A Letter and Membership Request From PSC President Steve Ellis
Recent headlines have raised the hope that the “bee problem” is behind us in the United States because the number of managed honey bees appears to have stabilized or even increased in recent years. Numbers reported by the USDA show a record high number of 3.8 million honey bee colonies in the 2022 Ag Census. Considering the enormity of the stakes, $30 billion of value from pollinator contribution to agricultural production in this country, the answer to this question is of critical importance to us all; beekeepers, growers, and consumers.
It has been almost 20 years since beekeeper David Hackenberg first reported the unusual disappearance of bees from his apiary and a new term entered the public lexicon “CCD.” Since Dave is a migratory beekeeper engaged in pollinating numerous crops, he sent a questionnaire out to all his farmer connections asking if anything different was used for crop protection. The growers reply came back, “Yes, a new class of insecticide had come into promotion and use: neonicotinoids.” Dave made the connection right then, one which took the rest of us, including the research community a little longer to make.
What the French beekeepers appropriately named “Mad Bee Disease”, we named CCD. Both amounted to symptoms of the same malady, namely neonicotinoid poisoning. Bee injury from pesticides has long been understood to take one of two routes: Type 1 (acute), quickly killed out in the field by contact with the poison, or Type 2 (chronic), slowly killed or greatly diminished when the poison is carried back into the hive. One result of hives succumbing to the internal hive poisoning is the toxin remaining in the beeswax comb and having the potential to poison again when the “dead out’ equipment is placed back into use.
USDA response came in 2013 to the widespread, mysterious losses being suffered by US beekeepers in the form of Emergency Livestock Assistance Program (ELAP). Beekeepers who suffered excessive losses, greater than 20% could qualify for payment if they demonstrated CCD symptoms. Bees killed by pesticide poisoning did not qualify, and larger beekeepers were ineligible to participate. This imperfect government program attempted to financially prop up a troubled industry, but in reality obfuscated the root cause of the massive losses: pesticides.
Today, as a commercial beekeeper who moves his hives through heavily managed row crops and orchards for a large portion of the year, my exposure to large amounts of type 2 poisonings from insecticides, fungicides, insect growth regulators (IGRs) and genetically engineered pesticides means that I will have to constantly replace dead hives throughout the year.Basic management requires me to make extra colonies up in the spring in anticipation of the losses which will follow me through the spring, summer and fall seasons. Even with this extra effort, I must still accept the reality that 1/3-1/2 of my bees at any given time are performing in a diminished capacity. The larger number which I create in early summer is temporary, yet it is the number that is reported to USDA through voluntary reporting to the National Agricultural Statistic Service (NASS). Similar voluntary self-reported numbers are given by beekeepers to the Bee Informed Partnership (BIP). Beekeepers like myself who are exposed to significant amounts of type 2 poisons, must if we are to survive “over build” our numbers since we have learned that “excessive mortality” is the “new normal.”
So, do maximum live numbers of managed honey bees, voluntarily self-reported by beekeepers represent a consistent metric over the years? Clearly they do not. Prior to CCD, beekeepers lost on average 5-15% of their bees over the course of one season. Today, the losses range from 5-90%, averaging 48%! It is also important to note that for beekeepers like me, who operate in and around chemical intensive agriculture the numbers reported today include 30-50% “zombie” bees (bees which are not acting or growing normally, and therefore aren't healthy hives). Beekeepers with heavy type 2 poisoning exposures have had to employ extraordinary measures to continue to operate. It is critically important to note that native pollinators don’t receive special help and so suffer greater numerical losses as evidenced by the listing of bee species, including the rusty patched bumble bee, and the seven species of Hawaiian bees, and the application for endangered species listing of other pollinators including icons like the Monarch butterfly.
The Pollinator Stewardship Council believes honey bees should be seen as a canary in the coal mine, warning us that change is necessary. Payments to beekeepers from USDA have softened the financial injuries, but the fact is that pollinators will not be returned to health in the United States until all of us together--farmers, beekeepers and consumers--insist on reforming the deeply flawed US pesticide regulatory system which has created this crisis.
Without your support, the Pollinator Stewardship Council wouldn’t be able to live by our mission to protect pollinators from the adverse effects of pesticides. This August, we’re asking for donations to fund our work– like researching and writing action letters to the EPA, funding research through our Scientific Advisory Panel, and allowing our expert board members to educate advocates across the U.S. about the mass death pollinators are facing from pesticides. This month, we’re hoping to raise $10,000 to support our efforts– can you chip in to help us protect pollinators?
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