can be directly linked to “neonics”, as the now controversial class of pesticides is often called, and also to genetically modified crops. Phased in during the 1990s, neonics are most often used by farmers to control unwanted crop pests. They are coated on seeds, which then produce plants that systemically fight pests.
To many environmental activists, the pesticide does more harm than good, and they’ve found their champion in Chensheng Lu. It’s been a busy fall for the professor, jetting back and forth between Boston and Washington, with forays around the United States to talk to adoring audiences. He presents himself as the defender of bees, and this fiery message has transformed a once obscure academic into a global “green” rock star, feted at events like yesterday’s lunch talk at Harvard. […]
One of the central problems with Lu’s central conclusion–and much of the reporting–is that despite the colony problems that erupted in 2006, the global bee population has remained remarkably stable since the widespread adoption of neonics in the late 1990s. The United Nations reports that the number of hives has actually risen over the past 15 years, to more than 80 million colonies, a record, as neonics usage has soared.
Country by country statistics are even more revealing. Beehives are up over the past two decades in Europe, where advocacy campaigns against neonics prompted the EU to impose a two-year moratorium beginning this year on the use of three neonics.
Of course, no “green” idea is too stupid or discredited to be adopted by Ontario Liberals.
h/t Meatriarchy
So what caused the great North American bee die-off at the turn of the 20th Century then?
A combination of things:
1. Varroa Mites.
2. Beekeepers transporting hives around the country to pollinate crops.
3. Bee colonies tendency to rob weak colonies of their honey.
4. Severe winters.
First off, the colony collapse disorder (CCD) was a serious problem in California in 2006, and continued for several years thereafter. Beekeepers are paid good money to transport their beehives to pollinate crops, and California is the leading state for this practice. The Varroa Mite first surfaced in the USA in 1987, and since then has been spreading across the continent. The main avenue of infection is when bees from a healthy hive raid another colony to steal honey, and in doing so bring back the mites to their own colony. Add to this the practice of transporting beehives around the country for paid pollination gigs, and you suddenly have a means of quickly infecting the entire bee population of the continent.
The severe winters of the past few years has resulted in a larger percentage of the bee population dying, but this has nothing to do with the mites or chemicals. Bees survive the winter by huddling together in a mass around the queen, and a certain percentage die from the cold every year. Their numbers are quickly replaced in the spring, and winter deaths are not considered a problem for the hive.
The jury is still out on this one. Something needs to be done, CCD is a problem that needs to be addressed. How much is man made and how much is natural is still the question.
I have yet to see however someone with definitive proof neonics are the problem.
This Chengshen Lu… A distant relative of David Suzuki perhaps…??
Same kind of maniacal ramblings. All to adoring low information voters of course (Liberals most likely).
It seems to me we are in an age that is virulently ANTI-TECHNOLOGY.. driven by ignorance & propaganda by those who would profit by it.
The 1890s and early 1900s, Pete, is the era I’m referencing but thank you for the further information.
It may be the same kind of thing as with the MMR vaccine in the late ’90s. One maverick researcher comes out with a report that hits all the right liberal buttons, and lo and behold a panic sets in. Andrew Wakefield of course turned out to be a complete fraud. Nothing yet is evidence of that in this case, but the absence of any entomologist in the research team is certainly a warning.
I briefly read one of Lu’s papers here
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CDsQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bulletinofinsectology.org%2Fpdfarticles%2Fvol67-2014-125-130lu.pdf&ei=jKl8VOXHOKi_sQSz-oLYDg&usg=AFQjCNHi2vSOBpHgosHL790TDPL22RBEjw&bvm=bv.80642063,d.cWc
It seems that he was dosing bees by adding the nicotinods to the sucrose from July to September. The problem is that according to the Corn Dust Research Consortium report neonicotinoid contamination is caused by vacuum type grain drills that exhaust some (we’re talking less than 40 parts per billion in most cases with two outliers of just over 100ppb) of the neonicotinoid pesticide coating into the air where it then settles onto flowers such as dandelions and tree blossoms that are downstream of the planting operation. Pollinating bees then gather the contaminated pollen.
Here is what I see that doesn’t fit. Grain planting is finished by early June at the latest so the neonicotinoids are no longer being gathered from contaminated blossoms by the bees. The time frame of Lu’s experiment is much later and up to three times longer than the contamination period observed in the GFO report. Also he does not state how he arrived at the dosage level in his experiment and how the dosage level corresponds to the actual doses bees near grain fields will receive. Third he only used two of the six neonicotinoids that are available; why were the other four omitted?
Half of the dosed bee colonies in Lu’s study ‘collapsed’. If neonicotinoids were actually causing half of bee colonies to collapse each of the seven winters since 2006 then 1/128 or less than 1% of the 2006 bee hives would have survived into 2014. Since this is nowhere close to what has occurred, Lu’s study does not reflect reality.
Hey, there certainly won’t be much protest from Ontario’s largest farm organization. Here’s an excerpt from very recent OFA press release that gushed about the stellar qualities of its new president:
“”…He is a leading advocate for environmental farm stewardship in the areas of air, water, biodiversity and climate change….”
http://www.betterfarming.com/online-news/new-faces-helm-ofa-56634
Cheerleaders at their own hangin’!
@Pete: This has come up before on SDA and I have stated essentially the same things as you. I also pointed out that Australia does not have CCD and neonicitoids have been in general use there since 1995. Now there is a real study!! It doesn’t matter. So what if Lu’s study is ridiculously tiny and badly flawed in design. It doesn’t matter. Actual “science” is no longer enough. It has become “political science” and science by advocacy. I’ve given up trying to talk reason to people. I’m not a violent person so ridicule and mockery are the only tools left. I’ve taken a vow to use them freely on the liberals and their fellow travelers.
No Different than the ‘low informed voter’. How does truth overcome that? Look at the black idiot in the white house.
“Australia does not have CCD and neonicitoids have been in general use there since 1995.”
Australia does not have the mite problem or harsh cold winters either.
CCD isn’t caused by one single thing. It’s caused by the cumulative interaction of a lot of adverse factors including harsh winters, moving hives, urban pollution, and sub-lethal doses of nerve-agent pesticides.
Neonicitoids in the small doses the bees get are just enough to keep them slightly ‘drunk’ or ‘stoned’. They lose their sense of direction, forget to gather pollen, don’t come back to the hive, ‘forget’ how to make honeycomb… all the things we see happen to addicts and stoners. How dysfunctional would you become if there was just a trace of LSD in your drinking water? Not enough to actually be detectable, but just enough to make you forgetful and easily distracted all the time. Probably not too bad during the warm summer months, but when winter rolls around the unanticipated results of forgetfulness can range from inconvenient: now you’ve got a bed bug infestation, and you catch the flu, and can’t go to work….to lethal.
If the bees have a low-stress, relatively stable environment like prairie canola fields then they can do OK with a bit of ‘dope’ in their food. That’s a whole lot different from bees moved around Ontario near urban pollution all summer long. Taking too much honey and replacing it with empty sucrose water doesn’t help their winter survival either.
Details are important; generalizations are generally misleading, incomplete, incorrect, and inconclusive.
‘The jury is still out on this one. Something needs to be done, CCD is a problem that needs to be addressed.’
So if bee mortality is found to be mainly caused by the cold summers we’ve been having and especially the cold weather we’ve had at the most critical time when bees need warmth we’ll still ‘DO SOMETHING’. It’s the modern way. We’ll find some junk on the internet about the bees being stoned and go with that.
http://junkscience.com/2014/04/05/bees-are-more-important-than-you-think/
I suspect that behind most mal-informed mass hysterics, you can find a Harvard academic.