25,000 Dead Bees Found In Car Park Amid Probe

http://news.sky.com/story/1106549/dead-bees-25000-found-in-car-park-amid-probe

by will_brown • 13 years ago

72 65 13 years ago

news.sky.com

genwin2• 13 years ago

Insecticides might be killing insects? This must be studied for a few decades, we wouldn't want to jump to conclusions.

will_brown4• 13 years ago

It should be no surprise that bees (as pollinators) and chemical companies are multimillion dollar/billion dollar industries within the larger agricultural industry.

It should also be no surprise the chemical companies are paying millions of dollars a year to special interest groups, lobbyists, PR, and "independent" research studies - all of which suggest Colony Collapse Disorder is not definitively linked with "insecticides", as you call them.

CCD is analogous to almost every other scientific theory that runs counter to powerful interests and money, backed by observation, research studies, empirical data, and plain common sense - think evolution or global warming - science and common sense goes out the window in favor of the status quo.

pstuart• 13 years ago

Yes, nobody talks about how the industrial beekeepers themselves are partly to blame by shipping their bees around the world and exposing them to new diseases. Gotta maximize short term profits, eh?

akiselev• 13 years ago

It's a real bummer. Most of the fertilizer/insecticide companies are focused on the corn and a few other cash crop or subsidized markets. The problem is that most of those crops self-pollinate or are pollinated by wind (like corn).

This leaves the industry at odds with the beekeeping industry which is absolutely necessary to keep pollinating quite a few of the other crops we actually want to EAT.

Blahah11• 13 years ago

Insects are not all the same, some are hundreds of millions of years evolutionarily distant from one another. This leads to quite specialised biology in different insect groups, and many insecticides have highly specific action that targets only a subset of insect species by interfering with molecular pathways specific to them. So actually, we really don't want to jump to conclusions. Just because something is an insecticide, doesn't mean it kills or harms all insects.

A further relevant fact is that bee decline is related to many factors, possibly including pesticide use, but almost certainly including the modern practise of intensive bee farming and transport for pollination services, which leads to rapid spread of diseases.

andyl3• 13 years ago

Pesticides wipe out beehives all the time.

One of my hives was destroyed last year.

sologoub5• 13 years ago

If you are in the business, perhaps you can provide some perspective on this. According to news reports for the last few months, there has been an epidemic of bees dying off. Can't recall for sure, but figures of 40%-75% loss have been floating around.

If true, this seems very significant. If we leave out the obvious emotional negatives, the economic fall out could be monstrous in the form of much higher prices and severe supply constraint on everything from fruit/pollinator-dependent food, to honey and products made from honey/beeswax. Not to mention farms going out of business due to poor harvest.

tjohns2• 13 years ago

This has been going on for more than a few months -- at least since 2006. Some countries are starting to ban the insecticides suspected to be responsible.

More info: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder

andyl3• 13 years ago

I'm not 'in the business' - just have a couple hives in my yard.

The epidemic, sometimes called 'Colony Collapse Disorder', has been in the news for years. IMHO this seems especially to have hit commercial operators, who truck their bees all over the country. I blame it on the pesticides and the trucking.

The pesticides are nasty for sure. Its horrible to see an entire hive die off.

knappe• 13 years ago

Why is this on the front page?

digitalsushi2• 13 years ago

Because for some pathetic reason, we're apparently still on the cusp of accepting that we are probably almost sure why the bees are dying, but a huge swath of us are turning a blind eye out of scientific ignorance or out of bribery. And our job as literate, scientific folk is to get outraged about this and use our cute metaphorical clout to make these other people, the majority, understand that the world is GOING TO SUCK someday if we kill the bees off enough to stop pollinating all the crazy delicious things we like to eat. Even if we have our heads up our asses over the supposed cause of this, we as an entire planet should still be completely paying attention, livid, and figuring out what the actual cause is. Because odds are good it's something humans did. If you're not upset about the bees dying, you are not thinking it through enough.

sologoub5• 13 years ago

Well said!

Blahah11• 13 years ago

This is mostly hyperbolic and wrong. You're right that bees are great, we should all care, and it would suck if they all died. You are wrong that we know what's causing it or that it's some nefarious scheme.

Firstly, nobody is turning a blind eye out of scientific ignorance, and to suggest bribery is involved is just ridiculous. Every time an industry has a problem that's being investigated by scientists, people start making bribery claims. It's absolute nonsense, especially in this case where there is a very active debate in the literature and many hundreds of labs working independently. Newsflash: agricultural corporations have almost no impact on research outputs. They fund a small amount of research, and often the results that get published are not what they wanted. They have no say on what gets published, except in perhaps a handful of cases where they illegally exert pressure, but I've never seen such a case. As a plant scientist, I find the idea of any company using money to influence the results of academic research completely laughable. They might use money to influence the research question, but not the answer.

Secondly, we really are not almost sure why the bees are dying. The evidence is very strong that there are many causes contributing to CCD, and it keeps getting more complex with time. What's clear is that it's not a single cause, and will not be simple to fix, and is not just about the insecticides.

quotha2• 13 years ago

Without bees, humans wouldn't survive much more than 6 months on this planet.

digitalsushi2• 13 years ago

That's really not true. Plenty of food self pollinates. However, I wouldn't really want to go on living without all the wonderful foods that bees provide us with. Think matrix-meals and you're feeling it.

freehunter• 13 years ago

We're already to the point where we can make food without bees. Corn is pollinated by the wind. With just corn, we can make anything else just by adding artificial flavors! I love Grapez with high fructose corn syrup, reconstituted corn meal, aspartame, Red No. 40, Blue No. 2, and artificial flavoring (manufactured in a facility that manufactures peanuts).

quotha2• 13 years ago

“The fact is that of the 100 crop species that provide 90 per cent of the world’s food, over 70 are pollinated by bees.”- UN report.

Blahah11• 13 years ago

Definitely not true. We don't depend on bees for any staple food. Fruits are the primary crops that require bee pollination.

pyre• 13 years ago

Also, almonds.

jmharvey2• 13 years ago

Can anyone recommend a good source for background information about bees? 25,000 sounds like a huge number, but some quick googling (no idea how reliable the sources are) seems to indicate that's about the number of bees in a hive.

I'd like to have a better idea of whether this story is closer to, "Exterminators spray beehive, all the bees die" or "Colony collapse disorder threatens the existence of all life on earth"

andyl3• 13 years ago

Numbers of bees in a hive grows and shrinks depending on the season and climate. Typical numbers might be 15-20K bees in winter, 60-80K bees in summer.

Worker-Bee lifespan = ~2 months. All eggs laid by one queen!

Blahah11• 13 years ago

Most of the bees were bumble bees (Bombus spp.), which have only hundreds of individuals in a hive. 25,000 honeybees could easily have been a single hive that died for any reason. 25,000 bumble bees is more alarming.

will_brown4• 13 years ago

A least a starting point on Colony Collapse Disorder:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder

sageikosa4• 13 years ago

A dead deer found on the side of the road in Pennsylvania has more biomass.

hnriot• 13 years ago

but not impact on future food supply.

sliverstorm3• 13 years ago

Deer don't pollinate flowers.

Blahah11• 13 years ago

25,000 is a huge number because they were bumble bees, which exist in hives of hundreds of individuals (unlike honey bees, which can have tens of thousands).

The story in a sentence is "Exterminators drench tree in mixed insecticide, kill thousands of insects from the tree and surrounding area". It has little to do with colony collapse disorder.

roc2• 13 years ago

So something like every single bee in a couple hundred colonies flew out to a single pair of trees to be poisoned? Isn't that fairly odd behavior in and of itself?

Wiki suggests bumble bees only range a few kilometers. Is it even normal to see that many colonies that close together?

BadCookie• 13 years ago

Is there a movement in the US yet to ban neocotinoids? I would like to donate if so. I saw a few bees dying on the ground last year, but this year it seems much worse. I've probably seen five bees dying on the ground in the last week, and I don't even spend that much time outside! (This is in the East Bay near San Francisco by the way.)

btbuildem• 13 years ago

"Workers plan to wrap bee-proof netting around the trees in an attempt to prevent the deaths of more bees."

Gee whiz, how about NOT SPRAYING POISON ON THE TREES in the first place?!

genwin2• 13 years ago

The netting is a stop-gap measure until the experts can definitively prove whether the insecticide sprayed on the trees kills insects.

jsilence• 13 years ago

Especially since the main reason for spraying are the aphids. Which they could keep low if there were more ladybirds. But alas! The ladybirds are being killed too.

Blahah11• 13 years ago

Please HN, let's be sensible about the bees. This is maybe the tenth story about bees I've seen hit the front page in the last couple of months. People seem to be absorbing the alarmist and unfounded opinion that we know what's causing CCD.

Truth is, we simply don't know what's causing it. There are many possibilities, and there are hundreds of research groups working on it. It has been shown that some pesticides do affect bees. But it has also been shown that various diseases as well as beekeeping practices have large effects.

CCD is complex, and a sky news story about a single incident of a bunch of bees dying is no reason to start jumping to conclusions. It's interesting, sure, but don't assume it tells us anything about CCD.

will_brown4• 13 years ago

It has been shown that some pesticides do affect bees. But it has also been shown that various diseases as well as beekeeping practices have large effects.

There is no direct link demonstrated between neonicotinoids and the honey bee syndrome known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). However, as the most likely candidate, that is why a story like this is important, because it is a case study likely to link the two. Is this story determinative? Absolutely not, otherwise that would be the headline, "Neonicotinoids Proved to be the Smoking Gun in CCD."

However, as to the diseases you refer to, recent research suggests that neonicotinoids may make honey bees more susceptible to parasites and pathogens, including the intestinal parasite Nosema, which has been implicated as one causative factor in CCD. (http://www.xerces.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Are-Neonico...)

As to the keepers theory, sure transport and handling may be blamed, but bee keepers have been around since at least the time of the building of the pyramids - in fact many tombs were uncovered with 2,000+ year old honey that was eaten by the discoverers (not a bad shelf life). Nevertheless, significantly well traveled bees tend to die at greater rates, of course this can not account for CCD in wild colonies.

I imagine neonicotinoids will prove to be the smoking gun, but more along the lines of nicotine and "third hand smoke" (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-hand_smoke). To complicate matters even further, the neonicotinoids are likely to not directly cause death, but to make bees more susceptible to diseases or parasites (as referenced in the study above), making the diseases and parasites more palatable candidates for the cause rather than an effect of the cause.

joshdance• 13 years ago

Temporary ban on neocotinoids?

dbg31415• 13 years ago

Just shocked they took the time to count all those dead bees.

DanBC• 13 years ago

You use counting scales.

Blahah11• 13 years ago

Or just normal scales: count out 200 bees and weigh them collectively. Divide by 200 to get the average bee weight. Now weigh all the bees collected and divide by average bee weight to get estimated number.

jamieb• 13 years ago

2001: Planted Linden Trees. (hmmm. maybe toxic to bees)

2002: no dead bees.

2003: no dead bees.

...

2012: no dead bees.

2013:6/17 Sprayed Lindren trees with insecticides toxic to bees

2013:6/20 25,000 dead fucking bees

Conclusion: "It could be because Linden Trees are toxic to bees."

Blahah11• 13 years ago

Where did you read that there were no dead bees in previous years?

socillion• 13 years ago

The insecticide was Safari (Dinotefuran) which is toxic to bees, and it has been confirmed that it killed them.

http://www.opb.org/news/blog/ecotrope/state-confirms-pestici...

This was also concluded a few days ago: http://www.opb.org/news/blog/ecotrope/xerces-society-wilsonv...

jmharvey2• 13 years ago

2013:6/21 "It was because of the insecticide, we're still investigating whether the application was legal."

http://www.oregon.gov/ODA/Pages/news/130621bees.aspx

25,000 Dead Bees Found In Car Park Amid Probe

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