About time I got this blog going again as the bees are still dying and we’ve still not be able to finger the pesticide companies.
Some slightly encouraging news today from the British BeeKeepers’ Association that is has finally decided to ditch its endorsement of pesticide products five years after its secretive deal came to light.
But the statement it has put out to local associations makes it clear that it has no intention of severing links with the manufacturers of pesticides that are highly toxic to bees and whose sub-lethal effects on honeybees have yet to be measured. In fact the relationship may become even closer as BBKA president, Martin Smith, says:
“It is time to broaden the range of engagement with the crop protection industry beyond the narrow focus of endorsing certain products; rather to contribute more directly to the development of new regulatory criteria for pesticide approval and to further support the industry in the general move to improve countryside stewardship.”
Particularly shocking is the language that the BBKA is now using to describe the pesticide industry. It has adopted the industry’s own terminology, referring to it as the “crop protection” industry and “crop protection” companies and its lobby group calls itself the Crop Protection Association.
Phil Chandler who has continually campaigned against the BBKA’s endorsement policy is critical of the organisation for never speaking out against the pesticide industry when their products have been implicated in the killing of millions of bee worldwide.
“My interest in this is a strong personal belief that a charity constituted to protect the interests of bees should not accept money from corporations whose commercial interests include the sale of extremely toxic insecticides, proven to be lethal to bees, on the grounds that such transactions will inevitably influence BBKA policies and actions.”
David Ramsden, a member of Twickenham and Thames Valley Beekeepers’ Association, who has been at the forefront of challenging the BBKA policy. He got a motion against the policy put on the agenda at the BBKA annual delegates meeting earlier this year. He says:
“The policy of endorsement has diminished the BBKA. It has robbed of transparency of purpose. Until it is stopped, the motives of any action or pronouncement the BBKA makes on the topic of pesticides will be open to cynicism. Is this a position that any national organization should find itself in?”
In response to today’s statement Chandeler says:
“Far from distancing themselves from these corporations, they appear to be ever more willing to embrace them (and their vocabulary) and thus further compromise their ability to speak freely about the dangers to bees from agricultural pesticides.
For me, the ethical considerations trump everything. For an organisation purporting to be working in the interests of bees to publicly walk hand in hand with the manufacturers of the very substances that are killing bees, other insects, birds and ultimately entire food chains, as well as endangering public health, while failing in any way to support the organic movement, is utterly anathema. “
He has a number of suggested actions:
(a) Request the BBKA sever all financial ties with corporations that have any interest in the manufacture or sale of insecticides or other agricultural chemicals known to be toxic to bees
(b) Request that the BBKA give explicit support for the Soil Association and the organic movement in general for their efforts in creating more habitat for bees and other pollinators.
(c) Request complete electoral reform in the BBKA, requiring all such matters to be openly debated, publicly reported on and voted on by all members.
What do you think?
Hi Alison:
You start the blog by stating that bees are still dying. I presume you mean that bees are still in decline.
As Bob Dylan once said, ‘he not busy being born is busy dying’
But are bees in decline? I’m not so sure.
I presume you are not referring to the UK as apparently colony numbers have increased from 40,000 to 120,000 in 30 months?
That comes from two recent bbka press releases.
Or do you think they have just made this up?
Where do your own figures come from?
Either way, I think it is a step forward that direct endorsement of pesticides has stopped as the issue was so divisive.
http://www.britishbee.org.uk/news/bm…rvey-09-10.pdf
http://www.britishbee.org.uk/news/cu…nnounced.shtml
Yes, I meant generally.
Figures from the US earlier this year were still showing a third of honeybees not making it through the winter. And the BBKA’s own survey for the 2009/10 winter showed that while the rate of bee mortality had declined, it was still close on one in five hives that had perished. A few years ago one in ten was a more common rate.
The number of colonies has increased because nearly double the number of people are now keeping bees. The BBKA reports that its membership has risen by nearly 100% in 3 years to around 20,000. This rise in partially attributable to people wanting to help bees because they have read or heard about their decline in many parts of the world.
My bka has just about doubled its membership in the last couple of years as well.
That can only be a good thing although it puts a strain on the proper training of new beekeepers.
As I see it there are two principal bee related issues with regard to pesticides.
(a) Is the bbka sponsorship ethical or even sensible
(b) Are pesticides, specificially neonicotinoid pesticides, involved in bee decline in general and CCD in particular.
With regard to the first point, I think the bbka has shot itself in the foot as the issue is so divisive, although dialogue with the pesticide/crop protection industry is surely essential with regard to minimising damage to bees. It is hardly rocket science to note that insecticides kill insects, so unless we are going to move to a utopian agricultural system which can maintain current yields without chemical input, the dialogue is the least worst option. Incidents such as the bee poisoning in Germany in 2008 were due to misapplication of seed dressing which only emphasises the need for dialogue. Could the bbka not work with some of the organizations promoting organic agriculture as well?
The second point is even more contentious. Reading some of the bee related internet fora you would imagine that the culpability of neonicotinoid pesticides was an open and shut case. That could not be further from the truth. The vast majority of recent published research has failed to link neonicotinoids to ccd or has pointed the finger at other suspects. Two recent papers by Dennis vanEngelsdorp and Jerry Bromenshenk are probably the best current examples. Engelsdorp noted that the highest levels of chemical residue in US bee colonies were the chemicals put there by beekeepers as part of varroa control and Bromenshenk isolated a new virus which was present in 100% of the ccd samples he studied.
Those ignoring this type of research tend to accuse the international research community of being in the pocket of Bayer and its ilk. This is exactly what has happened - classic conspiracy theory. Instead of taking this research seriously, the anti pesticide campaigners have turned to eccentrics such as retired climate change denier Hendrick Tennekes who has not published any peer reviewed work for a long long time. Surely an uneasy bedfellow of the Natural Beekeeping movement.
I can’t help feeling that in the long term interest of honeybees the best approach would be to keep an open mind on the cause of ccd rather than assuming it has got to be neonicotinoid pesticides and twisting the evidence to fit that preconceived idea.
Bromenshenk paper
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0013181
Engelsdorp paper
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009754
This issue goes way beyond honeybees and encompasses all bee species, all other insect species and the birds, mammals and other creatures that ultimately depend on insects for their food.
New evidence is coming to light that the neonicotinoid family of insecticides is far more toxic and far more persistent than Bayer pretend, and that the long-terms effects of using these chemicals in sprays and as systemics could be utterly devastating.
The apparent number of honeybee colonies in Britain is NOT a reliable indicator of overall honeybee health, as many of those colonies will have been created from imported queens and may not even survive their first winter. This sudden growth is due to beekeeping becoming ‘fashionable’ again after a long period of decline, and I suspect many people who started this year will have dropped out by this time in 2011, after their gentle, imported queens have been superseded and replaced by locally-mated, bad-tempered mongrels.
And don’t be fooled by the BBKA claiming to be dropping their endorsement of pesticides: if you read their recent Strategic Review, it is very clear that they have no intention of severing their ties with the pesticide manufacturers - they explicitly leave the way open to further develop their relationship with these corporate criminals, and do not preclude endorsing other, similar products in the future.
BBKA members really need to pay closer attention to what is going on in their organization.
I recently interviewed Dr Bernie Doeser, who has published a report that shows the extent of the lies that the BBKA has been telling its members over the last 10 years. The interview is available as a podcast here - http://tinyurl.com/35sen6k
Just to correct the above.
It seems there are two Hendrick Tennekes and the one I quoted above is the wrong one so I would be obliged if you could remove the reference to him. Thanks.
http://www.toxicology.nl/_mgxroot/page_cv_education.html
http://www.desmogblog.com/hendrik-tennekes