What Is Killing America’s Bees and What Does It Mean for Us?
Indeed, bees are not the only stakeholders in determining the non-target effects of neonics. They are what’s referred to as an “indicator species”: They provide a glimpse into broader environmental impacts, and because commercial honeybees are economic commodities, we pay attention to them in a way we don’t to other insects. Yet if honeybees are suffering, native pollinators are suffering too. In a study published in Nature this past April, honeybee populations exposed to field-realistic doses of neonics were not harmed in the short term, but wild-bee density was reduced by half, indicating that they are especially vulnerable. Other studies show that neonics are affecting earthworms, amphibians and a plethora of species at the bottom of the food chain. The chemicals have also shown up in water sources throughout the Midwest, and at levels known to be toxic to aquatic organisms if exposed over an extended time. A 2013 report done by the American Bird Conservancy found that a single neonic corn kernel can kill a songbird.
What harm, if any, they may pose to humans in the long term is unknown. “We don’t have data on neonicotinoids in our bodies because they’re not included in the panel of pesticides that the CDC’s biomonitoring program evaluates,” says Melissa Perry, president of the American College of Epidemiology and chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. “These compounds have come on the market so rapidly that they’ve outstripped scientific readiness.”
Perry’s research team recently completed a review of all the studies published in English globally on the health effects of neonics on humans and found, to its surprise, that there were only seven. Four looked at acute effects — poisonings — and only three at chronic exposure. Of those three, all of them found adverse effects on children. “There were cases of congenital abnormality, associations with suggestion of autism, associations with suggestion of heart defects, birth defects,” says Perry. Nevertheless, she counsels against using three studies to draw any major conclusions. “The status of the literature is so deficient that we know practically nothing,” she says. What we do know is that some neonics have been shown in rodents to cross the placenta, which has raised concerns that if a pregnant woman ingests the toxins, the developing fetus’ brain could be exposed. “I certainly have spent well over 20 years of my career having to play catch-up on the next chemical,” says Perry. “Do we have to allow decades to elapse before we come to the conclusion that this is the wrong decision?” And if it is, will it be too late to repair the damage? Destroy the bottom of the food chain, and what eventually happens at the top?
When Jim Doan got down to Florida, where his wife had taken their 275 hives to wait out the cold New York winter, he surveyed the colonies she had given up for dead and found that some of them could be salvaged. Sure, they were ailing, but there was enough life left in them that he thought he’d give beekeeping one last shot. He made a pact with himself that from that moment, his bees would never return home, that he’d keep them away from neonicotinoid pesticides no matter what. He researched places where he could put them, places away from corn and other major GM crops, places where his bees could roam freely and mainly encounter crops that were neonic-free or organic. He leased some land in Amish country, found some safe havens in Florida. “We’re never going to get 100 percent away from chemicals, because they’re out here. They’re in the water,” Doan says. “But we can at least reduce the amount of susceptibility.” Since making this plan, he says, he has been able to grow his hives up to 1,100 and has not yet experienced a serious die-off.
In 2013, he joined a collection of beekeepers who are suing the EPA, not for money, but for regulation. “When you go to the EPA and talk to them, they say, ‘Well, if you don’t like our decisions, then sue us.’ So you have to sue them,” he says. In questioning the EPA’s conditional registration of the neonic clothianidin, the suit not only alleges that the agency has not met its own criteria for granting approval, but also challenges its approval process overall. Two years in, it’s still in its initial stages of litigation and may not be decided for years.
Meanwhile, plans are being made for a time when perhaps bees won’t be around. Scientists at Harvard have tried to make a robotic bee, while agrochemical companies are trying to develop a GM one, resistant to pesticides in the same way GM crops are meant to be resistant to herbicides. They are also touting the benefits of flupyradifurone, a new systemic pesticide that’s supposed to be safer for bees because it’s even more toxic, the idea being that if it kills a bee on the spot, then that bee won’t transport the toxin back to the hive. But, as Doan sees it, it’s not bees that will go extinct first, it’s commercial beekeepers.
“I didn’t want to be the person that failed three generations of Doans keeping bees. I didn’t want it to end with me,” Doan says. But he knows that he may not have a choice in the matter. “I mean, we want something to pass on, but I’m not sure there’s going to be anything to pass on in another year or two. Just empty boxes.”
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