Colony Collapse Disorder
A strange noise drove me through every room of our new apartment as I tried to isolate the source of the sound. New spaces surprise us in the strangest ways and not always unpleasantly. In this apartment we have already learned that the tangerine trees just outside the bedroom perfume the air through the open windows and that mail is delivered twice a day. Some unexplained noises are to be expected in a new home; anyone who's just moved into a haunted house in a potboiler knows that. This noise sounded like the muted turns of a dentist’s drill, faint but insistent, staccato and arrhythmic. But where was it, and what was it?
It was spring and every window was open to admit the perfume of tangerines and lemon blossoms. I have often written of my firm belief in the cleansing powers of a fresh breeze. It is a belief I inherited from my grandmother. From her I also inherited reverence for nature. And that breeze and that reverence led me to that buzzing noise, which revealed itself to be a bee that had gotten in through a hole in the bathroom screen. It was lying on the floor tiles of an Art Deco bathroom I am excited to take on as a decorating project. It was buzzing as it wore itself out flapping its wings trying to get airborne.
I tried to help it fly but the bee was clearly exhausted and weak. The only kind thing to do for that poor bee was to extinguish it and return it to the earth. That I did, in the patch of bromeliads that grow in preponderance around the patio. As I went about my afternoon, I did my best to put that dying bee out of my mind. There was laundry to sort, newspapers to go through, columns to write. Then, that evening, it so happened that on the evening news they broadcasted a story about colony collapse disorder. I have no idea if that little bee was a victim of it, but in that little bee's memory, and in stewardship of both these participants crucial to the ecosystem and of the ecosystem itself, I decided to learn about colony collapse disorder, including what I as a citizen could do about it.
Colony Collapse Disorder is a term used to refer to the dramatic rise in the mortality of bee colonies. Bee colonies, which you and I know as hives, are perfectly evolved and organized societies that can function in perpetuity if conditions allow. The citizens of a bee colony are a queen, who provides reproduction to maintain the colony population; drones, who reproduce with the queen; and workers, who maintain the colony both within and without. The job of some workers is to leave the colony to gather food for the colony and to return to the colony with the food. Worker bees gather food by pollinating plants. If the food-gathering worker bees fail to return to the colony, then the colony cannot compensate for the absence of nutrition. The colony “collapses” – meaning that all of its inhabitants perish.
In contemporary colony collapse disorder, the workers never make it back to the colony, or if they do, the food they are delivering is low-grade or toxic. Colony collapse disorder has been in the news for nearly a decade, when reports started surfacing about bee colonies dying out in North America and Europe. It should be noted that instances of widespread bee colony distress or death are recorded in North America as early as 1869. Though from a scientific and sociological point of view bee colonies are models of collective living, they are not invulnerable to outside influences, including devastating ones. These include fungi, parasites, viruses, even inclement weather. Any or all of these factors may have contributed to historic occurrences of colony collapse.
Likewise, any or all of these factors may contribute to contemporary colony collapse disorder, but unfortunately, in all likelihood the primary culprit in contemporary colony collapse disorder is poison. It is widely believed that pesticides play the singular most significant role in contemporary colony collapse disorder. As reported as recently as this spring, numerous independent studies have concluded that bee colony deaths have tracked the use of neonicotinoid pesticides. Neonicotinoids are a fairly new class of insecticides modeled after the toxic effects of nicotine, the naturally occurring substance in many plants of the nightshade family, most famously tobacco. As any medical doctor, ex-smoker, or rose gardener can confirm, nicotine is a highly toxic substance.
Though nicotine itself has a long history as a natural insecticide, neonicotinoids are relatively new chemically synthesized compounds that replicate and supersede many of nicotine’s toxic effects. Numerous peer-reviewed studies conclude that neonicotinoid pesticides leave levels of toxicity in soils and irrigation channels as well as in plants themselves. Plants that absorb the toxins express the toxins through pollen and nectar. Bees that pollinate those plants absorb those toxins. The toxins may even become airborne, traveling on dust particles or, most cruelly, on and in the bodies of the bees themselves.
In January of this year, the European Food Safety Authority issued a position statement regarding neonicotinoids. The Authority concluded that neonicotinoids pose an unacceptably high risk, citing bees in the statement, and questioned whether pesticide industry-sponsored studies upon which industry claims of safety are based are scientifically defensible or admissible. On April 29 of this year, the EFSA passed a strongly worded two-year ban on neonicotinoids, based on the evidence of the insecticide’s role in colony collapse disorder.
The United States has not yet banned the use of neonicotinoids, though numerous groups are petitioning for the ban. The American Bird Conservancy, expressing concern for several species, has called for a ban on neonicotinoid use due to its toxicity as it travels through soil and water to food sources to birds, aquatic invertebrates, and other wildlife. The EPA is being sued by conservation and agricultural advocates for failing to impose an emergency ban on neonicotinoids. In part, the EPA has based its decision not to enact an emergency ban on those same pesticide-industry sponsored studies that the European Union dismissed as questionable and potentially compromised.
Bees perform a vital role in the food chain by pollinating crops. It may be tempting to dismiss that fact by rationalizing that many insects can and do pollinate crops, but no insect does the task as efficiently or for that matter as commonly as bees do. It is not an exaggeration to state that humans rely on bees to pollinate our crops. That’s important, because with the human population explosion, there are a lot of acres of food to pollinate. As population grows, the need for food responds exponentially. The more food that is necessary, the more acres of it have to be planted and maintained. Bee husbandry is a vital agricultural practice. Bee colonies are routinely supplied to agricultural sites worldwide so that the bees to help the crops grow. But if worker bees cannot travel freely to pollinate and reliably return to their colonies, even the most dedicated beekeepers cannot save the colonies.
As a member of the natural world and an advocate for it, I believe it is my obligation to learn about the ecosystem and then act as a steward for it. I understand that insects give people a start. I like bugs, but even I jump when I happen upon a creepy-crawlie. Still, insects are admirable. They are the most abundant animal class on earth, accounting for at least 50 percent and perhaps up to 75 percent of all animal life. Science still hasn’t completed the count, but over one million different insect species are known and there could be as many as ten million species of insect. Insects are among the most flawlessly evolved of living beings (another such is fungi). It is believed that insects have survived longer than any other known terrestrial class of organism.
Those facts should sober up all of us humans, for they mean that we alone have found the power to destroy at least one species outside of our own whose evolution, from form to function, from adaptation to survival, has commanded nature’s own respect for eons, and to do so at considerable harm to our own species. Individually and collectively, we do not have the right to eradicate an entire class of living organisms or even to be indifferent to the eradication. To do so is arrogant, cruel and unforgivable. In fact, learning about living individually and collectively is one of the lessons insects teach us, none more so than the industrious, socially evolved bee. If common sense doesn’t don’t win the argument for bee conservation, then common decency and mutual respect should.
Learn more and take action
Greenpeace
Natural Resources Defense Council
Bumblebee Conservation Trust
The Xerces Society
Scientific American
Environmental Protection Agency, Honey Bee Health Investigation and Report
Environmental Protection Agency, Office of the Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency, Congressional Influencers
Find your Senator
Find your Representative
change.org
It was spring and every window was open to admit the perfume of tangerines and lemon blossoms. I have often written of my firm belief in the cleansing powers of a fresh breeze. It is a belief I inherited from my grandmother. From her I also inherited reverence for nature. And that breeze and that reverence led me to that buzzing noise, which revealed itself to be a bee that had gotten in through a hole in the bathroom screen. It was lying on the floor tiles of an Art Deco bathroom I am excited to take on as a decorating project. It was buzzing as it wore itself out flapping its wings trying to get airborne.
I tried to help it fly but the bee was clearly exhausted and weak. The only kind thing to do for that poor bee was to extinguish it and return it to the earth. That I did, in the patch of bromeliads that grow in preponderance around the patio. As I went about my afternoon, I did my best to put that dying bee out of my mind. There was laundry to sort, newspapers to go through, columns to write. Then, that evening, it so happened that on the evening news they broadcasted a story about colony collapse disorder. I have no idea if that little bee was a victim of it, but in that little bee's memory, and in stewardship of both these participants crucial to the ecosystem and of the ecosystem itself, I decided to learn about colony collapse disorder, including what I as a citizen could do about it.
Colony Collapse Disorder is a term used to refer to the dramatic rise in the mortality of bee colonies. Bee colonies, which you and I know as hives, are perfectly evolved and organized societies that can function in perpetuity if conditions allow. The citizens of a bee colony are a queen, who provides reproduction to maintain the colony population; drones, who reproduce with the queen; and workers, who maintain the colony both within and without. The job of some workers is to leave the colony to gather food for the colony and to return to the colony with the food. Worker bees gather food by pollinating plants. If the food-gathering worker bees fail to return to the colony, then the colony cannot compensate for the absence of nutrition. The colony “collapses” – meaning that all of its inhabitants perish.
In contemporary colony collapse disorder, the workers never make it back to the colony, or if they do, the food they are delivering is low-grade or toxic. Colony collapse disorder has been in the news for nearly a decade, when reports started surfacing about bee colonies dying out in North America and Europe. It should be noted that instances of widespread bee colony distress or death are recorded in North America as early as 1869. Though from a scientific and sociological point of view bee colonies are models of collective living, they are not invulnerable to outside influences, including devastating ones. These include fungi, parasites, viruses, even inclement weather. Any or all of these factors may have contributed to historic occurrences of colony collapse.
Likewise, any or all of these factors may contribute to contemporary colony collapse disorder, but unfortunately, in all likelihood the primary culprit in contemporary colony collapse disorder is poison. It is widely believed that pesticides play the singular most significant role in contemporary colony collapse disorder. As reported as recently as this spring, numerous independent studies have concluded that bee colony deaths have tracked the use of neonicotinoid pesticides. Neonicotinoids are a fairly new class of insecticides modeled after the toxic effects of nicotine, the naturally occurring substance in many plants of the nightshade family, most famously tobacco. As any medical doctor, ex-smoker, or rose gardener can confirm, nicotine is a highly toxic substance.
Though nicotine itself has a long history as a natural insecticide, neonicotinoids are relatively new chemically synthesized compounds that replicate and supersede many of nicotine’s toxic effects. Numerous peer-reviewed studies conclude that neonicotinoid pesticides leave levels of toxicity in soils and irrigation channels as well as in plants themselves. Plants that absorb the toxins express the toxins through pollen and nectar. Bees that pollinate those plants absorb those toxins. The toxins may even become airborne, traveling on dust particles or, most cruelly, on and in the bodies of the bees themselves.
In January of this year, the European Food Safety Authority issued a position statement regarding neonicotinoids. The Authority concluded that neonicotinoids pose an unacceptably high risk, citing bees in the statement, and questioned whether pesticide industry-sponsored studies upon which industry claims of safety are based are scientifically defensible or admissible. On April 29 of this year, the EFSA passed a strongly worded two-year ban on neonicotinoids, based on the evidence of the insecticide’s role in colony collapse disorder.
The United States has not yet banned the use of neonicotinoids, though numerous groups are petitioning for the ban. The American Bird Conservancy, expressing concern for several species, has called for a ban on neonicotinoid use due to its toxicity as it travels through soil and water to food sources to birds, aquatic invertebrates, and other wildlife. The EPA is being sued by conservation and agricultural advocates for failing to impose an emergency ban on neonicotinoids. In part, the EPA has based its decision not to enact an emergency ban on those same pesticide-industry sponsored studies that the European Union dismissed as questionable and potentially compromised.
Bees perform a vital role in the food chain by pollinating crops. It may be tempting to dismiss that fact by rationalizing that many insects can and do pollinate crops, but no insect does the task as efficiently or for that matter as commonly as bees do. It is not an exaggeration to state that humans rely on bees to pollinate our crops. That’s important, because with the human population explosion, there are a lot of acres of food to pollinate. As population grows, the need for food responds exponentially. The more food that is necessary, the more acres of it have to be planted and maintained. Bee husbandry is a vital agricultural practice. Bee colonies are routinely supplied to agricultural sites worldwide so that the bees to help the crops grow. But if worker bees cannot travel freely to pollinate and reliably return to their colonies, even the most dedicated beekeepers cannot save the colonies.
As a member of the natural world and an advocate for it, I believe it is my obligation to learn about the ecosystem and then act as a steward for it. I understand that insects give people a start. I like bugs, but even I jump when I happen upon a creepy-crawlie. Still, insects are admirable. They are the most abundant animal class on earth, accounting for at least 50 percent and perhaps up to 75 percent of all animal life. Science still hasn’t completed the count, but over one million different insect species are known and there could be as many as ten million species of insect. Insects are among the most flawlessly evolved of living beings (another such is fungi). It is believed that insects have survived longer than any other known terrestrial class of organism.
Those facts should sober up all of us humans, for they mean that we alone have found the power to destroy at least one species outside of our own whose evolution, from form to function, from adaptation to survival, has commanded nature’s own respect for eons, and to do so at considerable harm to our own species. Individually and collectively, we do not have the right to eradicate an entire class of living organisms or even to be indifferent to the eradication. To do so is arrogant, cruel and unforgivable. In fact, learning about living individually and collectively is one of the lessons insects teach us, none more so than the industrious, socially evolved bee. If common sense doesn’t don’t win the argument for bee conservation, then common decency and mutual respect should.
Learn more and take action
Greenpeace
Natural Resources Defense Council
Bumblebee Conservation Trust
The Xerces Society
Scientific American
Environmental Protection Agency, Honey Bee Health Investigation and Report
Environmental Protection Agency, Office of the Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency, Congressional Influencers
Find your Senator
Find your Representative
change.org
Comments
Post a Comment