Pesticides Are Harming Bees — But Not Everywhere, Major New Study Shows

Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of Centre for Ecology & Hydrology Courtesy of Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

In the global debate over neonicotinoid pesticides, the company that makes most of them has relied on one primary argument to defend its product: The evidence that these chemicals, commonly called "neonics," are harmful to bees has been gathered in artificial conditions, force-feeding bees in the laboratory, rather than in the real world of farm fields. That company, Bayer, states on its website that "no adverse effects to bee colonies were ever observed in field studies at field-realistic exposure conditions."

Bayer will have a harder time making that argument after today. (Although it still has another argument in its quiver. We'll get to that later.)

This week, the prestigious journal Science reveals results from the biggest field study ever conducted of bees and neonics, which are usually coated on seeds, like corn and soybean seeds, before planting. Scientists monitored bees — honeybees and two types of wild bees — at 33 sites across Europe, in the United Kingdom, Germany and Hungary. At each site, the bees were placed near large fields of canola. Some of the fields contained canola grown from seeds that were treated with neonicotinoid pesticides, along with a standard fungicide. Other fields were planted with canola treated only with fungicides.

At most sites — specifically in Hungary and the United Kingdom — bees feeding on neonic-treated canola fields generally fared worse than bees that got to live around untreated canola. When exposed to neonics, wild bees and honeybees had more difficulty reproducing, and fewer honeybee colonies survived the winter.

The scientist who led the experiment, Richard Pywell, from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in the U.K., called the results "cause for concern."

But the experiment also revealed a complicated picture, because results were very different in Germany. There, honeybee colonies seemed to prosper, whether or not they were living near canola fields treated with neonicotinoids. In fact, honeybee colonies near neonic-treated fields produced more eggs, and more larvae. (Fewer colonies survived the winter, but the difference wasn't statistically significant.)

Pywell doesn't seem bothered by this discrepancy. "We think this is a really interesting result," he says. "We believe that this goes some way toward explaining the inconsistency of previous [research results]."

Apparently, the local environment plays a big role in whether bees are harmed by neonics. "We believe that other factors interact with neonicotinoid exposure to cause negative effects on honeybees and wild bees," Pywell says.

Pywell doesn't know exactly what those "other factors" might be — his experiment wasn't set up to examine them. But it did yield some clues.

Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology Courtesy of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

Honeybees in Germany managed to find a much wider variety of flowers to feed on. In Hungary and the United Kingdom, 40 or 50 percent of the pollen collected by honeybees was from canola; in Germany, it was only about 10 percent. In Hungary, Pywell says, the bees were surrounded by huge fields of canola, and in the U.K., "because of modern farming, we've lost many of our wild flowers, so the crops are pretty much all that's there in the springtime."

Also, honeybees in Germany were relatively free of parasites, compared to bees in the U.K. and Hungary.

Pywell suspects that bees are particularly vulnerable to neonic exposure when they're highly dependent on pesticide-treated crops for food, and when they already are weakened by disease.

This is what Jeffrey Donald, a Bayer spokesman, highlighted in an email to The Salt. He wrote that "the study shows that when hives are healthy and relatively disease free and when bees have access to diverse forage, neonics do not pose a danger to colony health."

Interestingly, this study was funded in part by Bayer and another neonic manufacturer, Syngenta, but Pywell says his team of researchers "operated very independently."

In a separate field study, also published this week in Science, a team of Canadian researchers measured the levels of neonicotinoid pesticides that honeybees were exposed to at several sites in Ontario and Quebec. They compared colonies located close to corn fields with those that were farther away.

"The first surprise was that bees were bringing in pollen that was contaminated with neonicotinoids for most of the growing season — three or four months," says Amro Zayed, a professor of biology at York University in Toronto. "The next surprise was that most of the pollen, 99 percent of the pollen, was from wild plants. Not corn, and not soybeans."

Zayed says that apparently, neonic residues in farm fields get dissolved in groundwater, and some are taken up by the roots of wild plants.

Zayed and his colleagues didn't monitor bee health in the field, but they tried to replicate this field exposure to neonics in experiments with laboratory bees. What they found: Bees exposed to neonicotinoids didn't keep their hives as clean and lost their queens more often.

Nigel Raine, a specialist on bees at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, says that these experiments have helped to fill in details of a picture that scientist still don't fully understand. "The story for honeybees is complicated, but these two papers, taken together, are kind of the first field-level evidence that there can be measurable impacts on important aspects of colony development and colony survival in the field," he says.

The European study, he says, shows just how complicated the picture is. It shows that pesticides like neonicotinoids affect bees, but also reveals the importance of other factors, too.

"We shouldn't just focus on insecticides. They're part of the problem, but if we focus on that and then just say, 'OK, we understand that now, the problem's fixed,' I don't think that's right," Raine says. "We need to be clear about how we're managing landscapes, both agricultural and urban and more natural landscapes, to support healthy biodiversity of pollinators," he says.

European regulators have imposed a partial moratorium on neonicotinoid use.

In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency is taking a closer look at neonics, but it hasn't proposed any new restrictions on them.</s>LONDON-The most extensive study to date on neonicotinoid pesticides concludes that they harm both honeybees and wild bees. Researchers said that exposure to the chemicals left honeybee hives less likely to survive over winter, while bumblebees and solitary bees produced fewer queens.

The study spanned 2,000 hectares across the UK, Germany and Hungary and was set up to establish the “real-world” impacts of the pesticides.

Neonicotinoids were placed under a temporary ban in Europe in 2013 after concerns about their impact on bees. The European Commission told the BBC that it intends to put forward a new proposal to further restrict the use of the chemicals. Prof Richard Pywell, from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Oxfordshire, who carried out the research, told BBC News: “Our findings are a cause for serious concern.

“We’ve shown for the first time negative effects of neonicotinoid-coated seed dressings on honeybees and we’ve also shown similar negative effects on wild bees. “This is important because many crops globally are insect pollinated and without pollinators we would struggle to produce some foods.”

However, Bayer, a major producer of neonicotinoids which part-funded the study, said the findings were inconclusive and that it remained convinced the pesticides were not bad for bees.

A growing number of studies have found evidence of a link between neonicotinoids and problems for bees.

But there have been questions over whether lab-based research represented what was happening in the wider environment or if the results of field-based studies were merely picking up a simple association between the pesticides and bee impacts rather than direct causation.

“There was a need to undertake a large-scale, realistic experiment to represent the effects of neonicotinoids on pollinators in the real world,” said Prof Pywell. The pan-European trials took place across 33 sites.

Bees were exposed to winter-sown oilseed rape that had been treated with two different types of neonicotinoids - Bayer’s clothianidin and Syngenta’s thiamethoxam - as well as untreated oilseed rape. For bumblebees and solitary bees, the researchers said that in the UK, Hungary and Germany, higher concentrations of neonicotinoid residues found in nests resulted in fewer queens.

The scientists also found a type of neonicotinoid called imidacloprid in the wild bee nests. This pesticide was not used in the study, and the team said its presence suggested that despite the 2013 ban, the chemicals were lingering in the environment. For honeybees, the scientists concluded that in the UK and Hungary, exposure to neonicotinoids meant that hives were at risk of dying out over the winter.

Prof Pywell said: “In the UK, we had high hive mortality.”

In Hungary, colonies fell by 24% over winter.

However in Germany, the scientists found there were no harmful effects on overwintering honeybees.

They believe this may be because bee diseases are less prevalent in Germany and the insects also have a wider range of flowers to forage on.

Commenting on the research that it had part-funded, Syngenta said the data was valuable but variable.

The company highlighted the findings in Germany. It said that if bee habitats and the health of pollinators improved “the impact of neonicotinoids can be minimal”.

Dr Richard Schmuck, director of environmental science at Bayer, said: “We do not share the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology’s interpretation that adverse effects of the seed treatments can be concluded from this study, and we remain confident that neonicotinoids are safe when used and applied responsibly.”</s>Two large-scale studies published Thursday suggest that common pesticides may harm bee colonies. In some cases, the pesticides contribute to the loss of not only worker bees but also queens.

The studies, in the journal Science, have been eagerly anticipated due to concerns about the impact of neonicotinoid pesticides on pollinators, but the results were not as clear-cut as experts had hoped.

The question is not whether neonicotinoids can be toxic to bees. These chemicals are marketed for their insect-killing power, and bees are, after all, insects. What has been harder to pin down is whether the exposure bees typically experience in the wild is harmful. Tests of neonicotinoids on bees in the lab show that the compounds are dangerous to them, but field studies have largely failed to implicate the pesticides.

To get the bottom of the controversy, two teams conducted large-scale field and lab studies designed to mimic natural conditions across four countries. Researchers in Europe placed bees in neonicotinoid-treated canola fields and monitored their health. Researchers in Canada monitored bees in apiaries within 550 yards of treated corn fields. They sampled pollen and honey for pesticides over five months, and attempted to replicate that exposure under controlled conditions. Both studies showed negative but different effects on bees, and both demonstrated that bees are picking up neonicotinoids from surprising sources.

In the European study, three types of bees were placed in 33 different canola fields across three countries. The differences between bees in treated or untreated fields were largely insignificant, and many of the bees in both groups died before they could be counted. This demonstrates how tough large-scale field studies are to conduct, said Richard Pywell, one of the study authors.

Of the differences that were statistically significant, results varied by country. In Hungary, honeybee egg production decreased and fewer worker bees survived the winter. In the United Kingdom, honeybee worker numbers decreased, and so did drones for a certain species of wild bee. In Germany, drone numbers for that same wild bee species and honeybee egg production actually increased.

Several important factors might help explain these regional differences. Nearly half the pollen picked up by bees in Hungary and the U.K. came from canola. In Germany, that number is closer to 10 percent. That means German bees had a wider range of flowers to choose from, possibly diluting their exposure to pesticides.

Disease rates were also lower in Germany. In the U.K., many of the bees fell prey to the dreaded Varroa destructor mite — a hairy, fanged parasite that many bee experts blame for the majority of losses that occur in commercial honeybee operations. In Hungary, a fungal infestation devastated the bees in the study. The fact that bees in the U.K. and Hungary, but not Germany, were adversely affected by neonicotinoid exposure suggests that the pesticides may exacerbate deadlier pressures bees face, such as parasites.

However, the small number of significant effects “makes it difficult to draw any reliable conclusions,” said Norman Carreck, science director of the International Bee Research Association.

Christopher Cutler, who studies insect toxicology at Dalhousie University, echoed Carreck’s concerns, pointing out that “when many different analyses are conducted” (42 in this case), “a small number of statistically significant effects are bound to emerge by chance.”

In another complication, when the researchers in Europe sampled the nests of bumble bees and solitary bees for pesticide residues, they found contamination with one type of neonicotinoid not used in the study. This was surprising, because there is currently a moratorium on the use of the pesticides to treat seeds of flowering plants in the European Union. This supports previously proposed hypotheses that neonicotinoids, which are water soluble, might persist in the soil, and that the bees were picking up chemicals applied before the ban.

In the Canadian study, scientists found that bees were exposed to 26 different pesticides. Neonicotinoids were present far below dangerous levels, but the exposure continued for months. Surprisingly, the bulk of contaminated pollen didn’t come from crops treated with the pesticide but from wildflowers nearby. That adds to the evidence that neonicotinoids might move through the soil and get picked up by other plants.

Researchers then fed the bees “pollen patties” laced with neonicotinoids at levels reflective of what they measured in the field.

Bees’ health suffered in several ways. Worker bees exposed as larva died younger, and treated colonies were more likely to be without a queen. Queen loss is normal during midsummer, but the exposed colonies were much less likely to rear a replacement queen.

Neonicotinoids also interfered with a behavior known as “social immunity.” Usually, bees remove their dead compatriots from the hive, but bee corpses stuck around longer in exposed colonies. Finally, neonicotinoids, when mixed with a certain fungicide, were more toxic than either alone.

Cutler called these results “interesting” and “useful” but regretted that the researchers did not collect any “colony-level data,” such as fertility, honey production or winter survival rates, which might better reflect the resiliency of bee colonies.

Bee exposure to neonicotinoids has been a puzzle. The pesticides are chemically similar to nicotine, which evolved in plants as a natural defense against insect predators. Neonicotinoids are commonly used to treat seeds or soil before planting. They move through the plant providing allover defense throughout development. They are popular with farmers because they don’t have to be sprayed throughout the season. Theoretically, that should mean less exposure for bees than to a sprayed pesticide.

In practice, recent concerns have focused on the capacity for neonicotinoids to be kicked up in dust clouds during planting. Canada has mandated the use of agents that help keep neonicotinoids out of the air.

The new studies suggesting that neonicotinoids seem to persist in the soil may help explain how bees, which do not forage on wind-pollinated corn, could still be exposed near fields of treated corn seeds.

In terms of how neonicotinoids effect bees in the field, many questions remain. How far is far enough for a wildflower to be from a treated field without taking up neonicotinoids? And as Pywell wonders, “If the bees are healthier, will they be more resilient to stresses such as neonicotinoids?” Together, the two research groups looked at a handful of bee species. What of the 20,000 others that inhabit the planet? And perhaps the most difficult question, what should we do about it?

An approach popular with activists would be to ban neonicotinoids altogether, but many experts worry this would cause farmers to turn to older and potentially more harmful methods of pest control. “Things are better for honey bees since neonics replaced more harmful insecticides,” said beekeeper and science blogger Randy Oliver.

Since the E.U. moratorium went into effect in 2014, farmers in England have struggled with increased pest pressure, Carreck said. Many have turned to pyrethroid pesticides, which have unknown consequences on bees and other beneficial insects. Pywell emphasized that if the E.U. continues the moratorium, we need to investigate what alternative pesticides are doing to bees.

I asked Dave Walton, a family farmer in Iowa, what he would do if neonicotinoids were banned. “We would have to use other products … Lorsban comes to mind.” Lorsban is a brand name for an equally controversial organophosphate insecticide, part of a class that is far more toxic to humans than neonicotinoids. They’re also no more friendly to bees.

Amro Zayed, who was involved with the Canadian study, recommends restricting the use of insecticides until after a pest problem occurs, instead of preemptively applying them to every seed we plant. Oliver agreed. “Neonics are still vastly overused as risk management, rather than as needed treatments for actual pest control,” he said.

When I asked Walton whether this was a workable compromise, he seemed less optimistic. “We use it to combat insects that feed on the seed and seedlings,” he explained. “By the time we find the insects, the damage is already done.”

The buzzword in farming these days is what’s known as “integrative pest management.” In IPM systems, conventional pesticides are used responsibly, and pest control relies heavily on natural predators. One potential strategy Pywell discussed is limiting exposure by supplying other flowers near fields which could also serve as a refuge for pest predators. Walton explained that they already employ a similar strategy on his farm, planting wildflowers and other native plants in ditches and field margins. However, given the evidence that neonicotinoids are more mobile and persistent than previously imagined, it may be important to monitor whether flowers in refuges are picking up neonicotinoids.

Wildflower refuges could also address an even greater threat to bees — habitat loss. Endless rows of wind-pollinated corn leave bees of all types scrambling for food. Likewise, urban sprawl and grassy lawns make for homeless, hungry pollinators. Many bee experts emphasize the importance of considering how changes to all landscapes could help or harm the pollinators we depend on.</s>Many people's only interaction with bees have been unpleasant stinging sessions. But the buzzing creatures are vital to our farming industry; they pollinate up to a third of the world's food supply. Yet, honey bees are in serious danger of dying out—with 44 percent of colonies lost in one recent year alone. And now, thanks to new research published this week in Science, we know the bees are facing another threat: the once-considered "safe" pesticides many farmers around the world use.

Neonicotinoids are a pesticide commonly used by farmers to fight pests that might otherwise their plants. (The pesticide is coated on seeds, such as corn and soybean seeds, before they are planted in the ground.) It's used across the U.S. and Europe, and the pesticide's main producer, Bayer, has long claimed it's safe for honeybees.
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But, according to the new study, which examined bees across Europe, the insects are harmed by the use of neonicotinoids. In fact, in one test by the researchers, the bees that ate pollen contaminated with neonicotinoids—specifically, a neonicotinoid called clothianidin—had a 23 percent shorter lifespan than bees not exposed to the pesticide. Those same bees took a longer-than-normal 45 minutes to travel from the plants to their hives, which could mean that the bees' memories were also affected by the chemical. And they also struggled to spot and remove diseased bees from their hives—something bees do to protect healthy bees—leading to a slow decline in their population.</s>There can be little doubt now that the world’s most widely used insecticides are bad for bees. Two new studies add to the mountain of evidence that neonicotinoids are harmful to pollinators, and add to the pressure for Europe, at least, to introduce a full ban.

The European Union has had a temporary moratorium on using three major neonicotinoids on bee-attractive crops since 2013, though farmers can apply for emergency authorisation to keep using them. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is due to rule in November on whether to make the ban permanent, and legislators are already discussing whether to extend it to cover all uses outside greenhouses.

One of the studies was the largest field trial to date, involving honeybees, bumblebees and solitary bees at 33 oilseed rape sites in the UK, Germany and Hungary. The team were given a licence to use two banned neonicotinoid insecticides (NNIs), clothianidin and thiamethoxam. One of these, or no NNIs at all, was used at each site, with the allocation made at random.

Even where no chemical was used, bees’ hives and nests contained NNI residues, including traces of the banned imidacloprid, which was not used in the study. This shows that all three chemicals have remained in the environment even after the moratorium.

In wild bees, the study found a link between higher levels of NNI residues and negative effects on reproduction: fewer queens in bumblebee hives and fewer egg cells in solitary bee nests.

In honeybees, the effects varied from country to country. During April to June flowering period, NNI exposure had negative effects on colony size in the UK and Hungary, but short-lived positive effects in Germany. In Hungary, the negative effects persisted over the winter, with worker numbers down 24 per cent the following spring.

It’s not clear exactly why there was this variation in effects, but diet and disease could be important factors. Bees in Germany had a more varied diet, getting less of their pollen from oilseed rape, and also had lower levels of parasites.

“The findings suggest that if we’re better at managing bee diseases, we may help mitigate these effects,” said study author Richard Pywell at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, UK.

The second study, by Nadejda Tsvetkov and colleagues at York University in Toronto, Canada, investigated levels of neonicotinoids that bees encounter in corn-growing regions in Canada. It found they were exposed for four months – almost the whole of their active season, and longer than had been suspected.

The researchers also tested the effects of exposure on honeybees in the lab. Worker bees exposed to realistic levels of clothianidin had shorter lifespans and their colonies were more likely to permanently lose queens. The toxicity of the insecticide doubled when it was present together with a commonly used fungicide.

In the field tests, most of the NNI-containing pollen collected by bees came from plants such as wildflowers that are not the targets of pesticide spraying. As in the European study, this raises concerns about the extent to which NNIs persist in the environment.

“Whatever you use the chemicals on, they are contaminating the environment and getting into bees’ food,” says Dave Goulson at the University of Sussex, UK. That suggests the EU’s current moratorium, which only applies to flowering crops such as corn and rape, won’t work, he says.

Although the field trial results varied between countries, the overall evidence points to harmful effects for bees, says Goulson. “I think you’d have to be pretty unreasonable at this point not to accept that, at least some of the time, these chemicals harm bees when used in normal farming practice.”

Goulson expects the EFSA to recommend at least that the moratorium on flowering crops be made permanent, and that it might raise the possibility of an extension to all crops. “I don’t think there can be any doubt that that’s what they’ll be recommending, but they might be suggesting going much further than that.”

Pywell said there needs to be more research on pesticides that might replace NNIs. “Whatever is decided, we’ve got to consider the alternatives,” he said.

Two makers of NNIs, Bayer and Syngenta, funded the European study but have rejected its conclusions, claiming the results were inconclusive. “We remain confident that neonicotinoids are safe when used and applied responsibly,” said Richard Schmuck of Bayer in a statement.</s>Matt and Michelle Tedman have been busy so far this summer with their honey business – T-House Honey – which has grown more than three times its original size in a matter of months.

It is the end of June and thousands of honey bees are busy gathering and storing the nectar from blooming flowers and trees in the honey combs of Matt and Michelle Tedman’s hives located just outside of Sabetha city limits.

T-House Honey started just over a year ago when one of the Tedmans’ two established hives produced roughly 90 pounds of surplus honey. The Tedmans planned on expanding their honey operation by two hives for this season, but the operation has unexpectedly grown to seven hives – two in the original location and five between two other locations – over the past two months.

Matt said that starting out was pretty straight forward, but it has been a lot of work, given how quickly the operation has grown this year.

“Starting with package bees was fairly simple and straight forward,” he said. “However, managing established colonies that have survived winter and capturing swarms both require different skill sets and knowledge, which I had to learn on the fly this spring. It was a lot of work, but I learned more this spring than I did my entire first beekeeping season.”

During the late spring and early summer months, Matt has been busy building up their bee populations, managing swarm season, adding honey supers according to weather conditions and monitoring their hives for pests on a weekly basis.

“Keeping bees can be quite labor intensive when you consider they are a bunch of bugs in a box,” Matt said.

Currently, the Tedmans have three different scenarios with their hives: established hives, swarm hives and packaged bees.

The Tedmans began with two established hives, but they have recently split one of their hives, which means they divided the brood, honey, and pollen frames evenly into two new hives.

“The old queen stayed with the hive in the original location,” Matt said. “The other ‘half’ went to another site several miles away.”

Matt then inserted a new mated queen into the new half without a queen and released her four days later.

“Bees do recognize each other by smell. If I would have released the queen immediately, the bees would likely have killed her,” he said. “Four days is generally enough time for the bees to accept a new queen in the right conditions.”

According to Matt, a beekeeper also can tell by the behavior of the bees if she has been accepted before releasing her.

Due to the mild winter, early spring, and a wet/cool spring created what Matt called the “perfect storm” for swarm conditions.

“All of our established hives swarmed multiple times this spring,” he said. “Because the hives have swarmed, we are waiting on the newly emerged queen to be mated and return to the hive to start laying eggs.”

“In our experience, this takes about 10 to 12 days for the new queen to start laying,” Matt said. “One of our hives is finally starting to grow after swarming mid April while the other ‘splits’ are still waiting on a laying queen before the hive population begins to grow again.”

So far this year, Matt and Michelle have caught three swarms – two from one of their hives and the other one from a feral hive that was within the city limits. According to Matt, he had to turn down swarm calls and let three to four other swarms go – including bees from his own hives – because he ran out of hive equipment.

The swarms that he did catch were placed into new hives with brand new frames, which means the bees have to start from scratch and draw out the combs before any new eggs can be laid by the queen.

“We are currently feeding these hives with sugar water to stimulate the queen to lay eggs and the worker bees to draw the comb faster,” Matt said. “The goal is to get two deep hive bodies completely filled out with approximately 100 pounds of honey before the first frost this fall.”

Matt said achieving that goal may not be possible, and it all depends on the weather.

“If the bees do not have the resources to make it through winter, it is best to combine hives in the fall and have higher chances to split the hive next spring,” he said.

Since Matt and Michelle only had two hives in the fall of 2016 and were inexperienced in overwintering hives, they were unsure of what would happen. So to ensure they would have bees this year, they ordered a bee package in early January .

“Bee packages typically need to be purchased/reserved early in the year, long before the hardest part of overwintering – March and early April,” Matt said. “Packaged bees are nothing more than an artificial swarm.”

Matt said currently the goal is to get the hives ready for winter – even though it seems so far away.

“With the summer solstice just occurring a week ago, the bees will recognize the days getting shorter and will begin to slow down production of wax accordingly,” he said. “First year packages typically do not produce surplus honey; however, this is strongly dependent on many factors, but mainly weather and location/available forage.”

The Tedmans order their bees from California. The bees are then transported via horse trailer along with hundreds of other package bee containers. According to Matt, a horse trailer is a great transportation method, because bees produce a lot of heat and the trailer allows for sufficient air flow to keep the temperature regulated.

“In fact, the transportation crews must be very careful when stopping to refuel and eat, so that the bees do not overheat,” Matt said. “Packaged bees cost roughly $100 each, so one can imagine the total dollar amount of bees that could be lost. The cost of packaged bees is also rising fast due to the shortage and large resurgence of the hobby in recent years.”

Swarming is defined as the asexual reproduction of a hive.

Swarming is in the bees’ genes, Matt said, and the most common cause of swarming is the worker bees’ inability to transmit the queen’s pheromones very well. Worker bees transmit the pheromone of the queen when they have come in contact with her, and since the bees are highly attracted to the queen pheromones the other worker bees become very interested in the worker bee that just came in contact with the queen.

“Imagine a large open room where there are few people,” Matt said. “You would have plenty of room to get away from the other people; however, when the room becomes condensed due to excessive people in the room, the bees can not transmit that pheromone very well. This drives the bees into swarm mode – too many bees in the hive coupled with early cool/rainy spring weather patterns.”

According to Matt, the bees also have to feel that they can be successful by starting a new hive – this is one of the main reasons why bees usually swarm in early spring – to have enough time to build a new colony and sufficient food stores for winter.

Once a hive has decided to swarm, the bees will convert multiple – usually a few dozen – two to three day old larvae cells into queen cells.

“The only difference between worker bees and queens bees is the fact queens are fed higher quality food – a highly enriched royal jelly – for the duration of their development,” Matt said. “This causes the queen larvae to fully develop ovaries and other reproductive organs.”

Eight days after the eggs are laid, queens cells are capped with a wax covering. The majority of hives will swarm when this happens, he explained.

“The majority of the hive will leave the hive, all at once, and create a huge cloud of bees,” Matt said. “They create quite the roar when they do. Approximately half to 2/3 of the colony will follow the queen to a nearby branch or rigid structure for an initial landing site and form a large mass of bees roughly the size of a basketball. The remaining half to 1/3 of the bees return to the original hive.”

“After the bees have swarmed, they will send out scouts to find a new location for the colony,” he continued. “The scouts will return and broadcast the location of the potential new home. The scouts will also check out the sites other scouts have found. This will happen until all bees have returned and are in agreement with the new site. The swarm will leave in unison to the new location and start drawing out the new combs.”

The original hive – that was left without a queen – will have to wait for the queens to emerge on the 16th day after the egg was laid. There is quite the process for how the queen is selected, however, and only one is kept.

“The first queen to hatch will make piping noises to notify the hive to be alert for her pheromone,” Matt explained. “The queen will then search out other newly hatched queens to fight to the death for rights to lay in that hive. Usually the first queen to hatch will sting the other queens while still in their cells. However, it is also possible for the last two remaining queens to both die fighting, leaving the hive queenless.”

Once the new queen has been selected, she will take a few days to mature for flight and then will take a mating flight to be mated by nearby drones. According to Matt, this is a risky process for the queen as she could be killed or poorly mated. A few days after being mated, she will begin to lay eggs.

“Adding honey supers gives the hives room to grow,” Matt said. “This helps alleviate the desire to swarm. Honey supers are also used to collect the surplus honey.”

Super boxes hold multiple frames and are only 6-5/8 inches tall, also commonly known as mediums. Honey is very heavy, and a good crop will yield about three pounds per frame in a medium box. Matt’s super boxes hold 10 frames.

A queen excluder is commonly placed above the brood chamber – which is a 9-5/8 inches tall box that holds the brood frames, where the queen lays the eggs and the nurse bees raise and tend to the eggs, larvae and pupae – to only allow worker bees to enter the supers. This keeps the queen from laying eggs in the super or getting damaged during harvesting.

“I am currently in the process of finishing the super boxes and frames,” Matt said. “I add the next super to a hive when roughly 80 percent of the top super frames are filled/capped with honey. Because our established hives have swarmed, our honey production will be reduced this year. We only have three hives with supers on currently; however, it is still spring and much can change before fall.”

Knowing when to add supers, what plants are blooming and when the subsequent nectar flows will be are all a part of the art of beekeeping.

“Honeybees are hoarders by nature and will always fill any open void possible with comb/honey, even to the point where it keeps the queen from laying eggs,” Matt said. “This is crucial to understand the timing of adding supers, as too little room can result in swarming or the bees not storing enough honey for winter, or too much space can spread the bees out too much and keep them from effectively defending the inside of the hive from any pests, namely small hive beetles.”

Small hive beetles are a small black beetle, roughly 1/8 inch in diameter, that lay their eggs in the honeycombs if left unguarded. The beetle larvae hatch inside the hive and cause significant damage to the combs and honey as they leave a slimy residue as they crawl out of the hive. The small hive beetles will then make their way to the soil below the hives, where they pupate into new beetles and emerge to start the process over again.

In order to help with the small hive beetles, Matt inserts “beetle blaster traps” into his hives. The trap hangs in-between the frames and has slots in the top of the trap that the beetles fall into – but the slots are too small for the bees. The trap contains apple cider vinegar and mineral oil, which attracts and drowns the beetles.

In addition to the small hive beetle, the varroa mite is also a danger to hives. Matt said that one of the reasons he has hives in multiple locations is because he likes to keep feral swarms away from the healthier hives.

“I like to keep swarms from feral hives away from my healthy apiaries until I know the quality and temperance of the bees from feral swarms,” he said. “For example, if they have diseases or are carrying high varroa mite loads.”

Matt explained that varroa mites are like ticks and are classified as arachnids. These mites – which arrived in the U.S. in the 1980s – peak in population immediately after the hives peak in population. They can attach to the bees and transmit many known viruses and bacterias.

“The virus and bacterias are very harmful to the bees and have been known to rapidly collapse a hive and even cause the hive to abscond (leave unexpectedly), leaving only a few nurse bees and the queen behind to die,” he said. “Another thing to note is varroa mites can double their population within a hive in under 30 days.”

The Tedmans treat these mites after harvesting the honey crop in the late summer/early fall.

Although the early spring seemed detrimental to this fall’s honey crop, Matt said things are looking up.

“The early spring has really hurt honey production for us, as our bees have swarmed,” he said. “However, our bees are looking healthy and our hive count has increased, which is much to be excited about.”

“Most people do not realize that just because plants are blooming, it does not necessarily mean the plants are producing nectar,” Matt said. “The plants need hot weather and sunshine to get the photosynthesis process working. Frequent rains can also reduce honey production as rain tends wash the nectar out of blooms and delay nectar availability.”

According to Matt, this past week has been great weather for the bees.

“The Linden trees have been in bloom this past week,” he said. “This past weekend was perfect with lots of sunshine and little wind.”</s>Two massive scientific studies just revealed it is almost certain the most widely used chemical insecticides in the world are extremely bad for bees, ultimately killing them in some instances. The results of the studies generated renewed pressure to completely ban the chemical pesticides in Europe.

One of the neonicotinoids studies was the largest such field trial to date. The scientists monitored honeybees, bumblebees, and solitary bees at a total of 33 oilseed rapeseed sites in the European Union. The team of researchers were permitted to spray two banned neonicotinoid insecticides during the field trial – clothianidin and thiamethoxam.

At each trial location, the scientists used either one of the neonicotinoids or no chemical insecticide at all. The sites where the pesticides were used were chosen at random. At the end of the study, even locations where no chemicals were used the presence of neonicotinoid residue were still present in bee hives and nests. Trace elements of the banned imidacloprid chemical that was not used in the study, was discovered as well.

The scientists surmised that all three chemical insecticides remain in the environment and can be spread long after crops are sprayed. The second study revealed wild bees are subjected to even higher levels of neonicotinoid residue.

Even traces of neonicotinoids caused negative effects on bee reproduction, according to the New Scientist. Queens in bumblebee hives were unable to reproduce at anticipated levels and few egg cells were found in the nests of solitary bees.

“The findings suggest that if we’re better at managing bee diseases, we may help mitigate these effects,” study author Richard Pywell, from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in the United Kingdom, said.

As Motherboard notes, bee populations have been on a drastic decline for more than a decade. The cause of colony collapse disorder (CCD) has been a hotly debated topic by both the scientific community and biotech companies who produce GMO seeds and chemical pesticides.

Neonicotinoids (neonics) were first discovered during the 1980s. The chemicals are used to treat not just crops around the world they are also present in veterinarian products and at fish farms. Neonics are believed to interfere with brain signals in bees. The study maintains the behavior of honeybees, bumblebees, and solitary bees is drastically impacted and increased mortality has occurred, when neonicotinoids are used.

Worker bees are the foundation of a healthy and productive hive. When the worker bees become lethargic or confused after being exposed to neonics, the hive does not function properly. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, about 70 percent of the food we eat is pollinated by honeybees. If the bees die off, the human race might not be too far behind.</s>Many studies have linked a relatively new insecticide group, neonicotinoids, which were developed in the 1980’s and 90’s, to a marked increase in bee deaths and hive mortality.

Neonicotinoids are neurotoxins, and unlike other chemical insecticides which are on the surface of plants, these are absorbed into the plant spread throughout the entire plant including into pollen.

In the past, critics have said the scientific studies linking bee problems with the chemical were due to unrealistic doses given to the bees and or conducted using unrealistic conditions the bees wouldn’t encounter in a natural situation.

A new study using real world conditions has challenged critics and confirms earlier studies..

Amro Zayed (PhD), associate professor of biology and research chair at York University in Toronto.

Unlike other studies, this one involved an actual real world time factor (full season) and dosage levels. What they found however clearly validated the previously criticised studies.

The study was published online today in the journal Science under the title, “Chronic exposure to neonicotinoids reduces honey bee health near corn crops” (abstract HERE)

Neonic treated corn and soy seeds are the most common of the treated crops in Canada.

This study involved some 55 colonies in real world, exposure to the toxin and had colonies randomly dispersed with some beside corn fields, and others far from corn field.

The study found some surprising results. The first was that the bees were absorbing neonics even before corn was planted. The levels remained low but constant throughout the season.

The sub-lethal levels however did compromise bees, with workers dying about 23 percent earlier than normal. As the bees aged flights were much longer than normal as the neuro-toxicity progressed. This latter suggests either the bees were weaker and/or had more trouble orienting themselves to find pollen, and then find their way back to the hive.

Also hive cleanliness suffered as did the critical ability to replace the queen if she died.

They also found that corn was not the bees first choice for pollen, meaning treated corn itself was not a great source consideration.

The fact that they were absorbing neonics even before corn was planted, and that pollen was being preferably gathered not from the treated corn but from other plants around the field suggests that the water-soluble neonics were getting into ground water and being absorbed by surrounding wild flowers and trees, that is spreading into the environment beyond the confines of the corn itself.

What they also found was that the bees had some 26 compounds in their bodies. Among them were herbicides and fungicides. The other surprise that a common fungicide, boscolid, combined with neonics and actually doubled the neonic toxicity.

“The effect of neonicotinoids on honey bees quickly turns from bad to worse when you add the fungicide boscalid to the mix,” said Professor Valérie Fournier of Laval University who collaborated with the York U team.

Professor Zayed said this might explain differences in the degree of bee and hive mortality, i.e. much higher mortality in an area where a farmer used both neonic-coated seeds, and sprayed boscolid fungicide on their crop.

Professor Zayed also notes that it’s easy to study honeybee colonies which are highly socialized and human managed, but most native bees are solitary and often specialize on a limited number of pollen sources. He says it is very likely their numbers are affected be neonicotinoids to an even greater extent that the domesticated bees.</s>A major £2.7m study into a controversial type of nicotine-based pesticide has found it can cause harm to bees, prompting environmentalists and some scientists to call for an outright ban.

Funded by two major agrochemical companies, the researchers discovered neonicotinoids were associated with negative effects on bees at sites in the UK and Hungary. However, they also found it had some “positive” effects on bees in Germany.

Nevertheless, writing in the leading journal Science, they concluded that the chemicals reduced the ability of bees to establish new populations the following year with a 24 per cent reduction in the Hungarian populations.

Neonics, as they are known, are already the subject of a partial ban by the European Union, which is considering preventing their use completely.

Other studies have reached similar conclusions but there were claims that these were either too small-scale or had not been carried out in ‘real world’ conditions. The latest study was designed to put an end to the debate once and for all.

The Soil Association said the findings were the “final, fatal blow” to the idea that neonics were safe for bees. And one leading bee researcher, Professor Nigel Raine, of Guelph University, said that the overall message from the study was that the pesticides had “appreciable negative impacts”.

Syngenta, which provided some of the funding along with Bayer Cropscience, noted the researchers had found the “direct mortality effects” were “likely to be rare” and highlighted the “positive and beneficial impact” for bees at the German sites.

But it added that the study had also helped to identify issues that could be addressed to “improve agriculture productivity while taking care of the environment”.

Writing in Science, researchers said: “For honey bees, we found both negative (Hungary and United Kingdom) and positive (Germany) effects during crop flowering.

“In Hungary, negative effects on honey bees, associated with clothianidin [a type of neonic], persisted over winter and resulted in smaller colonies in the following spring (24 per cent declines).

“In wild bees, reproduction was negatively correlated with neonicotinoid residues. These findings point to neonicotinoids causing a reduced capacity of bee species to establish new populations in the year following exposure.”

Two leading bee scientists, who were not involved in the study, agreed that it showed neonics were damaging bees.

Professor David Goulson of Sussex University, said: “This is by far the largest field trial ever conducted on the impacts of neonicotinoids on bees. Exposure of bees was entirely field-realistic; indeed, farmers simply followed normal farming practice.

“The findings are in agreement with a number of earlier studies: field exposure to neonicotinoids has clear negative impacts on bumblebees and solitary bees.

“Effects on honeybees were also predominantly negative but more variable. Interestingly, analysis of residues of neonicotinoids in bee nests suggests that much bee exposure was not from the treated crop adjacent to the colony but was coming from other sources in the landscape, suggesting widespread contamination of the environment.

“In the light of this new study, continuing to claim that use of neonicotinoids in farming does not harm bees is no longer a tenable position.”

Professor Raine said the “long-awaited paper” revealed “varying impacts” of neonicotinoid exposure.

But he added: “The overall picture points towards appreciable negative impacts on these important pollinators across the time course of this study.

“It is concerning that bumblebee colonies produce fewer queens, and solitary bees (Osmia bicornis) produce fewer offspring, where higher levels of exposure to neonicotinoids were found.

“These bees represent the basis for the next generation of these species in the following year, and fewer of these important individuals could have significant impacts on population size and persistence.”

However Professor Lin Field, head of the Department of Biological Chemistry and Crop Protection at Rothamsted Research, said the results were “very mixed”.

“Overall most of the parameters tested show no significant differences and for those that do there are sometimes conflicting results, meaning that it is hard to draw any conclusions,” she said. “My feeling is that no firm conclusions can be drawn from these results.”

Environmental groups called for the EU ban to be extended to all crops.

Vito Buonsante, a legal expert at ClientEarth, said: “The fact that Bayer and Syngenta were involved in one of the studies will make it much harder for industry to trot out the traditional argument that the results can't be trusted as the methodology was wrong. This is yet more evidence that the EU should adopt a total ban on these chemicals.

“Bees and wild pollinators are fundamental to our food supply, and we know neonicotinoids are threatening their existence. To let companies keep selling them, and farmers keep spraying them, would cause irreversible harm to the planet.”

Sandra Bell, a Friends of the Earth nature campaigner, said the study showed neonics came with “a nasty sting in the tail for our under-pressure bees”.

“It’s time for a complete and permanent ban on these chemicals,” she said. “We can successfully grow crops without neonicotinoids, and without resorting to more pesticides. The UK government must now do more to help farmers grow the crops we need without harming Britain’s bees.”

And Louise Payton, a Soil Association policy officer, said: “This should now be the final, fatal blow to neonicotinoids.

“With neonics widely polluting farms, and with UK farmers still treating most wheat, an outright ban is needed immediately.”

In a statement, Syngenta sounded a positive note about the results of the study, led by experts at the UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), but said it would seek to make improvements to their products.

Dr Peter Campbell, the company’s head of research collaborations, said: “We welcome the fact that the study concludes that ‘neonicotinoid residues were detected infrequently... [and] direct mortality effects by exposure to high concentrations of neonicotinoids are likely to be rare’.

“We were also pleased to see that in Germany during crop flowering, the use of neonicotinoid seed treatments has a positive and beneficial impact for both honeybees and bumblebees.”

The firm said other factors, such as beekeeping practices and planting wild flowers on field margins, could mean the impact of neonics was “minimal or in some cases even positive”.

Dr Campbell added: “Syngenta is absolutely committed to improving bee health as bees are critical for the sustainability of agriculture and our business.

“We are pleased that the CEH study has confirmed there are no consistent effects of thiamethoxam on bee health. The study has also helped to highlight areas where further measures can be taken to ensure our products improve agriculture productivity while taking care of the environment.”</s>WASHINGTON — A common and much-criticized pesticide dramatically weakens already vulnerable honeybee hives, according to a new massive field study in three European countries.

For more than a decade, the populations of honeybees and other key pollinators have been on the decline, and scientists have been trying to figure out what's behind the drop, mostly looking at a combination of factors that include disease, parasites, poor diet and pesticides. Other studies, mostly lab experiments, have pointed to problems with the insecticides called neonicotinoids, but the new research done in Britain, Hungary and Germany is the largest field study yet.

Researchers planted about 7.7 square miles (2,000 hectares) of fields of rapeseed, which is made into cooking oil, called canola in America. Some of the fields were planted with seeds treated with the insecticide, others with untreated seeds. The researchers followed bees from the spring of 2015 when the seeds flowered to the following spring when new bees were born.

The bee hives in the Hungarian and British fields that used pesticide-treated seeds did worse surviving through the next winter, the researchers found. In Hungary, the honeybee colonies near treated fields had 24 percent fewer worker bees the next spring when compared to those near untreated crops, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science .

But in Germany, the bees didn't seem harmed. Hives there were generally healthier to start and when scientists analyzed the pollen brought back to the hives, they determined that the German bees ate a far broader diet with much less of their nutrition coming from the pesticide-treated rapeseed plants, said study director Richard Pywell. Only about 10 percent of the German bee diet was from neonicotinoid-treated plants, compared to more than 50 percent in Hungary and England, he said.

When hives are weakened by disease, parasites or bad diet — as many hives are worldwide — then the neonicotinoids "pushes them over the edge," said Pywell, a scientist at the Center for Ecology and Hydrology in England. So many of the British hives died, in both treated and untreated fields, that scientists couldn't calculate the specific effect of the insecticide, he said.

The same study also found that wild bees were also weakened by the insecticide, but in a bit different ways, Pywell said. And for wild and honeybees, one neonicotinoid brand seemed to cause greater harm.

Europe banned neonicotinoids, or neonics, in 2013 and researchers needed a special exemption to do their study. Another study in the journal, also finds problems with neonicotinoids in a study in Canada.

The European and Canadian studies show that neonicotinoids harm bees, but still may not quite be the leading cause of bee losses, said University of Maryland entomologist Dennis vanEngelsdorp, who wasn't part of the study.

"The problem remains complex, like cancer," vanEngelsdorp said in an email.

Neonicotinoids makers Bayer and Syngenta paid for the European study but had no control over the results or the published paper, Pywell said.

Company officials pointed to the results in Germany and the lack of harm to hives there.

"The study shows that when hives are healthy and relatively disease free and when bees have access to diverse forage, neonics do not pose a danger to colony health," Bayer spokesman Jeffrey Donald wrote in an email.

In a statement, Syngenta's Peter Campbell, head of research collaborations, said the study "strongly suggests the effects of neonicotinoids are a product of interacting factors."
A study funded by Bayer and Syngenta confirms that neonicotinoid insecticides kill queen and worker bees.