Tech | December 19, 2010 | 54 comments

EPA : Pull Bayer's bee-killing pesticide. Now.

source: http://action.panna.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5370

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JanforGore
On December 8, PAN joined Beyond Pesticides and beekeepers from around the country in breaking a story that is coming to be known as “Wik-Bee Leaks” or the “Clothianidin Controversy.” As media are reporting, bees are dying off while EPA turns a blind eye.

People are outraged and have been asking us what they can do.

Urging EPA to pull a bee-killing pesticide that Germany, Italy and France have already banned is an important first step. The Agency will need unprecedented public pressure to make use of its emergency powers. And you can bet Bayer will batle to keep this blockbuster product on the market. But we have to pick this fight.

Here's why:

U.S. bee populations are still declining and scientists believe pesticides are a critical piece of the puzzle. Clothianidin’s family of pesticides (neonicotinoids, including imidacloprid) are an especially suspect culprit.

Clothianidin is on the U.S. market on the basis of unsound science and deeply flawed EPA decision-making. Like most pesticides registered in the last 15 years, it was rushed to market prior to safety testing with a “conditional registration.”

Beekeepers can’t take another season of losses. Beekeepers tell us that like their hives, their industry is on the verge of collapse. With 1/3 of food reliant on bees for pollination, the collapse of commercial beekeeping would devastate U.S. farmers as well.

Thank you for taking a stand with beekeepers.
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54 comments // EPA : Pull Bayer's bee-killing pesticide. Now.

  • twohawks
    • 0
      twohawks  

    • Why don't we look at this another way...
      What if... someone is sitting on pollination technology that could revolutionize agricultural business, and it doesn't rely on Bees?
      Then 'Bees dying off' could be a great financial opportunity.
      Everyone would be reliant on purchasing their Bee-Chem and the necessary and special deployment tech required for using it.
      I mean, what a brilliant idea for truly making people, I mean everyone, absolutely dependent on a new agribusiness solution.

      Of course, that solution would likely also have a dependence on "their" GMO tech, so once the bees die off 'they' won't have to deal with any more guff from the public about 'their' GMO's... in fact,the masses will be grateful for saving them from a bee-die-off travesty, and put 'them' up on a pedestal for having been so brilliant to have been thinking about GMO's before this Bee travesty even ever happened.

      A good capitalist always looks for the opportunity in any situation... what may be exploited for further gain. After all, there's nothing nature can do that human's cannot re-engineer and do better!
      There is no problem humans cannot solve with science. Humans have already proven this.

      ::sarcasm:: (of course)
      ::nervousness:: -? (well, yeah, makes me a little nervous thinking about it, I will admit. I am certain there are those, probably the majority of people, who totally believe that last paragraph.)

    • 1 year ago
  • coolplanet
    • +1
      coolplanet  

    • From: "A Spring Without Bees" by Michael Schacker (Lyons Press 2008) --

      "For commercial pollination, native bees in North America cannot match the European honey bee, which can be concentrated in great numbers to cover a specific field. Yet native bees are essential to pollinating 130,000 types of flowering plants, species that are critical to regional ecosystems. Unfortunately, in recent years native bees have been hit hard by mites and the unintended consequences of pesticides, with many species devastated. Other factors might have led to the native bees falling prey to the mites, but little research money ever goes to these native pollinators. This is a significant strategic error, as whole ecosystems are dependent on plants needing bees, bats, hummingbirds, and butterflies to reproduce and flourish." (p. 11)

    • 1 year ago
  • bailey78
  • coolplanet
    • +1
      coolplanet  
    • bailey78:

      I had that same job once. Not knowing what I was doing many of the bees died. I felt horrible!
      What I would recommend is not doing it until spring when it's warm enough for them to survive outside. Perhaps you could build a box or wall to prevent them from coming further into the house and spend the winter studying the best way to do it yourself. You will definately need a smoker and a good place to move them. And duct tape is great to seal any holes in your suit.
      GOOD LUCK! It scared the beejesus out of me.....

    • 1 year ago
  • bailey78
    • +1
      bailey78  
    • coolplanet:

      Thanks for the advise I may do just that. wait till spring to do it I'm going to try and find a bee suit. I know it's real mild down here in South Texas but yes I don't want to kill anymore than I have to to get them moved. They don't bother me when I go around them but if I bring a lawn mower or weedeater arond they will get after me. the last Guy to mow around them got stung about fifteen or twenty times.

    • 1 year ago
  • ThatCrazyLibertarian
  • bailey78
    • +2
      bailey78  
    • ThatCrazyLibertarian:

      The folks around here that handle bees said to use a spray to kill them. I really REALLY don't want to do that. I have never tried to play with bees before yet I can't wait to try my hand at it. I know my aunt wants them gone asap but I have talked Her into not killing them for now. I will do a little research and do my best not to kill any of them. If any of you folks want some fresh Honey let me know I will do my best to harvest as much of it as I can and send it out to those that need it for tea or other diet needs.

    • 1 year ago
  • WhiteCrow22
    • +2
      WhiteCrow22  
    • bailey78:

      Make or buy a top bar hive box. Wear a hat with a net, and gloves. Tape pant leg and shirt sleeve opening shut with duct tape. You'll be fine. Stay calm. If you are stung through all of that armor, it will only be once, and it won't hurt much unless you are allergic. Most people are not allergic. Find the queen. You'll have to look it up on the internet to see what they look like. Locate the queen in all of that comb and gently cut out a large section of the comb surrounding the queen. Relocate that section of the comb to the new box, and the others will follow.

      If you can take part of the royal nursery comb, look it up on the internet, without hurting the queen and place it in another separate top bar box along with other parts of the existing comb, some of the worker bees will nurse one of the royal brood to be a new queen for that second or third box. A warm and sunny winter's day would be fine probably.

      Remember, you are their friend, and as long as you remain calm they will remain calm. A smoker helps with that too.

    • 1 year ago
  • bailey78
    • 0
      bailey78  
    • WhiteCrow22:

      Ok I will build a top bar box and try to get my Aunt to wait till spring to do it. I really love Bee's and fresh Honey. Thanks for the tips on doing it . I will post a video when I do it.

    • 1 year ago
  • royulery
    • +1
      royulery  
    • bailey78:

      when working with bees; don't wear black (makes you look like a bear) and don't wear floral patterns. a smoker will send the bees inside and they will gorge on honey, you can then scoop them up by the hand full.
      i tried to collect a wild swarm once but the branch broke before i was ready and a lot of the hive landed on me. i was covered with bees and got stung a lot at first. i slowly moved off the canvas and began removing the bees with a stick, like shaving. they didn't sting me anymore and i wrapped the hive in the canvas and gave them to my grandfather.
      he moved the queen to a new box and the rest followed.
      fyi; you can't tell the difference between a european bee and a killer bee by looking at it.

    • 1 year ago
  • bailey78
    • 0
      bailey78  
    • royulery:

      Ok don't wear black and don't wear any thing with flowers on it and smoke is good. When I start this little game of steal the honey i will get lots of video of myself getting killed by bees for you folks

    • 1 year ago
  • bailey78
    • +2
      bailey78  

    • I have the job of moveing some Honey bees as soon as it gets cold enough. My Aunt was going to spray them with poison but I talked Her into moveing them on a nice cold day this winter. I will go get video of the bees with the comb today and show you folks what I have to do. Not sure how i'm going to do it yet But I will figure something out.

    • 1 year ago
  • JanforGore
  • coolplanet
    • 0
      coolplanet  
    • JanforGore:

      From what I understand it has been European honey bees imported to America that have been hit hard by Colony Collapse Disorder. Native American Mason bees have not yet been infected.
      Sorry for any confusion I might have caused (below).

    • 1 year ago
  • coolplanet
    • +1
      coolplanet  

    • So far it's the European honey bees that are collapsing, but in America some 90% of all grains and fruits (mostly non-native species) depend on honey bees to pollinate and produce. This would also greatly impact beef, lamb, pork, chicken, and turkey production since they all are fed a diet of grains.

      And now, the other most important pollinator -- bats -- are mysteriously dying off in the eastern U.S.

      We are looking at massive famine here people!

    • 1 year ago
  • Debra_
    • -9
      Debra_  
    • coolplanet:

      The bee's are the physical manifestation of European oppression and supremacy the sooner we get rid of the racist European bees the better.

      This country survived fine without them before and will do it again.

    • 1 year ago
  • Nephwrack
  • FtheBULLSHT
  • nanac
  • bailey78
  • WhiteCrow22
  • Debra_
    • -10
      Debra_  

    • They are doing us a favor. Bee's aren't native to north America anyway. They came over with the European supremacists.

    • 1 year ago
  • coolplanet
  • Nephwrack
  • Debra_
  • Debra_
  • Nephwrack
  • coolplanet
    • 0
      coolplanet  
    • Debra_:

      Agreed.
      But Indians didn't grow Eurasian wheat and alfalfa and almonds and apples and oranges, etc., etc., which require fertilization by honey bees. Nor did they raise dairy and beef cows which are fed with bee-polinated grains.
      I seriously dought that native American buffalo, squash, corn, beans, tomatoes and potatoes can satisfy the voracious appetites of Americans or Europeans (unless you're from Ireland).....

    • 1 year ago
  • coxian_armada
  • echelgreen
    • +4
      echelgreen  
    • Debra_:

      You should be more specific. You mean honeybees of the genus apis. There were several specie of bees floating around America in the distant past. And there is fossil record evidence of a certain species of honey bee, Apis nearctica, found in North America (Nevada), circa the late Miocene to the early Pliocene epochs (~14 million years ago). Due to climate and geological changes, by the 16th or 17th century they had been wiped from the vocabulary of the local fauna. Then the Europeans repopulated the "New World" with similar bee species. So America had plenty of honeybees before, way before humans around, until the middle of this millenium, so who knows if humans who had settled in North America had not cultivated these honeybees. There is an apparent lack of the fossil record for you to make such an assumption. Read this paper. http://research.calacademy.org/files/Departments/scipubs/proccas_v60_n03.pdf
      And here is a synopsis, if you can't or don't want to read that. http://ucanr.org/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=1544

    • 1 year ago
  • coolplanet
    • 0
      coolplanet  
    • coxian_armada:

      Native American Mason bees seem to not have been affected yet, probably because they are not big pollinators of introduced foreign crops and they don't live in bee hives.
      Another bee that is not yet affected is the Africanized South American "killer" honey bee.

    • 1 year ago
  • WhiteCrow22
  • royulery
    • +5
      royulery  

    • the world would go sterile without bees. a hive is a single organism with many mobile sex organs, the bee is not an individual. the hive sends out it's organs to collect nectar and pollen by mating with flowering plants. this is great magic. i'd bet if aliens came, they would be more interested in bees than us.

    • 1 year ago
  • hunzedog
  • vixxxen618
  • EthicalVegan
  • Konkey_dong
  • EthicalVegan
  • Sarah_Honea
    • +8
      Sarah_Honea  

    • What Monsanto and Bayer do not get is by their own actions they shaft themselves along with the rest of us. The sobering fact is now by their own actions along with with the Mining and Petrochemical companies- they will be creating a universal solidarity: by starvation--then extinction.

      They cant escape this no more than we can. And if they think they can survive in a secluded 'bio-dome' they have another thing coming.

    • 1 year ago
  • JanforGore
    • +13
      JanforGore  

    • And Bayer has just as sordid a history as Monsanto. Involved in making poison gas both in WW1 and in WW 2 through being a part of IG Farben, which killed millions in gas chambers. Now they kill biodiversity with these new poisons based on the old, and use the world as unknowing guinea pigs with their GMO seeds. (and BTW that is all corroborated if you wish to look it up.) And the agencies of this government that constantly support them over the health and wellbeing of people and planet are now just as corrupt. There is much blood flowing in the halls of these corporations from years of human rights abuses. It is time to put an end to it. Also notice that Bayer is now the frontrunner in telling people that taking aspirin can actually halt some cancers while their pesiticides continue to toxify the planet... all the while reaping the financial benefits. Despicable and downright evil.

    • 1 year ago
  • projectmayhem
    • -14
      projectmayhem  
    • JanforGore:

      a little while ago you were telling everyone how GM foods and global warming was the cause...and now this info comes out and suddenly youre an expert? what the fuck is wrong with you?

    • 1 year ago
  • ras_menelik
  • coolplanet
    • +2
      coolplanet  
    • projectmayhem:

      Bayer developed these pesticides to work in conjunction with GM crops. They are coated on seeds and become systemic in the plant. The reason we need stronger insecticides and herbicides every year is because global warming is increasing the bug and weed population.

    • 1 year ago
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
  • EthicalVegan
    • +8
      EthicalVegan  
    • projectmayhem:

      Nothing's "wrong" with JanforGore... she's been sharing information just like this for as long as I've "known" her here on current.com. It's nothing new. I think JanforGore is an amateur expert in that she at least reads, reads, reads, checks the facts, and then thinks prior to submitting and/or writing her own comments. 99.999% of the time, I'm in huge appreciation of her submissions, and 100% of the time, I respect her responses.

    • 1 year ago
  • coolplanet
    • +2
      coolplanet  
    • JanforGore:

      My staunchly conservative republican boss used to play Rust Limpball on the radio all afternoon.
      One day he proudly announced that the only book he has ever read was Limpball's "The Way Things Are," saying "It's the only book I need to read."
      I muttered something like "I wouldn't brag about that if I were you."

    • 1 year ago
  • Nephwrack
  • coxian_armada
  • projectmayhem
  • projectmayhem
  • coolplanet
  • ras_menelik
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