Hi Al

Last week I had an editorial in the Albany Times Union paper:

The idea that neonics threaten bees a misguided notion

The honey bee, whose problems we've heard so much about in recent years, forms a key partnership with farmers and agriculture. Yet, in a misguided effort to "save the bees," New York's Legislature is now considering measures that will drive a wedge between beekeepers and farmers, potentially damaging to both.

More than four decades of professional experience in beekeeping and bee research has convinced me that the Legislature's ill-conceived solution, based on a misdiagnosis of the problem, will only make things worse for everyone, including the very bees we want to save.

In the 1990s, a group of French beekeepers whose bees weren't thriving came up with the theory there might be a connection between their suffering bees and a new class of insecticides called neonicotinoids. A lot of effort was spent surveying beehives and trying to establish the connection, but the data did not support the link. In fact, what researchers found was that French bees were a pretty sick lot, due to parasites and viruses.

The idea that neonics are killing bees moved to the United States around 2006, when the media latched on to the story of bees dying off worldwide. Statistics actually show that honeybee populations are on the rise in most parts of the world, with the exception of Europe and the U.S.

There is no doubt that neonics can kill bees. Lab studies show that when fed in syrup to bees, the insecticide is toxic; its function is to kill insects. However, in the real world of farming, honey bees are able not only to thrive on treated crops, but actually produce millions of tons of pure clean honey. How can this be?

Simply put, the insecticides are used to treat the seeds, which causes the green parts to be toxic to crop-damaging insects. The pollen and nectar the bees gather contains little or no detectable residues.

The push to ban the whole class of neonicotinoid insecticides is based upon the erroneous conclusion that these chemicals are causing bee die-offs. This is simply not true. Ten years of intense scrutiny of the beekeeping industry has led to the same conclusion as in France: The honey bee colonies are unhealthy due to the heavy load of parasites and pathogens.

Many of the top authorities on honey bee health issues have weighed in on this. Various scientists, including Marla Spivak of the University of Minnesota; Walter Sheppard of Washington State University; and Richard Fell of Virginia Tech affirm that neonics are not a significant driver of honey bee decline.

Raising healthy bees is not a simple matter. Just as with any livestock or agricultural endeavor, there are huge problems when these time-honored traditions are ramped up to large-scale production. The massive scale leads to huge crops, but often huge losses.

Farmers need crop protection products like neonics to protect their investment. We have no business taking away their tools on the basis of the misguided notion that neonicotinoid use will lead to the demise of beekeepers and the loss of the pollination services of bees. We need healthy bees, that's certain, but we should be focusing on their actual problems.

* * *
Peter Borst of Ithaca has been involved in the beekeeping industry since 1974, starting with work for a commercial beekeeper in upstate New York. He was senior apiarist at Cornell's Bee Lab from 1999 to 2006.

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