[Pollinator] Fwd: [New post] Honeybees and Corn 2016

Mon Sep 12 10:10:48 PDT 2016

Very good.  Let's consider a little detective work.  "Neonics" are most
likely to harm those honeybees collecting pollen produced by systemically
treated corn seeds, right?  Why would honeybees visit male flowers of a
wind-pollinated plant in which grains are packed with starch instead of
amino acids and lipids?  The usual answer, based on a long history of
literature, is that honeybees only visit corn tassels when there's little
else on which to forage.  Townsend's bees had a "good year" in which forage
plants were plenty and the workers did not have to seek out what
anthropologists call "famine foods" when studying human populations. That's
why can't always predict success of failure in a multi-factorial system in
agriculture (like bee-keeping) restricted to one site and season.

Peter

On Sat, Sep 10, 2016 at 1:28 AM, Kit Prendergast <kitprendergast21 at gmail.com
> wrote:

> I fully support Stephanie's conclusion and could hardly have put it better
> myself. One needs to actually measure bee keeper practices ( and one has to
> ask how reliable are self-reports? How consistent are the behaviour of
> beekeepers across seasons?), pesticide exposure, pathogen exposure,
> climatic variables, foraging resources available in the environment (pollen
> and nectar resource abundance, and their distribution across the
> landscape), perhaps even competition between different bee populations
> (managed, wild, and native), or predators, to parse out the effects of
> various factors that might contribute to honeybee health. What has been
> recently shown in both lab and field studies is that pesticides do
> negatively affect honeybee survival and foraging ability at concentrations
> experienced in nature. It is also consistently shown that loss of flowering
> plants has a negative effect on pollinators, including on pollinator
> health. Pesticides also can stress bees, interacting with other stressors
> like nutritional limitations, adverse weather, and pathogens.
> Given that pesticides are known to affect other pollinators and insects,
> it is parsimonious to conclude that honeybees are also affected, whereas
> anecdotal reports of bad beekeeper management based on single examples that
> do not stand up to scientific rigour (replication, controls etc.) cannot be
> considered to be reliable.
> Regards
>
> On 10 September 2016 at 05:42, Stephanie Parreira <
> parreirastephanie at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This is a highly over-simplified opinion about the neonicotinoid problem.
>> I would have further questions for the above person, such as, are there
>> weather differences between the region where the colonies died and the
>> place your colonies are (windy conditions can blow neonic-laden dust into
>> colonies and onto foraging bees, so if one place is windier than the other,
>> bee exposure and response may be different)? Is the area of planted corn
>> significantly different from the area of corn in Ontario (more corn planted
>> = more potential exposure to neonics and less alternative forage)?
>>
>> Anecdotal evidence will do no one any good, whether that anecdotal
>> evidence argues against neonicotinoid use or for it. We should take things
>> like this with a grain of salt and understand that there are many factors
>> at play that may increase the potential of pesticides to severely affect
>> honey bee colonies.  I am not saying that beekeeper practices cannot be
>> improved to increase colony survival, but to blame beekeeping practices
>> without any comparison or contrast between beekeeping practices, landscape
>> and foraging environment, and pesticide exposure (in-hive or forager
>> residues), it is irresponsible to jump to this conclusion.
>>
>> (Furthermore, even if neonicotinoids are not the issue for honey bee
>> colonies specifically, we should still be concerned about their many
>> detrimental effects on native bee populations, which have been demonstrated
>> in the scientific literature time and time again.)
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 7:24 AM, Laurie Adams <lda at pollinator.org> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>> From: John Purdy <johnrpurdy at gmail.com>
>>> Date: Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 6:59 AM
>>> Subject: Fwd: [New post] Honeybees and Corn 2016
>>> To: Laurie Adams <LDA at pollinator.org>
>>>
>>>
>>> Here is an important observation from a beekeeper in western Canada.  It
>>> helps to build confidence in what I found in my recent bee health study.
>>> perhaps it is worth posting. (a section is a mile square or 640 acres)
>>>
>>> John
>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>> From: Alberta Buzzing <donotreply at wordpress.com>
>>> Date: Sun, Sep 4, 2016 at 10:40 PM
>>> Subject: [New post] Honeybees and Corn 2016
>>> To: johnrpurdy at gmail.com
>>>
>>>
>>> Lee Townsend posted: "I had a yard of 40 hives on a quarter section of
>>> treated corn this year, and it is interesting as I am not seeing any of the
>>> effects on the bees that groups like the Ontario Beekeepers Association
>>> claims to take place in this situation.  My bees are of th"
>>>
>>> New post on *Alberta Buzzing*
>>> <http://albertabuzzing.com/?author=1> Honeybees and Corn 2016
>>> <http://albertabuzzing.com/2016/09/honeybees-and-corn-2016/> by Lee
>>> Townsend <http://albertabuzzing.com/?author=1>
>>>
>>> I had a yard of 40 hives on a quarter section of treated corn this year,
>>> and it is interesting as I am not seeing any of the effects on the bees
>>> that groups like the Ontario Beekeepers Association claims to take place in
>>> this situation.  My bees are of the same species that are in Ontario, the
>>> corn is treated the same way as it is in Ontario, and the planting was done
>>> the same as in Ontario.
>>>
>>> Leads me to think the problem is not neonics, but beekeeper management.
>>> It is truly unfortunate that the Ontario Beekeepers Association and groups
>>> like it refuse to admit what exactly they are doing with their colonies,
>>> with proof to back up their claims.
>>>
>>>
>>> *Lee Townsend <http://albertabuzzing.com/?author=1>* | September 4,
>>> 2016 at 8:40 pm | URL: http://wp.me/p5JjBC-1X
>>>
>>> Comment
>>> <http://albertabuzzing.com/2016/09/honeybees-and-corn-2016/#respond>    See
>>> all comments
>>> <http://albertabuzzing.com/2016/09/honeybees-and-corn-2016/#comments>
>>>
>>> Unsubscribe
>>> <https://subscribe.wordpress.com/?key=35f57e0e57060a1db5cc61fc6e4f72d2&email=johnrpurdy%40gmail.com&b=0%2FYAnRWivfMj8xGg%3FZUoXl%7CtX_MnYYjlOMgcuNT%3D%25V_sk1AWcy>
>>> to no longer receive posts from Alberta Buzzing.
>>> Change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions
>>> <https://subscribe.wordpress.com/?key=35f57e0e57060a1db5cc61fc6e4f72d2&email=johnrpurdy%40gmail.com>.
>>>
>>>
>>> *Trouble clicking?* Copy and paste this URL into your browser:
>>> http://albertabuzzing.com/2016/09/honeybees-and-corn-2016/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> John Purdy PhD
>>> Environmental Scientist
>>> Abacus Consulting Services Ltd
>>>
>>> This message including any attachments is confidential to Abacus
>>> Consulting Services Limited.  Any other recipient must destroy the message
>>> and immediately notify the sender.
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Pollinator mailing list
>>> Pollinator at lists.sonic.net
>>> https://lists.sonic.net/mailman/listinfo/pollinator
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Pollinator mailing list
>> Pollinator at lists.sonic.net
>> https://lists.sonic.net/mailman/listinfo/pollinator
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Pollinator mailing list
> Pollinator at lists.sonic.net
> https://lists.sonic.net/mailman/listinfo/pollinator
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sonic.net/pipermail/pollinator/attachments/20160912/8cd75cb3/attachment.html>