Systemic Pesticides and Bees

I'm making a very big effort to make my yard bee friendly.  Well, bug friendly in general, but I have a special place in my heart reserved for bees.  Even as a child I would run around the backyard, catching bumblebees and honeybees, placing them in a jar with a flower so that I could view them up close, then releasing them once I was satisfied with my observations.

Well, ok... I'd have my dad release them.  I was afraid I'd get stung if I did it myself.


The point, though, is that even when I was still too young to start school, I recognized the beauty in bees.  Bees pollinate flowers, both wild and cultivated.  Bees have a sense of community that most creatures lack - everything is done for the benefit of the hive.  The honey they produce combats allergies in humans, and there's even one variety of honey that can heal illnesses and wounds.  A bee's brain is only about the size of a sesame seed, yet it can carry out complex computations and has accurate navigational abilities.

What's not to love?

There's a problem, though.  Bees have been hit with something called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).  CCD causes bees to disappear from the hive at alarming rates.  While other problems and diseases can afflict a hive, CCD stands in its own category.  In CCD, unlike other hive afflictions, there are no dead bodies surrounding the hive.  Bees always come home, so to have a healthy hive decimated in a matter of days with no sign of the workers is terrifying, to say the least.

There are many factors that are believed to contribute to CCD, but there's one factor that stands above the rest, and fortunately, it's a factor that we can actively fight against.

Systemic pesticides.

Systemic pesticides are different from other pesticides.  They don't just coat the plant.  They are actively absorbed. This means that the pesticide can't be washed away.  The actual plant becomes toxic to insect invaders.  Absorption also means that a plant that was treated last year has the possibility of still being affected this year. 

So what does this have to do with bees?

When a bee pollinates a plant that has been sprayed with systemic pesticides, a small amount of it is passed to the bee.  In a single day a bee can pollinate up to 100 flowers (and maybe more).  Now multiply that tiny amount of pesticide the bee has ingested by the number of blooms pollinated in a day.  Take that and multiply it by the number of days in a worker bee's lifespan (1-4 months).  Go ahead and halve that number... No... you know what?  Let's cut it down to a fourth.  That's still way too much pesticide ingested for any insect, as I'm sure you'd agree.

Systemic pesticides (and neonicotinoids top that list) break down a bee's immune system, making the bee less resistant to disease and parasites.  Furthermore, disorientation appears to take hold of affected bees, which explains their disappearance - they can't navigate back to the hive. 

This is not immediate, which is why systemic pesticides are still being used on commercial crops - tests to study long-term effects are not carried out by companies, so everything seems ok on paper.  Fortunately, academia has gotten involved, so this is changing.  Long-term studies are finally being carried out, and these studies are happening outside of the chemical companies, which makes them much more viable, in my opinion.

So what can we do?

Get the word out, for one.  Social networking is a way to do this.  Even a simple mention to your friends can help. 

Research CCD - don't take my word just because I seem to know what I'm talking about.  Look to the source - beekeeping organizations, scientists that are unaffiliated with either side of the debate, documentaries.  The information is there for everyone who is interested in finding it. 

But there's more.

In our country we have the ability to make our desires known.  While protest is one way to do this, most of us aren't prone to active political dissention.  That being the case, we can still make demands.  Petitions, letters to our representatives, etc.  If enough people speak out, the government is forced to take action.  It's when we sit idly by that nothing changes.

Environmental groups have already gotten together and submitted a petition with over a million signatures to the Obama administration, but there's still more to be done.

Here's a petition to congress that I've personally signed.  Take a look, and consider doing the same.  Every bit helps, and anything we can do to curtail the use of systemic pesticides will have a positive impact on the bees' future.

And while you're at it... garden organically.  In the very least, get rid of any pesticide you have that's made by Bayer (Merit is the one that comes to mind.  It's a home use systemic pesticide).  Pesticides don't actually stop problem insects from showing up, anyway.  That's a job for beneficial bugs and birds!

Pesticides cost more than natural methods, anyway.