In this special series called “The Neonicotinoid View”, which is produced by The Organic View Radio Show, host June Stoyer and co-host, Colorado beekeeper, Tom Theobald talk to Dr. Susan E. Kegley, Principal and Founder of the Pesticide Research Institute (PRI) about a new research initiative called The Hive Tracking Project and why this research is important for understanding what is impacting honeybee health. Below are some highlights from the interview.
The Perfect Storm For Bees
JS: What is the purpose of The Hive Tracking Project?
SK: My latest project is a collaboration with commercial beekeepers to look at the problems affecting honeybees. We started a hive tracking project.
There are several factors that are being evaluated for potential harm to bees including pesticides, mites (the Varroa mite is a pest of bees) habitat loss, and pathogens like viruses, bacteria and fungi that are affecting the bees. Our goal is to look at all of these factors at once. Because if you only look at one, you can’t understand how they might be interacting with each other.
For example, we know that pesticides affect the immune system of bees. So, if you have viruses and a transmitter of viruses like the Varroa mite that bites the bees and sucks the bee’s blood, and in the process, transmits viruses. So, if you have that scenario and you’ve ruined the bee’s immune system by exposure to pesticides, then you have a perfect storm for devastating the honeybee colony.
Make Bees Or You Can Make Honey But You Can’t Do Both
JS: Main stream media has been circulating that honeybee populations are on the rise. However, the beekeeping community knows fully well that this is a falsehood and a great exaggeration of what is reality. Can you please tell us what exactly are the current statistics for global honeybee declines?
SK: This is a very interesting point and I see this over and over again. I am really glad you are giving me a chance to say something about it. The number of honeybee colonies is not a good measure because a colony, remember, is a queen bee and some thousands of worker bees. That number thousands can be a couple of thousands or it can be a hundred thousand.
So, a better measure that we actually track through the USDA survey system is honey production. Honey production in 2013 was the lowest ever on record since they began keeping records in 1939. It bumped up in 2014 and we don’t have the numbers for 2015 yet. The number of colonies basically tells you that beekeepers are desperately trying to generate new bees but in the process they sacrifice honey. You can either make bees or you can make honey but you can’t do both.
TT: Well, I’d like to add a little personal note. I have gone through this too. I was reading an interview
just recently about Jim Doan. He was a commercial beekeeper who was hit hard by the systemic pesticides. He said his average production went from 124 lbs per colony to 9lbs per colony.
I’m going through the same thing. I’m going into the harvest right now and I’ll have about 1/10th of the crop that I would have had just a few years ago. Typically, I would have produced several tons of high quality table honey. I’ll be lucky to have a few hundred pounds this year. So, we’re all struggling. Everybody knows you can lie with statistics and they’ve been manipulated very carefully by the agricriminal industry.
Neonicotinoids Bind Irreversibly To The Nervous System
TT: You’ve recently shared some information about the difficulty in identifying neonicotinoids in dead bees after they have been exposed. Can you expand upon that for the listeners?
SK: Yes, I did a blog post on this at Pesticide Research Institute’s website. Basically, what I kept hearing
was people who had bee kills, massive bees with lots of dead bees in front of their hives were being told
by their regulators to take samples of the bees, to send them in for analysis. That raised a red flag for me because there are several studies that show the bees are either metabolizing these chemicals and while they are still alive their systems or are processing these chemicals and turning them into something else very quickly, within a few hours.
Then another study suggests that these chemicals are binding irreversibly to the nervous system of the bees. So, if it is bound irreversibly, you are not going to see it in an analysis. Then there is also the process of bees have been laying around in the hot sun, in front of the hive, dead, for several days. Oxygen in the air, sunlight, just the temperature will end up degrading these pesticides. So sampling bees, unless you know that the bees have been sprayed or have come into contact with with dust or spray on the outside of their bodies is just not going to show you anything about what they’ve been exposed to. The better thing to sample is a matrix from inside the hive such as pollen, nectar or honey. Pollen seems to be the reservoir of many of these pesticides. It is really important that when there is a bee kill, they do not sample the bees only. It might be worth doing one sample but certainly be sure to sample other things as well.
Listen To The Interview
In this special series called “The Neonicotinoid View”, which is produced by The Organic View Radio Show, host June Stoyer and co-host, Colorado beekeeper, Tom Theobald talk to Dr. Susan E. Kegley, Principal and Founder of the Pesticide Research Institute (PRI) about a new research initiative called The Hive Tracking Project and why this research is important for understanding what is impacting honeybee health.
Learn About Dr. Susan Kegley
Dr. Kegley is Principal and Founder of the Pesticide Research Institute (PRI), an environmental consulting firm providing research, analysis, technical services and expert consulting on the chemistry and toxicology of pesticides.
Dr. Susan Kegley
Dr. Kegley’s consulting work focuses on pollutant fate and transport; human and ecological exposure assessment and risk assessment; development of tools to assess relative risks for different pesticides; development of integrated pest management (IPM) approaches to minimize pesticide use; environmental monitoring (with a focus on air and water sampling); and analytical chemistry. She also has expertise in pesticide regulation and policy, ecotoxicology, human toxicology, and epidemiology. Dr. Kegley has a BS in Chemistry, Summa cum laude, from the University of Richmond and a PhD in organic/inorganic Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
To support Dr. Kegley’s work on The Hive Tracking Project, please donate to Pollinator Stewardship Council.
It makes you wonder how sick we are getting every time we consume honey.
“Agricriminals!” Great way of putting it! That is exactly what these beasts are. They rape the land for profit and will kill us all for the almighty dollar.
When we can’t get food, then people will wake up. Kissinger said, when you control the food, you control the people. It is happening right in front of our eyes and the powers that be are doing nothing but collecting checks. Meanwhile, they are not exempt from their own destruction.
EPA should do something but of course, wont do anything to help the bees. Time to create an independent agency that has restrictions so that the staff cannot take money or work for Big Ag once employed by the agency. Private sector does it with non-compete agreements. We need something like that for the public sector.
Bayer Crop Science has such a dark history. People need to know about what they have done in the past and wake up to what they are doing in the here and now. They are only concerned about making money. If all of the bees die, they don’t care as long as their stock portfolio is solid. Greed is their motive. The dead bees are the smoking gun. They should be tried and convicted for mass murder. Wake up, America!
Great interview! I knew it was too good to be true that the bees were doing fine.
Basically, all of the owned scientists have been touching the surface but not going deep enough to find out the real impact neonicotinoid pesticides have on honey bees. It’s not a surprise. Farmers and beekeepers are always going to be second class citizens. People need to know who is responsible for growing their food. The beekeepers are critical to the abundance of food we take for granted. This was very informative. Thank you.
Every year I see fewer bees around than the last year. Often I find the importance of bees in our society is something that is not highly considered. This is something that significantly concerns me, as without bees we would have no food source. More education through awareness needs to be pushed throughout society. I personally think the pesticide neonicotinoids, is one of the main contributors to the disappearance of the bees, as here in Australia we still do not have the varroa mite. People need to wake up and understand the effect that toxic pesticides are having on bees and start using sustainable alternatives to control pests. Let’s ban toxic pesticides worldwide before we lose nature’s tiniest workers.
Moira
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Thanks for remembering the importance of bees. That’s why I bring a little a solution to help to save bees with the adopt a hive program is a opportunity to become a virtual Beekeeper with the adopt a beehive program.
You´ll be able to keep forever part of your hive production.
As a matter of fact, you can watch all the pre-scheduled interventions, with your laptop, mobile phone or any other Android device.
Thanks for your time.
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