Our Bees, Ourselves - Bees and Colony Collapse

Our Bees, Ourselves
Bees and Colony Collapse

MARK WINSTON     JULY 14, 2014

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — AROUND the world, honeybee colonies are dying in huge numbers: About one-third of hives collapse each year, a pattern going back a decade. For bees and the plants they pollinate — as well as for beekeepers, farmers, honey lovers and everyone else who appreciates this marvelous social insect — this is a catastrophe.

But in the midst of crisis can come learning. Honeybee collapse has much to teach us about how humans can avoid a similar fate, brought on by the increasingly severe environmental perturbations that challenge modern society.

Honeybee collapse has been particularly vexing because there is no one cause, but rather a thousand little cuts. The main elements include the compounding impact of pesticides applied to fields, as well as pesticides applied directly into hives to control mites; fungal, bacterial and viral pests and diseases; nutritional deficiencies caused by vast acreages of single-crop fields that lack diverse flowering plants; and, in the United States, commercial beekeeping itself, which disrupts colonies by moving most bees around the country multiple times each year to pollinate crops.

The real issue, though, is not the volume of problems, but the interactions among them. Here we find a core lesson from the bees that we ignore at our peril: the concept of synergy, where one plus one equals three, or four, or more. A typical honeybee colony contains residue from more than 120 pesticides. Alone, each represents a benign dose. But together they form a toxic soup of chemicals whose interplay can substantially reduce the effectiveness of bees’ immune systems, making them more susceptible to diseases.

These findings provide the most sophisticated data set available for any species about synergies among pesticides, and between pesticides and disease. The only human equivalent is research into pharmaceutical interactions, with many prescription drugs showing harmful or fatal side effects when used together, particularly in patients who already are disease-compromised. Pesticides have medical impacts as potent as pharmaceuticals do, yet we know virtually nothing about their synergistic impacts on our health, or their interplay with human diseases.

Observing the tumultuous demise of honeybees should alert us that our own well-being might be similarly threatened. The honeybee is a remarkably resilient species that has thrived for 40 million years, and the widespread collapse of so many colonies presents a clear message: We must demand that our regulatory authorities require studies on how exposure to low dosages of combined chemicals may affect human health before approving compounds.

Bees also provide some clues to how we may build a more collaborative relationship with the services that ecosystems can provide. Beyond honeybees, there are thousands of wild bee species that could offer some of the pollination service needed for agriculture. Yet feral bees — that is, bees not kept by beekeepers — also are threatened by factors similar to those afflicting honeybees: heavy pesticide use, destruction of nesting sites by overly intensive agriculture and a lack of diverse nectar and pollen sources thanks to highly effective weed killers, which decimate the unmanaged plants that bees depend on for nutrition.

Recently, my laboratory at Simon Fraser University conducted a study on farms that produce canola oil that illustrated the profound value of wild bees. We discovered that crop yields, and thus profits, are maximized if considerable acreages of cropland are left uncultivated to support wild pollinators.

A variety of wild plants means a healthier, more diverse bee population, which will then move to the planted fields next door in larger and more active numbers. Indeed, farmers who planted their entire field would earn about $27,000 in profit per farm, whereas those who left a third unplanted for bees to nest and forage in would earn $65,000 on a farm of similar size.

Such logic goes against conventional wisdom that fields and bees alike can be uniformly micromanaged. The current challenges faced by managed honeybees and wild bees remind us that we can manage too much. Excessive cultivation, chemical use and habitat destruction eventually destroy the very organisms that could be our partners.

And this insight goes beyond mere agricultural economics. There is a lesson in the decline of bees about how to respond to the most fundamental challenges facing contemporary human societies. We can best meet our own needs if we maintain a balance with nature — a balance that is as important to our health and prosperity as it is to the bees.

Mark Winston, a biologist and the director of the Center for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University, is the author of the forthcoming book “Bee Time: Lessons From the Hive.”

A version of this op-ed appears in print on July 15, 2014, on page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: Our Bees, Ourselves.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/opinion/bees-and-colony-collapse.html

College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences

Killer in a Bottle?

Household insecticides may play a role in declining bee populations

By Becky Beyers

Vera Krischik and her lab in the Department of Entomology are exploring a different avenue: how neonicotinoids, a group of insecticides commonly used in urban gardens and forests as well as in agricultural fields, might be making bees less resistant to the parasites and pathogens that researchers now believe are likely causes of Colony Collapse Disorder.

Infesting the system

About two-thirds of the world’s crops rely on bees and other pollinators; if the bees are gone, so are the fruits, vegetables and other plant-based foods they help create.
Other insects are less beneficial, however, so farmers and gardeners turn to insecticides to protect their crops. The first neonicotinyl insecticide, imidacloprid, came on the market in the 1990s. Since then, three more—thiamethoxam, clothianidin and dinotefuran—have been registered for use. All have similar toxicity to bees and all are commonly used in Minnesota: in 2009, more than 8 tons of insecticides primarily using imidacloprid and nearly 10 tons of clothianidin were used on farms and nearly another ton of imidacloprid was used on the state’s landscapes. When it was first introduced, imidacloprid was considered a breakthrough because it wasn’t harmful to humans or mammals, and they’re now extremely popular. “Most people didn’t realize that this is a systemic insecticide,” Krischik says.

Imidacloprid is commonly sold to farmers as Admire, Provado and Gaucho and to businesses and home gardeners under names Merit, Marathon, Bayer Advanced Flower and Shrub, Bayer Tree and Shrub Protect, Bayer Complete Insect Killer for Turf, Krischik says. When neonicotinoids are applied to a field or garden, the chemicals are absorbed through the plants’ vascular system, which makes the entire plant toxic to insects. That works well for unwanted leaf-feeding pests, but the chemicals that kill unwanted insects also go into the nectar and pollen that pollinators need. The toxic effects to bees can last for several months to years in pollen and nectar from just one application. When the insecticide is applied to soil it can last for years, adding to the imidacloprid reservoir in the plant.

Honeybees, bumblebees and solitary bees all respond to the insecticides, which are also commonly used for controlling emerald ash borer and Japanese beetles. Less-than-lethal exposures can cause honeybees to have problems flying and finding their way back to the hive, lose their sense of taste and have more difficulty learning new tasks, according to a group of scientists called the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, who summarized some of the existing research on bees and neonicotinoids this year.

Neonicotinoids are banned from use on corn and canola seed in both France and Germany, and after two studies last spring that made a strong connection between their use and declining bee health, support is growing in the United States for stronger regulation both in agricultural and home use. Early this year, beekeepers from Minnesota and California petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to immediately suspend sales of neonicotinoid insecticides, but in July the EPA denied the request and said it will review the insecticides’ effects, a process that could take until 2018. More recently, members of Congress have asked the agency to speed up the process. Krischik says more research is needed.

Digging in to home use

For years, beekeepers, scientists and chemical companies have argued about the amount of insecticide used as a seed treatment. The imidacloprid seed treatment Gaucho permits 0.675 mg AI (active ingredient) imidacloprid/seed for corn and 0.11 mg/seed for canola, Krischik says. But the greenhouse rate used on perennial landscape plants allows for 300 mg AI/ per 3 gallons—a 444 times higher rate on landscape plants than on field corn. Consequently, greenhouse and urban landscapes use higher concentrations of imidacloprid, and to make matters worse, gardeners often disregard the products’ instructions and reapply the insecticide or use it at peak flowering time, giving home use much greater potential to affect bees and other beneficial insects.
It gets even worse with trees, Krischik says. A surface soil application of imidacloprid in agriculture is limited to about 4mg/sq ft. But when used to stop emerald ash borers or Japanese beetles, the allowable application for a similar area is 1,675 times greater. These higher application rates in urban areas have huge implications for movement of imidacloprid into flowers and effects on bees and beneficial insects.

Addressing the controversy

So how much imidacloprid kills a bee? Bayer says 20 parts per billion will alter behavior and 170 ppb in food will kill a bee while it is drinking.

So how much imidacloprid ends up in nectar and pollen from a standard application dose in agriculture or landscapes? Is it enough to kill pollinators?

The seed treatment Gaucho results in around 6 ppb imidacloprid in canola pollen and 0.6 ppb in canola nectar, 3 ppb in corn pollen and 3 ppb in sunflower pollen and 1.9 ppb in sunflower nectar.

In landscapes, a standard 300mg dose to a 3 gallon pot results in 1,600 ppb in milkweed nectar, around 800 times more than from a sunflower seed treatment, according to Krischik. That concentration can cause high mortality in beneficial insects other than bees such as lady beetles or lacewings. Krischik’s lab is the first to study how the higher concentrations affect bees.

By partnering with a local golf course that had applied a surface drench of imidacloprid to linden trees, Krischik found that 1 month after application the linden leaves had around 100 ppb imidacloprid—which had the desired effect of killing Japanese beetles—but 12,865 ppb imidacloprid remained in the soil under the linden trees. Any flowering plant growing under the linden will pick up the imidacloprid and move it to pollen and nectar.

“Our data demonstrates that a homeowner application to rose bushes results in 812 ppb, which will kill any insect eating the pollen,” Krischik says. “We have seen in our trials that bees die on the flowers while feeding on a mint treated with the standard dose or a second application of imidacloprid, which is permitted. We showed that a rose bush will kill leaf-feeding Japanese beetles for 3 years after one standard consumer application of imidacloprid. However, you can apply it many times a summer.”

Because the neonicotinyl insecticides (imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, clothianidin and dinotefuran) have a similar lethal effect on bees and other beneficial insects, the problem is enormous, Krischik says. Her lab showed that 4 species of lady beetles, a parasitic wasp, a predatory green lacewing and bumblebees all die at the standard application rate of imidacloprid. In bumblebee colonies, queen mortality, colony weight and stored nectar all are affected in direct proportion to daily dosages. Imidacloprid also reduces bumblebee memory in her lab studies and stops bee foraging.

Unfortunately, she says, research about neonicotinoids’ effects and consumer education on how to use them safely aren’t getting the funding they need from federal agencies. Krischik was awarded a 2009 state grant to study the effects of imidacloprid on bees; a second grant in 2010 that would have allowed her to investigate the uptake of ash and linden trees of imidacloprid and potential nontarget effects on bees and beneficial insects was awarded, but revoked six months later by state legislators who didn’t see the value in understanding consequences of the high amount of imidacloprid used in urban landscapes. “Wow, it is frustrating,” Krischik says.

The Xerces Society report published earlier this year also made the case for continued long-term independent research, noting a long list of questions about bees and neonicotinoids that no one has yet studied in depth.

Bees are too important to be ignored, Krischik says. “If you don’t support managing them in the appropriate way, you’ll lose part of your diet, a lot of the anti-oxidants found in fruits… People rally for polar bears 3,000 miles away and that is great. We need people to rally for bees in their own back yard.”

http://www.cfans.umn.edu/Solutions/Fall2012/Killer_Bottle/index.htm
October 2012

European Agency Says Insecticides a Threat to Honey Bees

Updated January 16, 2013, 7:32 p.m. ET
By MATTHEW DALTON and MICHAEL HADDON

European authorities said three insecticides long suspected of contributing to plunging populations of honey bees pose risks to the insects and called for such chemicals to be placed under tougher scrutiny.

The finding by scientists at the European Food Safety Authority adds fuel to a debate that has raged in recent years in North America and Europe over the cause of mass deaths in the bee colonies that farmers depend on to pollinate their crops. And it could raise pressure on U.S. regulators, who are now reviewing the environmental effects of the chemicals, to withdraw them from the lucrative U.S. market. 

France, Germany, Italy and other European nations previously banned or suspended the use of certain insecticides, known as neonicotinoids, that many farmers and scientists argue are the main causes of declining honey bee populations. The pesticide industry and other scientists say disease and environmental changes are responsible.

The risk assessment, published Wednesday, said three neonicotinoids—clothianidin and imidacloprid, which are made primarily by Bayer AG, BAYN.XE +0.34% and thiamethoxam, which is made by Syngenta AG SYNN.VX +2.57% —pose risks to bees through contaminated dust and pesticide residues on nectar and pollen.

The agency sees a "high acute risk" to bees in how the three insecticides are applied to cereals, cotton, rapeseed, corn and sunflowers.

Its analysis "proposed a much more comprehensive risk assessment for bees and also introduced a higher level of scrutiny for interpretation of field studies," the agency said. But the agency said data aren't available to conclude that the insecticides are contributing to the collapse of bee colonies.

The European Commission, the European Union's executive arm, will request further information from the companies producing the chemicals, a commission spokesman said. The EU is prepared to take "necessary measures" if further studies show a definitive threat to bee populations from the chemicals, the spokesman said.

A top executive at Syngenta criticized the study. "It is obvious to us that EFSA has found itself under political pressure to produce a hurried and inadequate risk assessment, which even they acknowledge contains a high level of uncertainty," said John Atkin, Syngenta's chief operating officer, in a statement. "This report is unworthy of EFSA and of its scientists.

EFSA didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bayer said it stands by previous data it has submitted to regulatory agencies showing the chemicals don't harm bees if used as approved in Europe. "We do not believe that the new EFSA reports alter the quality and validity of these risk assessments and the underlying studies," the German chemical giant said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates pesticides, says it is unaware of any data showing that neonicotinoids have contributed to the collapse of bee colonies. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are examining the issue, but the department says it has found no evidence linking use of the pesticides to mass bee deaths.

The EPA has refused emergency requests from environmental groups to remove a number of neonicotinoids from the market. But the agency, responding to public pressure, has accelerated a periodic safety review of the chemicals to see if additional restrictions are needed on their use.

Environmental groups say the EPA is moving too slowly. They are considering suing to force the agency to take action.

"The EPA has a huge compliance problem," said Jay Feldman, executive director of the anti-pesticides group Beyond Pesticides.

The EPA didn't respond immediately to a request for comment.

Neonicotinoids have been replacing other pesticides in the U.S. that are considered more dangerous and have been gradually removed from the U.S. market.

An industry-backed study published on Monday says that a ban or suspension on the use of neonicotinoids could cost the EU more than €17 billion ($22.68 billion) in lower crop yields over a five-year period. Were the pesticides no longer available, the 27-nation bloc would also see a significant drop in food production at a time of increasing global demand, the study said.
—Alessandro Torello contributed to this article.

Write to Matthew Dalton at Matthew.Dalton@dowjones.com
A version of this article appeared January 16, 2013, on page B7 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Europe Warns of Risk to Bees.
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887323468604578245811334066972-lMyQjAxMTAzMDEwNzExNDcyWj.html?mod=wsj_valettop_email

2 Studies Point to Common Pesticide as a Culprit in Declining Bee Colonies

Julian Stratenschulte/European Pressphoto Agency

By CARL ZIMMER
Published: March 29, 2012

Scientists have been alarmed and puzzled by declines in bee populations in the United States and other parts of the world. They have suspected that pesticides are playing a part, but to date their experiments have yielded conflicting, ambiguous results.

In Thursday’s issue of the journal Science, two teams of researchers published studies suggesting that low levels of a common pesticide can have significant effects on bee colonies. One experiment, conducted by French researchers, indicates that the chemicals fog honeybee brains, making it harder for them to find their way home. The other study, by scientists in Britain, suggests that they keep bumblebees from supplying their hives with enough food to produce new queens.

The authors of both studies contend that their results raise serious questions about the use of the pesticides, known as neonicotinoids.

“I personally would like to see them not being used until more research has been done,” said David Goulson, an author of the bumblebee paper who teaches at the University of Stirling, in Scotland. “If it confirms what we’ve found, then they certainly shouldn’t be used when they’re going to be fed on by bees.”

But pesticides are only one of several likely factors that scientists have linked to declining bee populations. There are simply fewer flowers, for example, thanks to land development. Bees are increasingly succumbing to mites, viruses, fungi and other pathogens.

Outside experts were divided about the importance of the two new studies. Some favored the honeybee study over the bumblebee study, while others felt the opposite was true. Environmentalists say that both studies support their view that the insecticides should be banned. And a scientist for Bayer CropScience, the leading maker of neonicotinoids, cast doubt on both studies, for what other scientists said were legitimate reasons.

David Fischer, an ecotoxicologist at Bayer CropScience, said the new experiments had design flaws and conflicting results. In the French study, he said, the honeybees got far too much neonicotinoid. “I think they selected an improper dose level,” Dr. Fischer said.

Dr. Goulson’s study on bumblebees might warrant a “closer look,” Dr. Fischer said, but he argued that the weight of evidence still points to mites and viruses as the most likely candidates for bee declines.

The research does not solve the mystery of the vanishing bees. Although bumblebees have been on the decline in the United States and elsewhere, they have not succumbed to a specific phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder, which affects only honeybees.

Yet the research is coming out at a time when opposition to neonicotinoids is gaining momentum. The insecticides, introduced in the early 1990s, have exploded in popularity; virtually all corn grown in the United States is treated with them. Neonicotinoids are taken up by plants and moved to all their tissues — including the nectar on which bees feed. The concentration of neonicotinoids in nectar is not lethal, but some scientists have wondered if it might still affect bees.

In the honeybee experiment, researchers at the National Institute for Agricultural Research in France fed the bees a dose of neonicotinoid-laced sugar water and then moved them more than half a mile from their hive. The bees carried miniature radio tags that allowed the scientists to keep track of how many returned to the hive.

In familiar territory, the scientists found, the bees exposed to the pesticide were 10 percent less likely than healthy bees to make it home. In unfamiliar places, that figure rose to 31 percent.

The French scientists used a computer model to estimate how the hive would be affected by the loss of these bees. Under different conditions, they concluded that the hive’s population might drop by two-thirds or more, depending on how many worker bees were exposed.

“I thought it was very well designed,” said May Berenbaum, an entomologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

But James Cresswell, an ecotoxicologist at the University of Exeter in England, was less impressed, because the scientists had to rely on a computer model to determine changes in the hive. “I don’t think the paper is a trump card,” he said.

In the British study, Dr. Goulson and his colleagues fed sugar water laced with a neonicotinoid pesticide to 50 bumblebee colonies. The researchers then moved the bee colonies to a farm, alongside 25 colonies that had been fed ordinary sugar water.

At the end of each year, all the bumblebees in a hive die except for a few new queens, which will go on to found new hives. Dr. Goulson and his colleagues found that colonies exposed to neonicotinoids produced 85 percent fewer queens. This reduction would translate into 85 percent fewer hives.

Jeffery Pettis, a bee expert at the United States Department of Agriculture, called Dr. Goulson’s study “alarming.” He said he suspected that other types of wild bees would be shown to suffer similar effects.

Dr. Pettis is also convinced that neonicotinoids in low doses make bees more vulnerable to disease. He and other researchers have recently published experiments showing that neonicotinoids make honeybees more vulnerable to infections from parasitic fungi.

“Three or four years ago, I was much more cautious about how much pesticides were contributing to the problem,” Dr. Pettis said. “Now more and more evidence points to pesticides being a consistent part of the problem.”

A version of this article appeared in print on March 30, 2012, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: 2 Studies Point to Common Pesticide as a Culprit in Declining Bee Colonies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/science/neocotinoid-pesticides-play-a-role-in-bees-decline-2-studies-find.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general

Keeping Bees Using the Top-bar Beekeeping Method

Use this less expensive method to raise bees that will pollinate your crops and provide tasty honey fresh from the comb

By Phil Chandler
October/November 2009

The comb attached to a top bar must be handled carefully so it doesn’t break away from the bar.
PHIL CHANDLER

Beekeeping is a great hobby, whether you keep bees for pollination, honey, profit, medicinal uses or all of the above. But getting started with bees can be expensive if you use conventional hives. A basic setup with bees can cost more than $200, and building conventional hives and frames is time-consuming. But there’s a simpler, less-expensive and more natural option: top-bar hives. The top-bar method of beekeeping allows you to make simpler, inexpensive hives. Build them now and you can start keeping bees next spring.

In the top-bar system, you build simple box hives with slats (bars) of wood laid across the top, to which the bees attach their wax comb.

With growing concerns about colony collapse disorder and the resulting decline in the number of pollinators, gardeners might consider maintaining a top-bar hive of honeybees simply to increase vegetable and fruit yields through better pollination.

Top-bar beekeeping is for both urban and rural dwellers who want to keep bees on a modest scale, producing honey and beeswax. Above all, top-bar beekeeping is for people who love bees and understand and appreciate their role in the pollination of many wild and cultivated plants.

If your goal is to obtain the absolute maximum amount of honey regardless of all other considerations, top-bar beekeeping is not for you. This style of beekeeping can produce adequate amounts of honey, but the emphasis is on sustainability and keeping healthy bees rather than maximizing honey crops.

Natural vs. Industrial Beekeeping

Beekeeping does not have to be complicated. And you need none of the stuff in those glossy supply catalogs to keep healthy, happy and productive bees.

Nearly all conventional beehives in use in the United States and Europe are similar. They consist of rectangular wooden boxes containing removable wooden frames holding preformed “foundation” for the bees to build wax comb on, plus a floor and a roof. The queen bee lays eggs in this comb, and the bees store some pollen (their protein source) and honey in the comb. Other wooden boxes, called “supers,” with (usually) smaller frames, are stacked on top to store most of the honey crop.

In some ways, this box-and-frame hive is right for the job — at least from the beekeeper’s point of view. It’s a simple matter to lift individual frames out of the hive to see what the bees are doing and, if you have a strong back, it’s relatively easy to remove the honey crop. The uniform shape of the honeycomb in the frames makes it easier to extract the honey with a centrifuge.

For the bees, however, this conventional system has several disadvantages. Bees naturally build comb in deep, catenary curves (the shape made by a chain or rope suspended by its ends). But the use of preformed foundation inside rectangular frames forces bees to build comb according to our requirements, not theirs. Bees prefer to adjust the size of cells according to their needs.

In a top-bar hive, the bees are encouraged to build their wax comb (which holds the cells they fill with honey or developing bees) from a thin strip of “starter wax” applied to the wooden bars, which simply rest across the top of the box that forms the hive. To extract honey from this wax comb, you crush it in a strainer and allow the honey to drain into a jar.

Top-bar beekeeping requires only one of the simple, versatile hives described below and a sharp knife. Instead of using a smoker to calm the bees when you open the hive to inspect bees or harvest honey, you can use a hand-held spray bottle containing water and, perhaps, a few drops of a mixture of essential oils or cider vinegar.

Top-bar Hive Design

Top-bar hives have been used for thousands of years and are still popular in developing countries. I created a top-bar hive design with sloping sides and side entrances. The hive boxes are 36 to 48 inches long. The hives are 18 inches wide (outside measurement at the top) by 12 inches deep, measured at the ends. The trapezoidal shape is close to the natural shape of the comb. It’s strong and virtually eliminates attachment of comb to the sides of the hive — a useful feature for the beekeeper. This top-bar hive is simple to construct using inexpensive or recycled materials — just be certain the wood hasn’t been treated with chemicals that would harm the bees or you. For example, do not use green, pressure-treated lumber or lumber that may have been sprayed with a pesticide.

Bees build their wax combs from the bottoms of wooden bars that are 17 inches long, 1 3/8 inches wide and about three-quarter-inch thick. The bars rest on the upper edges of the sides of the hives, giving an internal width of 15 inches. A central groove, about one-eighth-inch deep, is cut along the length of each bar using a circular saw and is filled with molten wax to provide a guide and anchor point for the bees to build their comb. Alternatively, a strip of thin wood can be fixed along the center of the bar and rubbed with wax. Two inches on each end is left free of wax to discourage the bees from building comb attached to the sides of the hive.

The floor can be either solid or mesh, the latter being preferable in summer and hotter climates in general. The mesh allows ventilation and prevents the buildup of debris inside the hive. But it’s a good idea to have some method of closing the bottom of the hive during winter if your bees will be exposed to strong winds.

This long top-bar hive is strong, versatile and easy to build, even for someone with only basic woodworking skills. It’s also easy to manage. After the hive is in place, the heaviest lifting you will need to do is to remove the roof.

 


 

For free, detailed plans, see How to Build a Top-bar Hive.

Managing a Top-bar Hive

In many ways, managing a top-bar hive is easier than managing a framed hive — but you can’t ignore the bees completely.

To get started, you can capture a swarm and put it in the hive or buy a package of bees (about $80) from a beekeeping supply company.

Sometimes, bees will naturally swarm to an empty top-bar hive and populate it. To attract a swarm to the hive, put it out during the swarming season, which is late spring through midsummer. Baiting the hive with a few drops of lemongrass oil will improve your chances of attracting a swarm.

The actual process of harvesting honey is simple: Take one comb at a time, cut it from the bar and replace the bar for the bees to build more comb. Take only a few bars of honey in summer, leaving a surplus for winter. Then harvest more the following spring after winter is over.

If you want at least some honey in liquid form, toss the comb into a stainless steel bucket, thoroughly mash it with a paddle, and strain it through muslin. But you probably won’t get all the honey out of the wax. To clean the wax, put it near a hive for the bees to reclaim any remaining honey. After they’ve cleaned it up, you can use the wax for candles or other projects.

— This article is an excerpt from The Barefoot Beekeeper by Phil Chandler

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/Top-Bar-Beekeeping-Method.aspx

If you're having trouble downloading the plans on our site, you can find them on biobees.com. Scroll down to the section "Free beekeeping articles."

Keep Your Garden Safe From Killer Compost

 


Warning: Do not bring manure compost into your garden from outside sources unless you’re certain it doesn’t contain aminopyralid residues!

By Barbara Pleasant
April/May 2011

  

If you inadvertently apply aminopyralid-laced manure compost to your garden, you may suffer the crop-killing consequences for three or more years.

We’ve been reporting since 2008 on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) failure to prevent Dow Agrosciences from contaminating the public compost supply by selling persistent herbicides, and the issue continues to escalate.
The aminopyralid herbicide known as Milestone, plus other related herbicides collectively known as pyralids (sold under the brands Confront, Curtail, Forefront, Hornet, Lontrel, Millenium Ultra, Reclaim, Stinger and Transline), are still surfacing unexpectedly in gardens throughout the United States, with devastating results. The EPA allows Dow and others to sell these potent weed killers to farmers, who spray them on their pastures and hayfields. When animals graze on the treated pasture or hay, the chemicals pass through the animals and persist in the manure for several years — even if the manure is processed into compost! Gardeners then use the contaminated hay or compost on their crops, bringing a slow death to carrots, lettuces, potatoes, beets, spinach, tomatoes and legumes, including (but not limited to) beans and peas.
This is not a minor or isolated problem. In Montana, laboratory tests confirmed pyralid toxicity in soil samples from 17 counties across the state. Pennsylvania’s state weed specialist has received several reports of contamination, and numerous North Carolina vegetable growers have lost crops to contaminated mulch, hay or compost. Whatcom County in Washington has been hit especially hard, with losses to community gardens and several organic farms estimated at hundreds of thousands of dollars. Those affected think the source of the contamination was cow manure used to produce local composts.
These poisons are so powerful that residues can damage sensitive crops at levels as low as 10 parts per billion, according to an Ohio State University fact sheet. Sensitive plants may show symptoms quickly in heavily contaminated soil, or damage may not be apparent for weeks. As the leaves of affected plants curl and shrivel, gardeners often wrongly assume their plants have been hit by a disease or aerial herbicide drift.

These Toxic Chemicals Contaminate for Years

The EPA gave Milestone/aminopyralid “conditional” approval in 2005, despite inconsistencies in the Environmental Fate and Ecological Risk Assessment submitted by Dow. According to the EPA’s own scientists, “the persistence of aminopyralid [in soil] may be underestimated in this assessment.” Another problem noted by EPA scientists was the risk to endangered native plants. The assessment names endangered plants known to grow in wheat fields, but fails to address a bigger issue: Aminopyralid kills legumes, including wild species that bring nitrogen into the soil, and is consequently capable of crippling nature’s fertility cycle.

At the time aminopyralid was approved, reliable lab tests didn’t exist to identify pesticide residue levels in soil, and today such tests cost several hundred dollars per sample.

The EPA recently asked Dow to make the environmental risks from aminopyralid more prominent on labels, so contamination warnings now appear on the front label of containers. But Dow gives no precautionary information on its website. We had hoped the “Milestone Training” information offered on the website would mention soil contamination, but were disappointed to find that the “training” was little more than a repetition of the product’s sales pitch. For example, Question 8 asks: “What happens to Milestone after application?” Dow’s answer: “It remains in the soil to kill emerging seedlings for several weeks.”
Actually, numerous reports indicate that aminopryalid persists in soil for several years rather than “several weeks.” In North Carolina, a hayfield treated with Milestone herbicide in 2006 was still unfit for tomatoes in 2009.

What Now?

When we pressed EPA officials for answers on what they plan to do about this ongoing problem, all they would say is they intend to reevaluate aminopyralid, with data completion scheduled for 2014. In the meantime, these incredibly potent and persistent plant killers will continue to pollute gardens. To express your disapproval and demand the EPA take immediate action on this issue, contact Dan Kenny of the EPA’s Technical Review Branch, 703-305-7546; kenny.dan@epa.gov. You can also post your comments at the bottom of this article and spread the word to your friends via e-mail or Facebook. Anyone directly affected should file an incident report with the EPA.
To protect your garden, network with neighbors to keep aminopyralid out of your local community, and ask lots of questions before importing compost, manure, mulch or topsoil.

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This isn’t the only pesticide issue that’s really bugging us right now. Remember the systemic neonicotinoid pesticides we told you about in our October/November 2010 issue (Systemic Pesticides: Chemicals You Can’t Wash Off) that are deadly to honeybees that consume pollen, nectar or even water droplets from treated plants? It turns out the EPA gave Bayer CropScience a “conditional” registration to use one of these pesticides, clothianidin, in 2003, even though EPA scientists reviewing the company’s research on this pesticide concluded that clothianidin is “both persistent and systemic” and “highly toxic [to honeybees] on both a contact and an oral basis.” For a full report on this issue, see Leaked Document Shows EPA Allowed Bee-Toxic Pesticide Despite Own Scientists’ Red Flags

In addition, new evidence from researchers at the University of Buenos Aires Medical School shows the most widely used herbicide in the world, Roundup/glyphosate, may cause birth defects at residue levels much lower than currently allowed limits. For details, see Groundbreaking Study Shows Roundup Link to Birth Defects. 

— Cheryl Long 

http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/killer-compost-zmgz11zrog.aspx#ixzz1IEc0J06C

UC Davis set to open Honey Bee Haven as part of pollinator research

By Debbie Arrington
darrington@sacbee.com
Published: Saturday, Aug. 21, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 1D
Last Modified: Sunday, Aug. 22, 2010 - 1:44 pm

From tiny metallic green specks to giant black drones, bees have found their honey heaven on a slice of the UC Davis campus.

More than 6 million bees representing up to 55 species have taken up residence in the new Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre refuge designed to educate students and the public about agriculture's most important little helpers.

The new garden will be dedicated Sept. 11, but it already buzzes with activity. Red sages attract legions of workers that dip eagerly for nectar. Summer squash and watermelon tempt honeybees into vegetable beds. Coneflowers with thimbles-full of pollen beckon native bees to dig right in.

Today is National Honey Bee Awareness Day. Interest in bees has never been bigger, say experts, mostly due to colony collapse disorder.

"Absolutely, bee awareness is the highest I've seen, no doubt about it," said bee expert Eric Mussen, who has been part of the UC Davis entomology staff for 34 years. "A lot of people are asking, 'What can I do to help?' "

America is losing its honeybees at an alarming rate for unknown reasons. Last winter, an estimated 33.8 percent of commercial hives died out. Since the start of its rapid rise in 2007, colony collapse disorder may have wiped out 25 percent to 35 percent of European honeybee colonies, the type tended by American beekeepers.

"Many bees just don't look as healthy as they used to," Mussen explained. "Something suppresses their immune system. We've found elevated fungal disease as well as elevated virus, but how did they get susceptible to these in the first place?"

Concern for bees is not just about honey. Many crops are dependent on bees for pollination. Among them are melons, squash, cucumbers, cranberries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries and sunflowers.

Also bee-dependent are alfalfa, buckwheat and clover. Most tree fruit needs bees. Among the biggest bee-users in California: almonds.

"We grow more than 700,000 acres of almonds in California, and every acre needs two to three hives," said Kathy Garvey of the UC Davis entomology department.

Each hive holds about 60,000 bees. That's potential employment for 126 billion bees – just in almond orchards.

But bees don't stay put. "Bees need the equivalent of an acre of plants to visit every day," Mussen said. "They'll fly up to four miles from the hive and cover 50 square miles. They're in everybody's gardens and fruit trees, not just the orchards."

Including three large almond trees and several other fruit trees, the new Bee Haven has 110 hives, but bees are everywhere – including the ground. Some native bees burrow and make nests in the soil.

"This garden already has incredible diversity," said Neal Williams, an assistant professor who works with native bees. "We have bumblebees, carpenter bees, leaf cutters, borer bees, mason bees, sweat bees. It's pretty incredible who we've found."

Before planting the garden, a survey by Davis bee expert Robbin Thorp found 21 species of bees buzzing around the Laidlaw Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis. Next to the research lab, the new garden – created as a food source for the facility's bees as well as an outreach program – attracted 15 more species this spring. In all, 55 species have been documented.

"We've seen some exotic nonnative species move in, too," Williams said, "plus some bees that we still haven't fully identified.

"It's important to have diversity," he added. "It's like a stock portfolio; diversity buffers change."
With a $75,000 budget, the garden began in July 2009 with a patch of open, untilled field. The local bees survived on star thistle and bindweed.

"The ground hadn't been worked in years," said Missy Borel, program manager of the California Center for Urban Horticulture at UC Davis. "It was like a giant concrete brick."

Sausalito landscape architects Donald Sibbett and Ann F. Baker, interpretative planner Jessica Brainard and exhibit designer Chika Kurotaki were picked after an international design search. Cagwin & Dorward Landscape Contractors of Antelope – experts on sustainable drought-tolerant landscaping – handled the installation.

"Our biggest challenge was cost," said Borel, who was in charge of the planting. "We had a tight budget and started with nothing but an empty field. We had no irrigation. But we had tremendous support. Almost everything was donated."

Most of the featured plants are Arboretum All-Stars, drought-tolerant, easy-care perennials and shrubs propagated by the university's arboretum. The compost came from scraps from campus cafeterias.

"We gave the designers a list of suggested plants to use that would offer year-round bloom," said Lynn Kimsey, director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology, who also oversees the UC Davis apiary (bee) program. "The bees love them – but so do the rabbits. That's been a real struggle."

To keep out voracious bunnies, a temporary fence skirts the garden, which is open free to the public daily from dawn to dusk.

Out of bronze and ceramic mosaic, Davis artist Donna Billick created a giant honeybee sculpture the size of a large dog. It sits atop a bench and pedestal decorated with mosaics by Sarah Rizzo, schoolchildren and UC Davis students led by artist-scientist Diane Ullman.

"We learned a lesson from the bees – the value of social networking and collaboration," Billick said.

The artists incorporated a bit of bee into their work depicting bee life. Beeswax went into the lost-wax process to create the bronze legs. To pattern the eyes, Billick used the same hexagonal screen that beekeepers use in hives.

About 1,000 people are expected for the grand opening, said coordinator Chris Akins.
Visitors have already started dropping by to catch the buzz.

"It's awesome," said preschool teacher Kerry Bzdyk of Virginia, who visited the garden with her daughter Emily, a grad student. "I especially love the bee sculpture. This is really great for kids – for anyone – to learn about bees."

HÄAGEN-DAZS HONEY BEE HAVEN
Where: Bee Biology Road on UC Davis west campus.
When: Grand opening, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sept. 11. Garden is open to public daily from dawn to dusk.
Admission: Free
Details: http://beebiology.ucdavis.edu

THREE THINGS
1. Bees need water – not just to drink, but for air conditioning.

In triple-digit Sacramento summers, interior hive temperatures can top 130 degrees, melting the wax used to form cells in the comb. Bees gather water on hot days, then bring it back to the hive, where it's pooled on the floor as a sort of swamp cooler. Evaporation – up to a gallon a day – cools the hive.

Bees also need water to produce food for the colony's babies. Each "water carrier" makes 50 trips a day, collecting about 25 mg per trip. For a gallon, the bees need to make almost 160,000 trips.

2. Most bees live short, sweet, busy lives.

The average honeybee lives 30 days. Queens usually live two years, but some last longer. During spring, queens can lay 2,000 eggs a day. That allows the hive to rejuvenate itself. The colony needs workers. It takes 2 million visits to flowers to produce 1 pound of honey.

3. Bees like to dance, but the sun calls the moves.

When bees return to the hive after foraging, they communicate where the best flowers can be found with the "waggle dance." The direction of the bee's dances correlates to the angle of the flower from the hive relative to the angle of the sun.

FLOWERY FEAST
Which plants will draw bees to your garden? Here are plants in the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven:
• Basil
• California buckwheat
• Cape mallow
• Catmint
• Eggplant
• Honeysuckle
• Leucophyllum
• Mexican elderberry
• Mexican hat flower
• Mint
• Oregano
• Purple coneflower
• Red sage
• Roses
• Salvia
• Santa Barbara daisy
• Seaside daisy
• Strawberry
• White sage
• Watermelon

AVOID STINGS
Most bees are not aggressive, but they will sting when stepped on or when they sense a threat to the hive.

Most bee stings happen in the fall. As flowers disappear, bees take more risks as they expand their search.

Bees are attracted to sweet smells and bright colors, so avoid wearing them.

If a bee lands on you, hold still. (Tell kids to pretend they're statues.) Don't swat; the rapid movement might startle the insect. Gently blow on the bee to encourage it to take off.

If you get stung, pull the stinger out immediately. That cuts down on the poison that causes swelling. Then apply an ice pack or cold compress.

If a person is allergic to bees and is stung, don't wait to see symptoms; call 911 or head for an emergency room.




© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/08/21/2972258/uc-davis-set-to-open-honey-bee.html#ixzz0xfoDvp6q

Bayer Advanced Fruit, Citrus, & Vegetable Insect Control - a good idea?!?

Dear Friends,
Whether you are a gardener or horticultural professional you need to be aware of the dangers associated with a new garden pesticide on the market.

Our environmental/pesticide regulators have approved a pesticide for home garden use that works by the pesticide being absorbed by the plant. So every bit you take from the vegetable you get to eat some of the pesticide in it. There are label restrictions and recommendations but they are in tiny print and how many home owners are going to take the time to read the pages upon pages of tiny print on the label and then follow those instructions. Who has eyes good enough to read that stuff.

A friend/associate of mine who operates a local nursery wrote a great article about the issue. Know that he is not organic but does believe in using least toxic IPM strategies. If someone in the nursery industry can come out and say what he did in his blog, I don't think I need to say any more.

Please go to <http://redwoodbarn.blogspot.com/2010/05/bayer-advanced-fruit-citrus-vegetable.html> and read his short article. And then be sure not to buy this dangerous product and be sure to tell all your friends that they too must avoid using this product on food crops!

Naturally Yours,

Living Resources Company

Steven Zien

Steven M. Zien

President

http://www.organiclandscape.com/services

Join the Coalition for Pesticide-Free Lawns today!

http://www.beyondpesticides.org/pesticidefreelawns/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the article referred to above:
Posted by Don Shor
Friday, May 21, 2010

Bayer Advanced Fruit, Citrus, & Vegetable Insect Control -- a good idea?!?

“I’ve heard there is a new systemic insecticide for vegetables and fruit trees.”
Yes, indeed: Bayer CropScience has introduced Bayer Advanced™ Fruit, Citrus & Vegetable Insect Control, which you pour on the ground around edible crops. It goes up into the plant and kills insects that are feeding on the plant.
My god, what a terrible idea!
“Keeping your plants protected from listed damaging insects has never been easier.”
Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should!

The active ingredient imidacloprid (Merit) is a widely used neo-nicotinoid systemic insecticide. We recommend it for control of some pests on ornamentals, in situations where you and bees won’t be exposed to it, and it is useful on houseplants. It is the active ingredient in a popular flea control product on pets. It is heavily used on some agricultural crops in California, including head and leaf lettuces and citrus, as well as on turf and ornamentals.

I understand the basic principle of toxicology: the dose makes the poison. How toxic a material is depends on how much you ingest. There are doses that are considered safe for humans. Neonicotinoids are especially toxic to insects and much less so to humans. But the regulatory agencies base their safe dosage on assumptions about our current intake of the product by other sources. You are ingesting imidacloprid regularly when you eat conventional produce, walk across commercially-maintained turf, pet a cat that has been treated with Advantage®, etc.

Ok, so you put this insecticide on the ground, it is taken up by the roots, goes up into the plant and kills anything that sucks or chews on the plant. Then it breaks down steadily in the plant over time. Apparently Bayer and various regulatory agencies believe that it’s ok for you to eat whatever the plant produces because it has diminished to less harmful levels in the plant.

This all assumes you follow the label instructions for the rate per square foot, that you only apply it once a year, and that you wait the specified interval before harvest. Why, one wonders, is it a 21 day waiting period for lettuce, but a 45 day waiting period for Swiss chard?

You can download the 10-page label from bayeradvanced.com. Read about imidacloprid at the cooperative-extension maintained site http://extoxnet.orst.edu/

Here’s what anybody selling, buying, or using this product needs to know:
• You must carefully follow the rate of application per square foot of garden space.
• The product is in the plant, including the part you consume. If it provides “Season-Long Protection!” then it is in the plant all season. Including when you harvest.
• It is important to check the interval before harvest for a particular crop, which ranges from 14 to 45 days after application.
• You cannot use this product more than once a year. In California we have two full vegetable growing seasons.
• Imidacloprid is very toxic to bees of all kinds. Bees are exposed to it through pollen.
• You should not apply it when trees are blooming or bees are foraging nearby. It can be taken up by the roots of nearby flowering plants. Your garden needs to be entirely separated from plants that bees might visit. Sub-lethal doses to bees have unknown effects. It is one possible factor being reviewed in Colony Collapse Disorder, but has neither been ruled in or out as a cause.
• It is very toxic to earthworms.

I am concerned that the manufacturer and the regulatory agencies have not considered California’s unique gardening climate.

I don’t know if the baseline for acceptable “average” intake from other approved uses has been updated since the mid-1990’s (that is the only data I could find online). There have been many new approved uses of imidacloprid in the last decade, including urgency permits for new pests. Imidacloprid is the pesticide of choice for many of the new pests that arrive in California, so I would guess that we are consuming more and more of it.

I personally would not use it or sell it for edible crops, and urge nursery professionals, Master Gardeners, and landscape gardeners to discourage its use.