Top level EPA officials observe California bee shortfall EPA senior staff put on a bee suits and look inside beehives National Honey Bee Advisory Board (NHBAB) and the National Pollinator Defense Fund (NPDF) hosted a tour this spring with High Level EPA officials to assess honeybee health in almonds. Acting Director of the EPA Jim Jones; Don Brady Director of Environmental Fates and Effects Division (EFED) and Anita Pease, Associate Director EFED, along with Cindy Wire EPA Region 9 representative from the Pesticide Program, along with other industry officials attended a two day tour through the Central California Valley to learn more about what is harming honeybee populations. The bees are in trouble and cumulative pesticide exposure is the proximate cause. The tour began with a PowerPoint presentation which summarized potential pesticide exposures to a bee operation for a year. It started with a series of pictures from the 2012 EPA bee tour which showed Darren Cox s mountain bees just before a bloom spray event, and the same hives a week later, significantly weakened. Dependant on year, bees can be exposed to as many as 6 pesticides applications during almond bloom. We; NHBAB and NPDF discussed mislabeling of fungicides and Insect Growth Regulator s with EPA officials to make them aware of losses during spray bloom events. Next we discussed follow-up pollinations such as cherries which can exposes the hive to more pesticides; interwoven in the discussion was the problems associated with the spraying of bee attractive adjacent crops. Spring is a critical time of year because most bee operations split hives to make up losses; there was discussion of what effect earlier pesticide exposures may have on the viability of the splitting process. Corn planting dust was discussed; we talked about the bio accumulation in the soil, up to 26 parts per billion. (Bayer s investigation of Steve Ellis). Perhaps the dirt itself, ie dust may be a contributor to the mortality problem. The picture to left shows pulling out splits which had queens started that laid a round or two of brood and then failed
We described how this exposure causes hive depopulation followed by queen supercedures several weeks later and showed several pictures of this; left Hives were followed though soybeans spray exposure quickly followed by corn pollen; we talked about the break in the late summer brood cycle which may cause a retention of older forage bees in the over winter clusters We discussed short residual spraying at night during bloom periods as a vast improvement to the 24/7 of ERT s even during the middle of bloom which currently happens. We discussed the fact that OECA and State Primacy Partners are doing absolutely nothing to educate or fine errant applicators, which FIFRA requires While each crop area has it own set of circumstances, all of them boil down to problems when pollinator toxic pesticides are allow to be used indiscriminately on bloom. Migratory bee stress from the early 60 s was compared it to air ride trucks and better roads of today It was explained that California bee operations often place bees for pollination from other operations that choose not physically come to California. If you loose the California operation you loose much more than just one operation you lose pollination infrastructure EPA was shown several pictures of merging hives in January in a stock yard which had about a 2/3 loss.
It was mentioned that because the industry at large took such an large overall loss this season, and that because both our Northern California and Southeastern beekeepers that generally supply queens and packaged bees are affected, that it will be difficult to get replacement queens and packages in a timely fashion this spring; this will likely suppress the number of hives that the industry can produce in 2013 Higher honey prices may affect some bee operations decision to split hives small to create numbers; they may opt to split to a more normal size hive creating honey producing hives instead of simply beehives. Left is a picture of stored over winter dead out equipment. This represents only about 1/3 of the losses post 2012 honey production for this 4500 colony operation. We discussed the pesticide exposure that precipitated the 70% losses. After this discussion we toured bee hives in almond pollination contracts; the good the bad and the ugly. Idaho beehives which had been graded at 7 about 2 weeks prior to our inspection had about 3 frames of bees average; bee almond orchard was pathetic. Because we knew EPA was coming ahead Jeff Anderson was able to stage an orchard field run bees, and with hives which ended the 2013 average; (below) We inspected frames of bees These hives now flight in the of time, beekeeper with good bees, up being close to Good Field Run 2013 Average? We had lunch in Oakdale hosted by Jeff and Christine Anderson
In the afternoon we met with bee broker, bee strength inspector Denise Qualls and observed her crew doing strength inspection This season Denise s crew inspected 25% of 48 thousand hives; this afternoon her crew was just under 1/3 of the way through those inspections the average frame count was only 3.8 frames of bees. The first 4 hives her crew inspected while we were present were stone cold dead; the largest in the drop of 32 hives was about 4 frames of bees Average was under 2 in this bee operation this was an 8 frame average contract. Denise stated that she has inspected for 7 years now, and that by far and way this was the worst year for hive size. She also mentioned that each year the average number of frames of bees is less. This afternoon Denise still had list 5 pages long of people still actively looking for hives to rent What NHBAB/NPDF heard from EPA The bee industry has done a fair job of getting EPA s attention that our industry is experiencing abnormally high /unsustainable bee morality. Foliarly applied pesticides Even though EPA acknowledges that their incident reporting pipeline is absolutely broken and they are working on it; because of lack of bee kill incident reports reaching them, they are not convinced that pesticides are a significant player in abnormal bee mortality. EPA does not require the States to forward reports of bee kill incidents they investigate. Historically EPA has not accepted reports directly from beekeepers as they have a vested interest which leads EPA to believe that the information they supply lacks veracity. State Pesticide Enforcement people believe that mandatory language on pesticide labels is unenforceable; EPA has no immediate plans to remedy the language/enforceability problems. While EPA acknowledges that daytime applications of pollinator toxic pesticides commonly occur on blooming crops, they claim to be powerless to change the paradigm. EPA has no immediate plans to require State Primacy Partners applicator education programs include pollinator protection education as a requirement for licensing.
Systemic Pesticides are not regulated as a pesticide because they are not foliarly applied. While EPA acknowledges that pesticide coated seeds abrade toxic dust during planting, they have no intention of doing mandatory regulating of this exposure; their approach is to allow industry and equipment manufactures to determine how or if dust can be abraded. While there is talk that a new polymer may be able to be utilized to stick the pesticides more firmly to the seed, EPA has no plans to re-assess the potential increase in toxins available in the root zone and how this may affect the uptake into the pollen and nectar producing parts of the treated plants. Federal EPA has no intention of interfering with States individual rights to regulate pesticides in their jurisdiction. What that means in practical terms, quoting Jim Jones I can arrange to bring all the stakeholders to the table ; you convince others in agriculture to apply pesticides correctly. NHBAB recognizes that significant action is needed; we are however only an advisory board ; as such, limited in the scope of actions that we can instigate. For this reason we are advising the reader to consider a significant financial contribution to the National Pollinator Defense Fund. Check out their website for more information http://pollinatordefense.org Donations can be made on line, or a check can be sent to National Pollinator Defense Fund P.O. Box 193 Danbury, TX 77534