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Honeybees pick up pesticides from non-crops


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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., May 31 (UPI) -- Honeybees acquire pesticides as they collect pollen from non-crop plants, a new study finds.

Even honeybees that live in agricultural regions get most of their pollen from non-crop plants. Avoiding commercial crops isn't sparing bees from potentially harmful pesticides.

Researchers at Purdue University tracked the pollen sources and pesticide levels of honeybees over the course of 16 weeks. Samples taken from their hives revealed pollen foraged from 30 plant families. The samples contained residues of pesticides from nine chemical classes, including neonicotinoids -- a pesticide implicated in colony collapse disorder.

 

Read more on UPI

 

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Hopefully the increase in beekeeping helps the bee population.

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18 hours ago, Myles said:

Hopefully the increase in beekeeping helps the bee population.

In many safe places (mostly urban) where bees could survive well there are local ordinances against it. Unless that changes it will be the continuation of the same.

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I'm glad they did a study to see just how widespread this is... but it's kind of a duh study. Of course honeybees tend to flowers other than the crops they are pointed at. And yeah, that includes neighbors that spray chemicals around they properties.

And beekeeping in urban environments isn't really an answer. Folks use a LOT of chemicals in their yards in cities.

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7 minutes ago, rashore said:

I'm glad they did a study to see just how widespread this is... but it's kind of a duh study. Of course honeybees tend to flowers other than the crops they are pointed at. And yeah, that includes neighbors that spray chemicals around they properties.

And beekeeping in urban environments isn't really an answer. Folks use a LOT of chemicals in their yards in cities.

A lot of chemicals is not as dangerous as a little glyphosate. We always had to battle neighbors spraying, and the bees even got through the DDT times (not without casualties I might add). And sorry, you are wrong about urban beekeeping, while country bee keeping leads up to a 50% loss (http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2015/05/14/more-bad-news-for-minnesota-beekeepers/) of colonies in urban areas is it less than 10%. And the reason is that much less of the agro-industrial pesticides are used there.

 

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I live in a small city and there are lots of people getting into bee keeping.   I have to assume it is the same throughout the country.   Kind of a fad, but it should help the populations for sure.

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37 minutes ago, Myles said:

I live in a small city and there are lots of people getting into bee keeping.   I have to assume it is the same throughout the country.   Kind of a fad, but it should help the populations for sure.

I live on the outskirts, but if I put a hive in my back yard I'll get in trouble with city ordinance and if I go a little further away I'll run into farmer Smith and his 400 gallon spray machine. So its not worth it.

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19 minutes ago, questionmark said:

A lot of chemicals is not as dangerous as a little glyphosate. We always had to battle neighbors spraying, and the bees even got through the DDT times (not without casualties I might add). And sorry, you are wrong about urban beekeeping, while country bee keeping leads up to a 50% loss (http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2015/05/14/more-bad-news-for-minnesota-beekeepers/) of colonies in urban areas is it less than 10%. And the reason is that much less of the agro-industrial pesticides are used there.

 

I'm not quite sure where you are getting your 50% country, 10% urban numbers from? No where in that article does it make that kind of distinction. Nor is that anywhere in the BIP survey, or the NASS report that was used in conjunction with the BIP survey. It's all statics by state, not by rural or urban environments.

And people use a lot of glyphosate in urban environments- Roundup. Homeowners use it quite a bit. So do golf courses and quite often public parks. Folks use other chemicals too, but glyphosate is one of the most popular ones. More commercial use like golf courses and public parks tend to use the higher concentration like agriculture does. Agriculture tends to spray more extensively, and sometimes multisprays depending on the crop.

Heavy use of this is part of the reason why we are now seeing glyphosate resistant weeds showing up everywhere from corn fields to golf courses to city sidewalk cracks.

That was part of the point of the OP article... they figured out that homeowners and urban landscapers were contributing far more pollen and chemical distribution than had been previously considered.

 

However, a good point to urban beekeeping is that there is a much healthier diversity in diet, something honeybees really need. And that OP article study points out that it's more urban environments that are providing that diet. And that's a good thing. Honeybees are indeed in danger. Perhaps a little less chemicals all around, and a bit more diversity in agricultural plantings would be beneficial.

So I don't think urban beekeeping is really an answer. Though it does increase the chances of honeybees existing, and it does help with diet diversity, it does not address some more serious problems in general. Using less chemicals all around and increasing diet diversity in agriculture would be helpful. So would discontinuing the practice of transporting honeybees from field to field. This is disruptive to the honeybees- and it's something that urban beekeeps have an advantage on because they tend not to move their hives as much. So would utilizing the plethora of other bees that are available for pollinating.  A lot of people concentrate on honeybees because they will pollinate pretty much anything and they produce honey. But there are lots of other niche bees that do the job of pollinating just as well. Almost. There are a few crops that only honeybees will touch. There are also some crops that honeybees won't touch if they can help it.

 

 

 

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34 minutes ago, questionmark said:

sorry, should have said 10% less (conservatively) and here is an article about it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eliza-de-la-portilla/are-urban-bees-immune-to-_b_4047576.html

I love that Ted talk. And the information was accurate at the time. And probably helped spawn a lot of good urban beekeeping.

There is a newer study out comparing urban environments with kept and feral bees that came out last year. They found that urban kept bees were under the most pathogen pressure. Urban bee survival showed a three-fold decline. Feral bees in general had a healthier immune response than kept bees. https://news.ncsu.edu/2015/11/tarpy-frank-2015/

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Just now, rashore said:

I love that Ted talk. And the information was accurate at the time. And probably helped spawn a lot of good urban beekeeping.

There is a newer study out comparing urban environments with kept and feral bees that came out last year. They found that urban kept bees were under the most pathogen pressure. Urban bee survival showed a three-fold decline. Feral bees in general had a healthier immune response than kept bees. https://news.ncsu.edu/2015/11/tarpy-frank-2015/

Where I kept my bees all we really had to worry about is Varoa (I say past tense because I am in the process of selling my bee farms to my employees, in a few weeks I will have been a bee keeper).

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Just now, questionmark said:

Where I kept my bees all we really had to worry about is Varoa (I say past tense because I am in the process of selling my bee farms to my employees, in a few weeks I will have been a bee keeper).

Aww, that's a bummer. I can understand that you don't want to deal with the hassle though. Not all city ordinances are kind to animal husbandry in general.

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Just now, rashore said:

Aww, that's a bummer. I can understand that you don't want to deal with the hassle though. Not all city ordinances are kind to animal husbandry in general.

Well, one farm is in Greece and the other in New Zealand, so I have no city ordinances to worry about. But beekeeping is not something you can delegate and expect acceptable returns (even if both are too big to be a one man operation). I want to be much more time back home so I decided it would be the best for me and for the bees.

 

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