Bees “restored to health” in Italy after this spring’s neonicotinoid-free maize sowing

During this year’s neonicotinoid-free maize sowing in Italy hardly a bee colony has been lost, bar a suspicious case where some leftover seed from last year may have been used

It does look like a resounding, spectacular success. During this year’s neonicotinoid-free maize sowing in Italy hardly a bee colony has been lost, bar a suspicious case where some leftover seed from last year may have been used. 

The ban on the insecticide-soaked seed coating enforced by the Italian government last year seems to have worked wonders, judging from the freshest data collected on the ground by researchers, beekeepers and regional authorities alike.

Read More:

http://www.youris.com/Environment/Bees/Bees_restored_to_health_in_Italy_after_this_springs_neonicotinoidfree_maize_sowing.kl

New research should nail the coffin lid shut on a toxic bee-killing pesticide

Entire food chain found to be contaminated, from soil to pollen to dead bees

The Sierra Club, with over 1.3 million members and supporters, calls on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to immediately suspend the registration of the insecticide clothianidin, based on new scientific evidence of extensive contamination in bees and soil.

Last week (January 3, 2012) scientists at Purdue University documented major adverse impacts from clothianidin, used as a seed treatment in corn, on honey bee health.        The results showed clothianidin present in foraging areas long after treated seed has been planted.

The study raises questions about the long term survival of this major pollinator.

"This research should nail the coffin lid shut on clothianidin", says Laurel Hopwood, Sierra Club's Chairwoman of the Genetic Engineering Action Team. "Despite numerous attempts by the beekeeping industry and conservation organizations to persuade the EPA to ban clothianidin, the EPA has failed to protect the food supply for the American people."

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http://www.sierraclub.org/biotech/whatsnew/whatsnew_2012-01-10.asp

Stephanie Bodoni - Honey Made Close to Modified Crops May Need Regulatory Approval

Beekeepers with hives close to fields cultivating genetically modified crops can't sell honey in the European Union without regulatory approval, an adviser to the EU's highest court said.

The unintentional presence in honey "even of a minute quantity of pollen" from a type of genetically modified maize made by Monsanto Co., the world's largest seed company, means that the honey needs an authorization before being sold in the market, Advocate General Yves Bot of the European Court of Justice said in a non-binding opinion today.

"Food containing material from a genetically modified plant, whether that material is included intentionally or not, must always be regarded as food produced" from modified plants, said Bot. The Luxembourg-based EU tribunal follows such advice most of the time. Rulings normally follow within six months of an opinion.

Read More:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-09/honey-made-close-to-gm-crops-needs-approval-eu-court-aide-says.html

Honey bees study finds that insects have personality too

A new study in Science suggests that thrill-seeking is not limited to humans and other vertebrates. Some honey bees, too, are more likely than others to seek adventure. The brains of these novelty-seeking bees exhibit distinct patterns of gene activity in molecular pathways known to be associated with thrill-seeking in humans, researchers report.

The findings offer a new window on the inner life of the honey bee hive, which once was viewed as a highly regimented colony of seemingly interchangeable workers taking on a few specific roles (nurse or forager, for example) to serve their queen. Now it appears that individual honey bees actually differ in their desire or willingness to perform particular tasks, said University of Illinois entomology professor and Institute for Genomic Biology director Gene Robinson, who led the study. These differences may be due, in part, to variability in the bees' personalities, he said. The study team also included researchers from Wellesley College and Cornell University.

"In humans, differences in novelty-seeking are a component of personality," he said. "Could insects also have personalities?"

Robinson and his colleagues studied two behaviors that looked like novelty-seeking in honey bees: scouting for nest sites and scouting for food.

Read More:

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-honey-bees-insects-personality.html

More Damning Evidence Points to Pesticide as Cause of Mass Bee Deaths

A new study published in Naturwissenschaften - The Science of Nature by a leading bee expert provides damning evidence that a widely used pesticide, even at low levels, is responsible for the recent catastrophic decline in honey bees. Dr. Jeff Pettis of the USDA's Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, MD led the study.

Colony collapse disorder, as this phenomenon is known, has been getting worse since 2006.

The news has brought renewed calls for these pesticides, which only became widely used in the 1990s, to be banned as honey bees are key to human’s survival – pollinating 70 per cent of the crops which produce most of the world’s food.

The pesticide that the study (pdf) looked at was imidacloprid, one of the most widely used pesticides worldwide. It is neonicotinoid insecticide produced by Bayer CropScience.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/30-9

Honeybee Deaths Linked to Seed Insecticide Exposure

Honeybee populations have been in serious decline for years, and Purdue University scientists may have identified one of the factors that cause bee deaths around agricultural fields.

Analyses of bees found dead in and around hives from several apiaries over two years in Indiana showed the presence of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are commonly used to coat corn and soybean seeds before planting. The research showed that those insecticides were present at high concentrations in waste talc that is exhausted from farm machinery during planting.

The insecticides clothianidin and thiamethoxam were also consistently found at low levels in soil -- up to two years after treated seed was planted -- on nearby dandelion flowers and in corn pollen gathered by the bees, according to the findings released in the journal PLoS One this month.

Read More:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120112112722.htm