Pushing poison

The world honey bee population has plunged in recent years, worrying beekeepers and farmers who know how critical bee pollination is for many crops. Without honey bees, our entire food supply is in trouble.Now, Britain's beekeepers are at war over their association's endorsement for money of four insecticides, all of them fatal to bees, made by major chemical companies. The British Beekeepers' Association has been selling its logo to four European pesticide producers and is believed to have received about £175,000 in return. The active ingredient chemicals in the four pesticides the beekeepers endorsed are synthetic pyrethroids, which are among the most powerful of modern insect-killers. The beekeepers' association's deal with the chemical companies had been running since 2001, and it received £17,500 a year for endorsing four pesticides: Bayer's Decis, BASF's Contest (also known as Fastac), Syngenta's Hallmark and Belchim's Fury.
The British Beekeepers' Association referred to the pesticides on several occasions in the newsletter BBKA News as "bee friendly" or "bee safe". Yet a 2003 study in the Bulletin of Insectology on modelling the acute toxicity of pesticides to honey bees found that cypermethrin, the active ingredient of Fury and Contest, and deltamethrin, the active ingredient of Decis, were in the top four most toxic to bees of all the 100 substances evaluated. Cypermethrin was second most toxic, and deltamethrin was fourth. (The active ingredient of Hallmark, lambda-cyhalothrin, was not included in the test.) Other studies confirm these conclusions.

The deal was struck in secret by the beekeepers' association executive without the knowledge of the overwhelming majority of its members. After news of the deal emerged, some members expressed outrage and others resigned. The beekeepers executive asks delegates to support them in the way in which it "should manage its intellectual property". It goes on: "This includes the use of its logo and maximises the benefits which can be gained from these assets and its reputation." The BBKA appears never to have issued any public statement that is critical of any pesticides or pesticide manufacturer. Dealing with potential pesticide problems comes almost last as a single page. The document says that incidents in Europe involving neonicotinoids which have been harmful to bees "have been considered to be the result of bad practices". Then the document says: "These compounds appear to be not very widely used in UK agriculture at present." Figures from the Food and Environment Research Agency show that in 2008, the year before the study was published, the area of land treated in Britain with neonicotinoids was 1,027,706 hectares, or 2,539,461 acres. It gives "not very widely used" a whole new meaning.

An open letter signed by prominent figures in the world of the environment and agriculture condemns the British Beekeepers' Association for its commercial relationship with the German chemicals giants Bayer and BASF, the Swiss-based Syngenta and the Belgian firm Belchim – and demands that it permanently sever commercial links with agrochemical companies.

"A charity that claims to have the interests of bees and beekeeping at heart should never put itself in a position where it is under the influence of corporations whose purpose is to sell insecticides which are able to kill bees," said Philip Chandler, a Devon beekeeper and one of the organisers of the open letter, which has been signed by the botanist David Bellamy, the author and television wildlife presenter Chris Packham and Lord Melchett, policy director of the Soil Association. "It is the equivalent of a cancer research charity being controlled by a tobacco company," Mr Chandler added.

In America documents released by Wikileaks reveal that despite warnings from their own scientists that Clothianidin was a major risk concern to non-target insects (that is, honey bees), the agency allowed the widespread use of a bee-toxic pesticide. The pesticide was worth up to $262 million in sales in 2009. One-third of American agriculture, which relies on bee pollination, is at stake.

The bee-toxic pesticide problem can be traced back to 1994, when the first neonicotinoid pesticide (Imidacloprid) was released. Neonicotinoids like imidacloprid and clothianidin disrupt the central nervous system of pest insects, and are supposed to be relatively non-toxic to other animals. But there's a problem: The neonicotinoids coat plant seeds, releasing insecticides permanently into the plant. The toxins are then released in pollen and nectar--where they may cause bees to become disoriented and die. After imidacloprid was released in France (under the name Gaucho) the number of bees in the country dropped rapidly, from 75 kg per hive down to 30 kg per hive between 1995 and 2001. Imidacloprid was banned for use on sunflowers and, later, sweet corn.

Enter clothianidin, a next-generation neonicotinoid released by Bayer in 2003. "In terms of the neonicotonoid family, clothianidin is one of the most toxic members," explains Dr. James Frazier, a professor of entomology at Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

The EPA first brought up the link between clothianidin and bees before the pesticide's release in February 2003. The agency originally planned to withhold registration of the pesticide because of concerns about toxicity in bees, going so far as to suggest that the product come with a warning label: "This compound is toxic to honey bees. The persistance of residues and the expression clothianidin in nectar and pollen suggest the possibility of chronic toxic risk to honey bee larvae and the eventual stability of the hive." But in April 2003, the EPA decided to give Bayer conditional registration. Bayer could sell the product and seed processors could freely use it. The EPA continued to allow the sale of clothianidin. Once the Bayer study finally came out, it was flawed. "It’s as if they designed the study to avoid seeing clothianidin’s effects on hive health."the Pesticide Action Network accuse.

The EPA is continuing to allow the sale of clothiandin, even though the study that the agency based its decision on proved to be invalid.