6 ms·

Beekeeper Who Leaked EPA Documents: "I Don't Think We Can Survive This Winter"

154 points by zoowar 16y ago

Mz 16y ago
Excerpt: Now the stakes are higher than ever. Tom Theobald's honey crop this year is the smallest he's seen in 35 years of beekeeping. "This is the critical winter for the beekeeping industry. I don't think we can survive," he says. "If the beekeeping industry collapses, it jeopardizes a third of American agriculture." That's because the giant agriculture industry couldn't produce nearly as much with native bee pollinators alone; instead, the industry relies on beekeepers, who rent out their bees to pollinate everything from strawberries and blueberries to squash and cucumbers.
- araneae 16y ago
  This is the critical winter for the beekeeping industry. I don't think we can survive. As a beekeeper, this phrase has meaning that might be overlooked by someone who is not one. It may seem obvious, but the most difficult time for bees is during winter; almost all hive deaths occur during the colder months. In a bad winter, some beekeepers will lose up to 75% of their hives. And hives only "reproduce" in summers when they're very strong. If this year is a bad one... they could literally not survive.
  - Mz 16y ago
    It sounded pretty ominous to me even before you chimed in. If agriculture was hurt badly from one year to the next by a sudden bee die-off, it could make concerns about Peak Oil and The Recession look pretty minor in comparison. Thanks for the info.
  - delackner 16y ago
    It sounds like you have some understanding of the way these hives are run. Aren't commercial "hives" stored in boxes with vertically slotted plates that the hive grows on? During winter why not just move the hives into a heated room with plenty of bee-friendly nutrients?
    - araneae 16y ago
      I come at it from a non-commercial perspective; at most I've had two hives at a time. I was mostly speaking from personal experience of winter losses; it's really heartbreaking. Commercial hives are indeed relatively mobile, as they're temporarily stored on trucks to move from field to field. It's possible that it's simply untenable to keep bees indoors on a large scale. Hives that are too close together for long periods of time will attack and raid each other. There simply might not be enclosed spaces large or affordable enough to hold wintering bees. But someone who does commercial bee-keeping could probably give you a much better answer.
mey 16y ago
Original article on the story: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2001067 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2001067
bigmac 16y ago
I grow tomatoes on my fire escape in downtown San Francisco. I had to self-pollinate them with an electric toothbrush. I'm pretty sure this is due to the natural lack of bees in San Francisco, not because of the bee die-off due to this chemical. So my question to the more agriculture knowledgeable HN'ers: how hard would it be to do self-pollination at scale? I imagine the answer is "impossible." Is that too pessimistic?
- barnaby 16y ago
  It's "possible" ... I saw a program about CCD on PBS. There are parts of China where they've killed off all the bees in traditional farming areas. The video showed entire fields of workers holding jars of pollen and taking feather dusters, swathing them in the pollen, then waving them around the flowers. Very labor intensive.
  - cryptoz 16y ago
    That sounds like an excellent use-case for armies of flying nano-bots. Well, what are we waiting for?
    - gloob 16y ago
      Well, first we're waiting for someone to invent flying nanobots. Then we're waiting for someone to successfully convince the public that flying nanobots somehow won't kill us all.
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
    - tb 16y ago
      What is a bee if not a miniature flying pollination machine? :)
    - hyperbovine 16y ago
      Seriously? It's was our faith in mankind's ability to engineer its way out of any mess that gave us this miracle pesticide in the first place. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
julian37 16y ago
I came across this very informative article while googling for the name of the pesticide: http://www.thenhf.com/article.php?id=598 http://www.thenhf.com/article.php?id=598 According to this, issues surrounding bee deaths and clothianidin as well as its predecessor imidacloprid have been known since at least 2003.
pigbucket 16y ago
It makes a good story if you can spin this as a case of EPA ignoring its own scientists as evidenced by a leaked report. But what the report (a public document according to Theobald) actually recommends is not that the pesticide be denied registration, but that it should only be sold with a warning. "EFED [Environmental Fate and Effects Division of the EPA]expects adverse effects to bees if clothianidin is allowed to drift from seed planting equipment. Because of this and the uncertainty surrounding the exposure and potential toxicity through contaminated pollen and nectar, EFED is recommending bee precautionary labeling." Grist, Fast Company, and Wired have all gone with the "Leak Reveals EPA ignoring its own Scientists" story. But that story is nonsense and distracts from the real problem; namely, the fact that the so-called leak actually only recommends precautionary labeling. What really needs to be leaked is the memo that explains why EFED's recommendations are so weak in a case where high toxicity is known to occur.
- Alex3917 16y ago
  The people buying the pesticides aren't the ones bearing the costs of the adverse effects so whether or not there is a warning label is completely irrelevant.
  - pigbucket 16y ago
    I think you're thinking that a bee precautionary label would say something like "Warning: Dangerous to Bees," in which case non-beekeeping farmers might not care. I suspect the label would instead mandate that users apply the product in a prescribed manner in order to minimize drift (one of the known causes of toxicity to bees). Pesticides typically come with fairly detailed instructions for proper use. My point, though, was that mandating such a label, in this case, is still not an adequate response on the part of EFED to the problem.
    - stuaxo 16y ago
      I'm not sure a label mandates much without the stick of stuff penalties behind it - we've seen how well self regulation works before.
davidj 16y ago
well the people who were saying it was the cell phone towers now look very stupid. I think there was even a pseudo-scientific "study" "proving without a doubt" that the cell phones were causing the problem. "They use it to sense the direction of the earth's magnetic field and their ability to do this is compromised by radiation from [cell] phones and their base stations. So basically bees do not find their way back to the hive."

154 points by zoowar 16y ago

Mz 16y ago

Excerpt: Now the stakes are higher than ever. Tom Theobald's honey crop this year is the smallest he's seen in 35 years of beekeeping. "This is the critical winter for the beekeeping industry. I don't think we can survive," he says. "If the beekeeping industry collapses, it jeopardizes a third of American agriculture." That's because the giant agriculture industry couldn't produce nearly as much with native bee pollinators alone; instead, the industry relies on beekeepers, who rent out their bees to pollinate everything from strawberries and blueberries to squash and cucumbers.

araneae 16y ago
This is the critical winter for the beekeeping industry. I don't think we can survive. As a beekeeper, this phrase has meaning that might be overlooked by someone who is not one. It may seem obvious, but the most difficult time for bees is during winter; almost all hive deaths occur during the colder months. In a bad winter, some beekeepers will lose up to 75% of their hives. And hives only "reproduce" in summers when they're very strong. If this year is a bad one... they could literally not survive.
- Mz 16y ago
  It sounded pretty ominous to me even before you chimed in. If agriculture was hurt badly from one year to the next by a sudden bee die-off, it could make concerns about Peak Oil and The Recession look pretty minor in comparison. Thanks for the info.
- delackner 16y ago
  It sounds like you have some understanding of the way these hives are run. Aren't commercial "hives" stored in boxes with vertically slotted plates that the hive grows on? During winter why not just move the hives into a heated room with plenty of bee-friendly nutrients?
  - araneae 16y ago
    I come at it from a non-commercial perspective; at most I've had two hives at a time. I was mostly speaking from personal experience of winter losses; it's really heartbreaking. Commercial hives are indeed relatively mobile, as they're temporarily stored on trucks to move from field to field. It's possible that it's simply untenable to keep bees indoors on a large scale. Hives that are too close together for long periods of time will attack and raid each other. There simply might not be enclosed spaces large or affordable enough to hold wintering bees. But someone who does commercial bee-keeping could probably give you a much better answer.

mey 16y ago

Original article on the story: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2001067 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2001067

bigmac 16y ago

I grow tomatoes on my fire escape in downtown San Francisco. I had to self-pollinate them with an electric toothbrush. I'm pretty sure this is due to the natural lack of bees in San Francisco, not because of the bee die-off due to this chemical. So my question to the more agriculture knowledgeable HN'ers: how hard would it be to do self-pollination at scale? I imagine the answer is "impossible." Is that too pessimistic?

barnaby 16y ago
It's "possible" ... I saw a program about CCD on PBS. There are parts of China where they've killed off all the bees in traditional farming areas. The video showed entire fields of workers holding jars of pollen and taking feather dusters, swathing them in the pollen, then waving them around the flowers. Very labor intensive.
- cryptoz 16y ago
  That sounds like an excellent use-case for armies of flying nano-bots. Well, what are we waiting for?
  - gloob 16y ago
    Well, first we're waiting for someone to invent flying nanobots. Then we're waiting for someone to successfully convince the public that flying nanobots somehow won't kill us all.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - tb 16y ago
    What is a bee if not a miniature flying pollination machine? :)
  - hyperbovine 16y ago
    Seriously? It's was our faith in mankind's ability to engineer its way out of any mess that gave us this miracle pesticide in the first place. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

julian37 16y ago

I came across this very informative article while googling for the name of the pesticide: http://www.thenhf.com/article.php?id=598 http://www.thenhf.com/article.php?id=598 According to this, issues surrounding bee deaths and clothianidin as well as its predecessor imidacloprid have been known since at least 2003.

pigbucket 16y ago

It makes a good story if you can spin this as a case of EPA ignoring its own scientists as evidenced by a leaked report. But what the report (a public document according to Theobald) actually recommends is not that the pesticide be denied registration, but that it should only be sold with a warning. "EFED [Environmental Fate and Effects Division of the EPA]expects adverse effects to bees if clothianidin is allowed to drift from seed planting equipment. Because of this and the uncertainty surrounding the exposure and potential toxicity through contaminated pollen and nectar, EFED is recommending bee precautionary labeling." Grist, Fast Company, and Wired have all gone with the "Leak Reveals EPA ignoring its own Scientists" story. But that story is nonsense and distracts from the real problem; namely, the fact that the so-called leak actually only recommends precautionary labeling. What really needs to be leaked is the memo that explains why EFED's recommendations are so weak in a case where high toxicity is known to occur.

Alex3917 16y ago
The people buying the pesticides aren't the ones bearing the costs of the adverse effects so whether or not there is a warning label is completely irrelevant.
- pigbucket 16y ago
  I think you're thinking that a bee precautionary label would say something like "Warning: Dangerous to Bees," in which case non-beekeeping farmers might not care. I suspect the label would instead mandate that users apply the product in a prescribed manner in order to minimize drift (one of the known causes of toxicity to bees). Pesticides typically come with fairly detailed instructions for proper use. My point, though, was that mandating such a label, in this case, is still not an adequate response on the part of EFED to the problem.
  - stuaxo 16y ago
    I'm not sure a label mandates much without the stick of stuff penalties behind it - we've seen how well self regulation works before.

davidj 16y ago

well the people who were saying it was the cell phone towers now look very stupid. I think there was even a pseudo-scientific "study" "proving without a doubt" that the cell phones were causing the problem. "They use it to sense the direction of the earth's magnetic field and their ability to do this is compromised by radiation from [cell] phones and their base stations. So basically bees do not find their way back to the hive."