Beekeepers, scientists, farmers and environmentalists have been alarmed by a huge spike in the number of dead bee colonies since 2006. "Colony collapse disorder," happens when worker bees leave the hive to collect nectar and don't come back. No worker bees, no food for the hive, no hive. Opinions have been leveled that this was being caused by some parasite or a fungus or a virus or climate change, that bees might become extinct.
Bee pollination is the base of our food chain. Bees pollinate all the fruit and almost all the vegetables we eat as well as the fodder we feed our cattle, chickens, pigs and other animals. Without bees there would be no wheat to make bread, no corn, no apples, no tomatoes, no beef, no milk or cheese, no humans. (1)
As reported by Grist, a leaked EPA report reveals that, in 2003, the EPA approved a pesticide its own researchers warned specifically targeted bees and would kill them; three years before we noticed the spike in Colony Collapse Disorder and that US bees were disappearing. (2)
The pesticide, clothianidin, is made by Bayer AG of Germany and Takeda Chemical Industries of Japan. (3) It is used to treat seeds which grow into plants that extrude the poison through their nectar and pollen, which would seem to be perfectly developed to kill pollinators, which are not pests.
Germany banned clothianidin and all other pesticides like it (4), along with France, Italy and Slovenia.
In 2008, the Guardian reported :"This is not the first time that Bayer, one of the world's leading pesticide manufacturers with sales of €5.8bn (£4.6bn) in 2007, has been blamed for killing honeybees. In the United States, a group of beekeepers from North Dakota is taking the company to court after losing thousands of honeybee colonies in 1995, during a period when oilseed rape in the area was treated with imidacloprid. A third of honeybees were killed by what has since been dubbed colony collapse disorder. Bayer's best selling pesticide, imidacloprid, sold under the name Gaucho in France, has been banned as a seed dressing for sunflowers in that country since 1999, after a third of French honeybees died following its widespread use. Five years later it was also banned as a sweetcorn treatment in France. A few months ago, the company's application for clothianidin was rejected by French authorities."
In 2001, clothianidin-treated seeds will grow and flower in millions of acres of American corn, canola, rapeseed and other crops. The EPA has been repeatedly sued by various groups over the use of clothiandin but has so far refused to change its status.
The author of the Grist article attempted to communicate with staff at the EPA but their responses were essentially meaningless and false. There is no good reason for the use of this dangerous pesticide and every reason to ban it.
(1) USDA National Agricultural Library
(2) EPA Report PDF
(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothianidin#cite_note-Grist-0
(4) Guardian
