AGRICULTURE - Vanishing Bees

"Are pesticides to blame for the massive bee die-off?" PBS NewsHour 11/24/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Commercial beekeepers across America have been struggling with great numbers of bee deaths over the past few years.  What’s behind their failing health?  Some research points to a class of pesticide that’s coated onto a large proportion of corn and soybeans grown in the U.S. Allison Aubrey of NPR reports.

ALLISON AUBREY (NPR):  It’s harvest time at Adee Honey Farms in Bruce, South Dakota.  Bret Adee’s the third generation to manage the 80,000 hives the Adees have scattered across five Midwestern states.  He says beekeeping these days is much harder than it’s ever been.

BRET ADEE, Adee Honey Farms:  In 2010, our bees were just destroyed in a couple of weeks.  Most of our bees died.

ALLISON AUBREY:  Bret says things really haven’t improved much.

BRET ADEE:  I would to see about twice to three times as many bees in most of the hives right now.  It will be a real challenge to keep them alive through the winter.

ALLISON AUBREY:  The Adees are not alone.  According to a preliminary survey from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, commercial beekeepers lost 42 percent of their colonies last year.  Bees are a critical part of agriculture.

Adee trucks his bees out to pollinate California’s almond groves every year.  And it’s not just almonds.  Bees pollinate everything from apples to cherries and squash.  To figure out what’s plaguing the bees, the Obama administration assembled a task force last year.  Scientists at the EPA, USDA and researchers across the country who have been studying the problem are finding there are multiple issues.

Bees have fewer wildflowers to forage on due to a loss of habitat.  There’s viruses that pests pass on to the bees.  Climate change is thought to play a role too.  Another issue is pesticides.  Some studies suggest that a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoid, or neonics for short, are harming the bees.

These pesticides are coated onto the seed of about 80 percent of the corn that’s grown in the United States and about half the soybeans too.  To get a sense of that scale, imagine a cornfield like this taking up the entire state of California.  That’s how much of this re-treated seed is being planted.