Since 2006, the United State's approx 2.4 million beehives have been in decline. It was dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and reasons for it were varied from climate change, fungus, miets and cell phones. The great fear is that if the honey bees die, so will our food production.
Just last winter the news was grim:
The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS). (source)
And now a leaked document gives a clearer picture of what's happened: The EPA killed the honey bees.
Not directly, but they did approve a pesticide that has been banned in Germany, France, Italy and Slovenia called Clothianidin. Clothianidin is produced by Bayer AG mainly to pre-treat corn seeds. In 2009, Bayer made $262 million in sales to farmers who also used it on canola, soy, sugar beets, sunflowers and wheat. The linked document was created in response to Bayer's request for approval for use on Clothianidin on cotton and mustard.
Link to leaked document (PDF).
One of the money quotes:
Clothianidin’s major risk concern is to nontarget insects (that is, honey bees). Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid insecticide that is both persistent and systemic. Acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis. Although EFED does not conduct RQ based risk assessments on non-target insects, information from standard tests and field studies, as well as incident reports involving other neonicotinoids insecticides (e.g., imidacloprid) suggest the potential for long-term toxic risk to honey bees and other beneficial insects.
Despite 101 pages of this, the corporate-controlled EPA approved it anyway.
Suspicions about clothianidin aren’t new; the EPA’s Environmental Fate and Effects Division (EFAD) first expressed concern when the pesticide was introduced, in 2003, about the "possibility of toxic exposure to nontarget pollinators [e.g., honeybees] through the translocation of clothianidin residues that result from seed treatment." Clothianidin was still allowed on the market while Bayer worked on a botched toxicity study [PDF], in which test and control fields were planted as close as 968 feet apart. (source)
So, what about Bayer? They're not a terribly nice transnational. Perhaps this stems from their sordid WWI and ever worse WWII history (Zyklon B, anyone?). But they certainly are no friend to honeybees:
Bayer AG is involved in an ongoing controversy with French and Nova Scotian beekeepers over claimed pesticide kills of honeybees from its seed treatment insecticide imidacloprid. France has since issued a provisional ban on the use of Imidacloprid for corn seed treatment pending further action. A consortium of U.S. beekeepers has also filed a civil suit against Bayer CropScience for alleged losses. (source)
They certainly bought the best government agency they could -- to the detriment of us all.
UPDATE via link from Gooserock
So what about that front page NYT article in October on CCD? Didn't that shut the case on the mystery? Perhaps, if you ignore some rather large problems with the lead author of the study, Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk.
What the Times article did not explore -- nor did the study disclose -- was the relationship between the study's lead author, Montana bee researcher Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk, and Bayer Crop Science. In recent years Bromenshenk has received a significant research grant from Bayer to study bee pollination. Indeed, before receiving the Bayer funding, Bromenshenk was lined up on the opposite side: He had signed on to serve as an expert witness for beekeepers who brought a class-action lawsuit against Bayer in 2003. He then dropped out and received the grant. (Source)
Not only was it the corporate cash:
Bromenshenk's company, Bee Alert Technology, which is developing hand-held acoustic scanners that use sound to detect various bee ailments, will profit more from a finding that disease, and not pesticides, is harming bees.
Other sources:
http://www.thegovernmentrag.com/...