Honey Bees and Pesticides  
 
The first record of an insecticide killing honey bees in the United States was in 1881 when a beekeeper "sprinkled" Paris green, an arsenical, on his flowering plum tree to protect it against plum curculio (Thompson 1881). E M. Webster (1892), who was later to become president of the association, wrote two and one-half pages in the proceedings of the fourth annual AAEE meeting on the adverse effects of arsenites on honey bees when fruit trees were sprayed while in bloom. In comments made at the end of the paper L. O. Howard said that in tests he conducted with fruit trees treated in bloom, and covered with gauze, the bees died from confinement rather than from the arsenical poisoning. M. V. Slingerland said it might be necessary to spray in the blooming season to kill the "bud-worm on apple." 
 
F. M. Webster (1894) reported more fully at the sixth meeting of the association, writing in the proceedings, "Finally, I believe we now have the first conclusive proof of the effect on bees by the use of arsenical poisons in the orchard while the trees are in bloom." He alluded to the fact that legislation was needed to protect beekeepers by preventing growers from spraying fruit trees in bloom. We know now that Webster was correct but the arsenicals continued to plague the beekeeping industry until the DDT era. At the thirty-ninth annual meeting, in 1925, a symposium was presented on the effects of spraying and dusting of fruit trees.
 
Some of the worst losses from the arsenicals were reported immediately after World War II. When DDT first appeared there was great concern that it would harm honey bees, but such was not the case and the pesticide and beekeeping industry entered a honeymoon that lasted until Sevin, a carbamate, was introduced in 1959. As a result of severe losses of honey bees across the United States, the Congress passed the Beekeeper Indemnification Payment Program in 1970. This reimbursed beekeepers for pesticide losses and was retroactive to 1967. The program lasted only 10 years and was abandoned because it did nothing to solve the basic problem. The introduction of Penncap-M, a microencapsulated insecticide, caused the beekeepers further difficulty in the 1970s, but by then there was better labeling and stronger legislation from the Environmental Protection Agency. The result has been fewer losses to honey bees caused by pesticides. -- Dr. Roger Morse, 1989
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