Hi all
I guess a lot of Bee-L folks are in Montreal, sounds exciting. Although, I read they expect 6000 beekeepers. The last big conference I went to, I kept bumping into people I wanted to talk with, but they were always scurrying off and I never got a chance to talk with them. I prefer smaller conferences, where you can actually talk longer than an "elevator conversation." Meanwhile, a new report is out on Agricultural Pesticide Use in Southern United States. It's pretty long but I have excerpts, posted for review purposes only:

The current study describes the potential chemical exposure within the foraging territory of bee colonies located in an agricultural setting in the southern United States. The study sites were selected to represent the diversity of mid-South agriculture as well as areas with little or no agriculture.

Given that agricultural pesticides were routinely applied to much of the landscape around the apiary, we expected that bees would be exposed to these while foraging, and had potential to transport contaminated nectar or pollen back to the hive. Samples of beeswax, bee bread, honey, and bees were screened for 174 common agricultural pesticides and their metabolites. Of these, only 26 compounds were detected during the two-year study:

one defoliant, one insect growth regulator, five herbicides, six fungicides, six insecticides never used in beekeeping, and five insecticides/ miticides and their metabolites which are used in beekeeping and for various other agricultural purposes, as well as two miticides exclusively used by beekeepers to control Varroa destructor . 


Overall, considering the widespread use of pesticides in the landscape around the apiary at the High-Ag site, bee hive samples contained fairly little contamination. 

In honey sampled at the High-Ag site, the only contaminants detected were flubendiamide (in 2014) and DMPF (2,4-dimethylphenyl formamide) (in 2015). This agrees with Rissato et al. and Alburaki et al., who also found pesticide concentrations in honey to be very low or undetectable. 

This is likely because many synthetic pesticides are lipophilic, and readily accumulate in beeswax, but are not especially soluble in honey. Also, many foliar-applied insecticides work by contact, and are unlikely to be present in nectar collected by bees. 

No pesticide residues were detected in adult bee samples in 2014, from either the High-Ag or Low-Ag sites. However, because adult bees are short-lived in the summer, our limited sampling at the end of the season may not have detected applications made earlier. Similarly, in 2015, only beekeeper-applied products were detected in adult bee samples. 

New beeswax contained the highest number of detected compounds at both sites, and in both years. New beeswax sampled from the Low-Ag site in 2014 contained the highest number of compounds detected (16). The sources of these contaminants in the Low-Ag landscape are unknown, but were generally well below LD50  values for bees.

The highest levels of residues detected in wax were from products that are primarily applied by beekeepers for Varroa mite control. In 2014, coumaphos and fluvalinate were detected in new beeswax at both sites. Both of these compounds had been detected in foundation wax and package bees at the beginning of the season, but were not applied early to hives during the experiment, and were not likely to be used for any nearby field application.

Absent from the list of detected compounds are any of the neonicotinoid group of insecticides, which have recently received much critical attention for their suspected role in honey bee population declines.

Despite the widespread use of these chemicals, both hobbyist and commercial beekeepers continue to maintain productive honey bee colonies in intensive agricultural areas. Furthermore, colony productivity has been shown to increase with proximity to crop land,  and research has also shown that mass flowering crops can benefit wild and managed bees, despite other risks posed by agricultural practices and land management.

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