Einstein is rumored to have said that if honey bees disappeared from Earth, humans wouldn't last another four years.
For the last couple of years, we've been precariously close to testing his hypothesis. Starting in 2006, honey bees would leave to gather pollen and then ... poof! they'd never come back to the hive.
Keepers and scientists quickly gave the phenomenon the doomsday name colony collapse order. But even with a catchy-media-friendly name nobody could figure out why the honey bees and hives were dying.
Now beekeepers are sure they have a culprit, one that will not please the American Council of Science and Health because it turns out it was a pesticide.
Imidacloprid is not just another chemical. The Bayer Cropscience-owned
product is the world's best selling insecticide. It also causes honey bees'
nervous systems to go haywire. More than that, Bayer knew its
insecticide killed bees:
In its 2007 studies, Bayer applied standard doses of imidacloprid totest trees, including apple, lime and dogwood. Its scientists found
imidacloprid in nectar at concentrations of up to 4,000 parts per
billion, a dose high enough to kill several bees at once ... What caught the
attention of California agricultural officials was that the test trees
contained the same amount of deadly imidacloprid as the citrus and
almond groves regularly sprayed by farmers, and pollinated by bees ... Agricultural officials were
also surprised to learn that the imidacloprid can persist in the leaves
and blossoms of a plant for more than a year.
Bayer's credit it didn't try to cover up the finding. But it still
maintains imidacloprid isn't the cause of colony collapse. Beekeepers
disagree and the National Honeybee Advisory Board has called for a ban
on the product but that's not likely to happen anytime soon. As Salon explains:
Halting the sale of pesticides, though, would be no mean task. Over
120 countries use imidacloprid under the Bayer label on more than 140
crop varieties. In
a statement, the EPA says that before banning a pesticide, it "must
find that an 'imminent hazard' exists ... The EPA did not clarify what is
meant by "imminent hazard" and why the death of honeybees does not
qualify.
So
far honey prices haven't risen significantly and honey bees aren't
endangered (though they're getting that way in the wild). But it's a scary thought -- if we're actively killing one of the animals we use
the most, how are we supposed to protect less useful species?
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