Honeybees Capable of Self-Medicating

Beeswax and propolis on top of a frame. Photo courtesy: mattprice

News today of yet more evidence linking neonicotinoid pesticides to Colony Collapse Disorder in bees was notable not just because it showed that insecticides harm bees. What is really interesting about this, and previous studies on honeybee exposure to neonicotinoids, is that the chemicals don't appear to just kill bees overnight, but rather they disrupt natural behaviors like navigation, queen rearing and the ability to ward off parasites.

We already knew that bees have a remarkably sophisticated social system and a robust set of defenses against numerous threats (check out this remarkable video, for example, on how honeybees clean house). But we're learning just how remarkable with every new study.



Jennifer Welsh reported over at Huffington Post recently on new research showing that bees self-medicate against fungal threats by collecting plant resins and wax to create propolis, a glue-like substance with strong anti-fungal properties:

The researchers found that when facing a fungal threat the bees brought in 45 percent more of the waxy creation to line their hives, and physically removed fungally-infected larvae from their area. Interestingly, that means they have a better grasp of the germ theory of disease than humans did before the 19th century — things that come into contact with microbes tend to cause further infection, the researchers noted.

"The colony is willing to expend the energy and effort of its worker bees to collect these resins," Simone-Finstrom said in a statement. "So, clearly this behavior has evolved because the benefit to the colony exceeds the cost."

As Welsh notes, the study may have implications for recommended beekeeping methodologies. After all, beekeepers have tended to favor hive designs and bee strains that produce less propolis, and often remove the substance when it is made, because it sticks hive parts together and makes the bees tough to work with.

Any time we post on alternative methods like tough love beekeeping or top-bar hives, one of the common criticisms is that regular intervention is needed to stop bees gluing up their hives.

Maybe this is just one more reminder that the bees may just know what they are doing, at least better than we do.

Pesticide Companies Must Sart Taking Responsibility

A colony of honeybees. Photograph: Haraz Ghanbari/AP via guardian.co.uk

The 27th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster in India that killed 20,000 people will be commemorated by World No Pesticides Use Day. This year, it is also the start of a three-day public trial of pesticide companies by the Permanent People's Tribunal (PPT), an international opinion tribunal that has raised awareness of cases from Eritrea to Guatemala.

It will convene in Bangalore, India, to hear cases brought against the big six pesticide companies; Monsanto, Dow, BASF, Bayer, Syngenta and DuPont, which control 74% of the global pesticide market. The PTT will invite the companies to defend an allegation of violating human rights. The World Bank estimates that more than 350,000 people each year die of unintentional pesticide poisoning - close to 1,000 people a day. Pesticide Action Network (PAN) International, which is spearheading the PPT, says that up to 41 million people suffer from adverse effects of pesticide exposure.

But it's not just people that have been killed and maimed by these toxic chemicals. Since a new class of systemic pesticide, called neonicotinoids - which move through the plant to the the flowers, attacking insects' nervous system on contact - appeared on the market two decades ago they have been linked to the worrying worldwide deaths of honeybees.

In Germany, Italy, France, and Slovenia, a Bayer-manufactured neonicotinoid, imidacloprid has been suspended as a seed dressing for corn following research showing it contaminated the pollen the bees collect and feed to their young and could, in laboratory conditions, impair honeybees' communication, memory and learning abilities. Beekeepers in Italy and France also blame another neonicotinoid, thiamethoxam, produced by Syngenta, for killing their bees and studies have shown how bees' flight could be adversely affected by the absorption of very low doses.

In the US, where a third of honeybees were wiped out in 2008, scientists have found imidacloprid at higher levels than had ever been reported before in the field. Although the mysterious disappearance of bees, dubbed colony collapse disorder, is likely caused buy a combination of factors, even the head of the US Department of Agriculture's Bee Research Laboratory believes that exposure to pesticides is a critical factor, along with parasites and poor nutrition.

"We call them the three Ps. If we have all three of them present in bees then they will be in poor health, but even having two of them could be problematic," said Jeff Pettis last year. Also last year a leaked memo from the US Environmental Protection Agency revealed that another Bayer pesticide, highly toxic to bees, had only received conditional registration and the company was instructed to conduct further field studies to assess clothianidin's threat to bee colonies. Seven years later it was still waiting.

In 2008, two-thirds of honeybee colonies along the Rhine, in Germany, died from the dust from a clothianidin seed treatment on corn that had drifted onto neighbouring field. Bayer and Syngenta continue to deny evidence of any link between these toxic products and the collapse of bee colonies.

PAN UK is inviting witnesses to give evidence at the PPT, but until the hearing begins PAN says it can't give out the their names. The defendants will be summoned to offer responses. Whether they turn up is unknown. You can watch the hearings live here.

The PPT, which cannot impose legal penalties, was set up in 1979 to raise awareness of human rights violations because there is no international forum empowered to hear and make judgment on cases of human rights violations brought against global corporations. In 1996, after the session of PPT on industrial hazards and human rights in Bhopal, the Charter on Industrial Hazards and Human Rights was adopted.

My opinion, and that of others, is that there is an overwhelming body of evidence pointing the finger at the sub-lethal impact of pesticides on bees, isn't it time that their creators were held to account?

After all, what is good for the environment is good for us. Without bees and other winged pollinators we face a very bleak future in regard to food security worldwide.

Lack of Insect Pollinators Causing Food Shortages in India

Falling vegetable yields could have a detrimental impact on people's diets, Indian researchers warn. Photo courtesy: bbcnews

A decline in pollinating insects in India is resulting in reduced vegetable yields and could limit people's access to a nutritional diet, a study warns.

Indian researchers said there was a "clear indication" that pollinator abundance was linked to productivity.

They added that the loss of the natural service could have a long-term impact on the farming sector, which accounts for almost a fifth of the nation's GDP.

Globally, pollination is estimated to be worth £141bn ($224bn) each year.

The findings were presented at a recent British Ecological Society meeting, held at the University of Leeds.

Each year, India produces about 7.5 million tonnes of vegetables. This accounts for about 14% of the global total, making the nation second only to China in the world's vegetable production league table.

Despite the concern, no study had been done to assess directly the scale of the decline in natural pollinators, explained Parthiba Basu, from the University of Calcutta's Ecology Research Unit.

"The ideal situation would have been if we were able to compare the overall pollinator abundance over the years, but that kind of data was just not available," he told BBC News.

Instead, his team compared the yields of pollinator-dependent crops with pollinator-independent crops.

"Data shows that the yields of pollinator-independent crops have continued to increase," Dr Basu said. "On the other hand, pollinator-dependent crops have levelled off."

He explained that certain crops did not depend on insects for pollination, including cereals. Instead, the plants used other mechanism - such as relying on the wind to carry the pollen.

However, many vegetables - such as pumpkin, squash, cucumber and gherkin - were reliant on insects, such as bees.

He added that the fall in yield per hectare was against the backdrop of a greater area being turned over to crop production each year.

The exact cause for the decline of pollinators, especially bees, still remains a mystery. Photo courtesy: bbcnews

In an attempt to identify an underlying cause for the pollinator decline, the team is carrying out a series of field experiments, comparing conventional agriculture with "ecological farming".

Defined as "a farming system that aims to develop an integrated, humane, environmentally and economically sustainable agricultural production system", ecological farming is almost a hybrid of conventional and organic farming, looking to capitalise on returns from modern farming methods as well as drawing on natural ecological services, such as pollination.

Dr Basu said: "There is an obvious indication that within the ecological farming setting, there is pollinator abundance. This method typically provides the habitats for natural pollinators - this is the way forward."

He added that if the team's findings were extrapolated, this would offer a "clear indication" that India was facing a decline in natural pollinators, as ecological farming was only practiced on about 10-20% of the country's arable land.

Figures show that agriculture accounts for almost one-fifth of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP), compared with the global average of just 6%. The sector also provides livelihoods for more than half of India's 1.2 billion population.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that of the slightly more than 100 crop species that provide 90% of food supplies for 146 countries, 71 are bee-pollinated, primarily by wild bees, and a number of others are pollinated by other insects.

In order to gain a clear insight into the scale of the global problem, the FAO has established the International Pollinators Initiative, which includes a project involving seven nations (India is among them) with the aim of identifying practices and building capacity in the management of pollination services.

In a 2007 assessment of the scientific data on the issue, the UN Environment Programme observed: "Any loss in biodiversity is a matter of public concern, but losses of pollinating insects may be particularly troublesome because of the potential effects on plant reproduction and hence on food supply security."

Dr Basu said food security was unlikely to be the main consequence facing India.

"There has been a debate within India about this, but most of the cereal crops are not pollinator dependent, so if there is a pollination crisis it is not going to affect food security as such.

"What is going to be affected is nutritional security."

The concept of food security was first established by a FAO committee in 1983. Nutritional security was soon added as a key pillar to ensure "access by all people at all times to enough food for an active and healthy life".

Dr Basu said that vegetables such as pumpkins, squash, cucumber, and gherkins were "quite substantial" in terms of delivering necessary nutrients to the population.

"But there are many other vegetable crops that are eaten by people who are around the poverty level, so-called minor vegetable crops like eggplant, for which is there is no or very little data," he explained.

About a quarter of India's population is believed to live below the poverty level, which - under the UN's Millennium Development Goals - refers to people who live on less than US$1 a day.

In industrialised nations, such as the US and in Europe, many farms employ the services of commercial hives to pollinate fruit trees and food crops, and ensure they harvest adequate yields.

But Dr Basu said the use of domesticated bees in this context was not widespread in South Asia.

"There are honey farmers, but using hives in the field to pollinate crops is not at all common in India," he said.

"That is why a lot of the political noise about a global pollination crisis came from the US and Europe, because their managed/domesticated bee population was declining."

In 2007, about one third of the US domesticated bee population was wiped out as a result of a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), with some commercial hive owners losing up to 90% of their bees.

The exact cause remains a mystery, and last year a number of UK agencies - including the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) - began a £10m project to help identify the main threat to bees and other insect pollinators.

A number of possible causes have been suggested, including the misuse of pesticides, habitat loss and fragmentation, and the spread of parasites and diseases.

Dr Basu said that as a result of his team's field experiments, it was clear that India too was experiencing a decline.

However, he cautioned: "There are many kinds of natural pollinators. As a result, we - not only in India, but in other parts of the world - do not really know what is happening to natural pollinator populations."

Via bbcnews

Are Cell Phones to Blame for Colony Collapse Disorder?

Photo courtesy: genehanson

A new study has suggested that cell phone radiation may be contributing to declines in bee populations in some areas of the world.

Bee populations dropped 17% in the UK last year, according to the British Bee Association, and nearly 30% in the United States says the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Parasitic mites called varroa, agricultural pesticides and the effects of climate change have all been implicated in what has been dubbed "colony collapse disorder" (CCD).

But researchers in India believe cell phones could also be to blame for some of the losses.

In a study at Panjab University in Chandigarh, northern India, researchers fitted cell phones to a hive and powered them up for two fifteen-minute periods each day.

After three months, they found the bees stopped producing honey, egg production by the queen bee halved, and the size of the hive dramatically reduced.

It's not just the honey that will be lost if populations plummet further. Bees are estimated to pollinate 90 commercial crops worldwide. Their economic value in the UK is estimated to be $290 million per year and around $12 billion in the U.S.

Andrew Goldsworthy, a biologist from the UK's Imperial College, London, has studied the biological effects of electromagnetic fields. He thinks it's possible bees could be affected by cell phone radiation.

The reason, Goldsworthy says, could hinge on a pigment in bees called cryptochrome.

"Animals, including insects, use cryptochrome for navigation," Goldsworthy told CNN.

"They use it to sense the direction of the earth's magnetic field and their ability to do this is compromised by radiation from [cell] phones and their base stations. So basically bees do not find their way back to the hive."

Goldsworthy has written to the UK communications regulator OFCOM suggesting a change of phone frequencies would stop the bees being confused.

"It's possible to modify the signal coming from the [cell] phones and the base station in such a way that it doesn't produce the frequencies that disturb the cryptochrome molecules," Goldsworthy said.

"So they could do this without the signal losing its ability to transmit information."

But the UK's Mobile Operators Association -- which represents the UK's five mobile network operators -- told CNN: "Research scientists have already considered possible factors involved in CCD and have identified the areas for research into the causes of CCD which do not include exposure to radio waves."

Norman Carreck, Scientific director of the International Bee research Association at the UK's University of Sussex says it's still not clear how much radio waves affect bees.

"We know they are sensitive to magnetic fields. What we don't know is what use they actually make of them. And no one has yet demonstrated that honey bees use the earth's magnetic field when navigating," Carreck said.

Via CNN

USA Still Suffering Honey Bee Losses

Researchers said that continued losses of this magnitude are not economically sustainable for commercial beekeepers. Photo courtesy: Jack Dykinga

Reprinted from Wildlife Extra

Losses of managed honey bee colonies across the USA totalled 33.8% from all causes last winter (October 2009 to April 2010), according to a survey conducted by the Apiary Inspectors of America (AIA) and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS). Beekeepers identified starvation, poor weather, and weak colonies going into winter as the top reasons for mortality in their operations.

This is an increase from overall losses of 29% reported from a similar survey covering the winter of 2008-2009, and similar to the 35.8% losses for the winter of 2007-2008.

The researchers said that continued losses of this magnitude are not economically sustainable for commercial beekeepers. The continued high rate of losses are worrying, especially considering losses occurring over the summer months were not being captured, notes Jeffrey Pettis, research leader of ARS' Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Md. ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's principal intramural scientific research agency. The survey was conducted by Pettis and past AIA presidents Dennis van Engelsdorp and Jerry Hayes.

The 28% of beekeeping operations that reported some of their colonies perished without dead bees present--a sign of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)--lost 44% of their colonies. This compares to 26% of beekeepers reporting such dead colonies in the 2008-2009 winter and 32% in the 2007-2008 winter. Beekeepers that did not report their colonies having CCD lost 25% of their colonies.

As this was an interview-based survey, it was not possible to differentiate between verifiable cases of CCD and colonies lost as the result of other causes that share the "absence of dead bees" as a symptom. The cause of CCD is still unknown.

The survey checked on about 22.4% of the country's estimated 2.46 million colonies. The survey reports only winter losses and does not capture colony losses that occur throughout the summer when queens or entire colonies fail and need to be replaced. Those summer losses can be significant.

Remedy For Colony Collapse Disorder

An Israeli company, Beeologics, has developed a vaccine against Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Colony Collapse Disorder is a syndrome that has been wiping out bee communities and threatening agricultural production all over the world. No one knows what causes it.

Their new drug, Remembee has completed successful clinical trials on millions of bees in North America. It has proved to be effective in maintaining bee health; increasing the longevity of bees; and, increasing honey production. Based on Nobel prize-winning RNAi technology, an interference technology, Remembee helps the bees overcome IAPV (Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus).

Nitzan Paldi, Chief Technology Officer of Beelogics, explains to ISRAEL21c,

“The technology is based on naturally occurring biological agents. Conceptually, we’re introducing the factor that prompts the silencing response,” says Paldi. “We didn’t invent gene silencing, it’s been around for eons, and discovering its broad applicability earned Andrew Fire and Craig C. Mello the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2006. However, as far as we know we are the first to use it commercially on non-humans.”

"It's really a tug of war between the virus and the host. We are helping the bee tug the rope more strongly and beat the virus. We take advantage of an immune system that the bees elicit for viral disease. But we are really using naturally occurring phenomenon. It's not a pesticide and it's not toxic."

This animated video shows how RNAi works:

A Black Market For Bees?

Image credit: Chelsea Bay Wills.

The Black Market is driven by a simple principle – supply and demand. As soon as something becomes hard to get, someone will come up with a “steal to order” scheme.

Such has happened in the UK. We are all aware that bees and their keepers have fallen on hard times with disease, climate change and colony collapse disorder taking its toll on bees worldwide.

Britain’s honeybee keepers are being warned to protect their hives from bee rustlers as thefts of hives have risen to unprecedented levels. In the latest incident, more than a million bees were taken from a strawberry farm near Telford, Shropshire.

David Sutton, the National Bee Unit inspector for western England, said: "You used to get the odd one or two, but not like this. People are realising the value of bees now because they are very scarce."

Second-hand hives that used to sell for £30 ($45) can now fetch more than £200 ($305). With each hive capable of producing around 50 lb of honey a year, victims stand to lose thousands of pounds.

To make matters worse, it would appear that the culprits are in the beekeeping community also. Tim Lovett, president of the British Beekeepers Association, said: "To steal bees, you have to know what you are doing. Beekeepers are now on the lookout. It's a vicious circle. You lose more bees, the price of bees goes up and the risk of them being stolen goes up."

So it would seem that you never really know what you’ve got until it’s gone.