Correct or cancel Mom’s grocery bag misinformation

Misleading claims on organic food grocery bags deceive shoppers on bees and pesticides 

Paul Driessen April 28, 2022

I don’t deliberately avoid organic foods or markets, but I don’t seek them out either. Claims that organic food tastes better or is more nutritious are not supported by evidence and certainly don’t justify the far higher prices. Mostly, I’m put off by assertions that organic food is pesticide-free, safer and more planet-friendly. Those assertions are simply false advertising; deliberate misinformation. 

Mom’s Organic Market shopping bags provide an excellent example. They’re emblazoned with six “Bee Informed” messages that help customers Bee the Change, Give Bees a Chance, and Save the Bees from a looming Armageddon attributed to synthetic pesticides. The Bee Misinformed messages merit correction. 

1. The #1 irrigated crop in the US is lawn grass, using over 10 trillion gallons of water per year. Mom’s didn’t say where its number came from; and if this basic information is fishy, what about the other messages? The Natural Resources Defense Council says US lawns consume three trillion gallons per year – not ten. Still, too many people overwater, use fine sprays that let too much water evaporate, and/or water lawns during the hottest hours or days of the week. The better message is, water smarter. 

2. Suburban lawns and gardens receive more pesticide applications per acre than agriculture. This may be true, but is it? Can’t Mom’s be more transparent about its sources? Homeowners should use lawn and garden chemicals carefully, responsibly and sparingly – and assume that any chemical (synthetic or organic) may be toxic and dangerous: to bees, other insects, fish, wildlife, pets, children and themselves. 

3. A single bee colony can pollinate over 300 million flowers a day. Busy as a bee – sure. But really? A typical hive (colony) has 10,000 to 80,000 worker bees. Assuming 50,000 on average, this means each bee would have to visit 6,000 flowers per day. Perhaps in a sprawling canola field; but otherwise pretty unlikely. Again, what’s Mom’s source? 

4. Scientists found bee-killing neonicotinoids in 75% of honey sampled from around the world. Now we’re getting into the nitty-gritty of ongoing organic food and environmentalist campaigns to frighten people (especially moms) into going full-organic and avoiding conventionally grown food. 

The scientists are finding parts per billion. 1 ppb is equivalent to 1 second in 33 years – or 50 drops of water in a 50-by-25-by-2-meter Olympic-sized swimming pool: 2 teaspoons in 660,000 gallons. 

Used primarily to coat seeds, neonics become part of the plant tissue and target only pests that actually feed on the crops, particularly during early growth stages. They greatly reduce the need for aerial or ground-level spraying with other chemicals that are much more of a threat to bees and other pollinators. They are a far lower risk to honeybees or wild bees than some organic pesticides – or Varroa destructor mites that attach to bees, suppress their immune systems, carry deadly diseases, create pathways for other diseases to enter bee bodies, and can cause well-publicized “colony collapse disorder.”

Neonics may be detected in honey because so much comes from vast canola fields in western Canada, where canola is grown with neonic-coated seeds, and beekeepers place their hives in the fields because bees thrive there and produce delicious honey. Don’t equate detection with danger. 

5. There are traces of 20 different pesticides in the average American’s body. Mom’s could at least post the source for this assertion on its website. More important, these parts per billion are detectable only because modern lab equipment is so sophisticated. The traces are not at levels that should cause concern. 

And what about organic pesticides? Organic farmers also use many different pesticides to protect their crops. But Mom’s, Greenpeace, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and the organic food industry don’t look for or talk about traces of organic farming pesticides: in honey, on produce or in human bodies. Perhaps they don’t want people (especially mothers) to know or think about that. 

The Risk Monger’s Dirty Dozen List of Toxic Organic Pesticides provides an informative overview of “natural” fungicides and insecticides used on organic farms – including chemicals that are toxic to bees, other insect and wildlife species, and humans. 

Among those organic farm chemicals, copper sulfate is highly toxic to bees, deadly to fish, and bio-accumulative in soil and water. Pyrethrin neurotoxin pesticides are also very toxic to bees – and are possible human carcinogens; originally derived from flowers (which is why they can still be classified as organic), they are now manufactured synthetically. Like neonicotinoids, nicotine sulfate is derived from nicotine; it can paralyze bee wings and legs, and is poisonous to humans; it’s dusted or sprayed on crops, so it can impact bees, birds and other non-target organisms. 

Other “natural,” “organic” chemicals that are highly toxic to bees include rotenone, spinosad, hydrogen peroxide, azidirachtin (neem oil), citronella oil, and even garlic extract and acetic acid. 

If Greenpeace, the EWG or the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) ever spent the time and money to test for these chemicals, they’d undoubtedly find “traces” of “organic” chemicals on “organic” produce. 

6. Roughly 0.1% of pesticides reach their targeted pests, leaving 99.9% to impact the environment. That sounds farfetched because it is, especially for crops grown using neonic-treated seeds so that the pesticide becomes a systemic part of the plant and targets pests that try to eat the crops. 

Today’s farmers are far more careful and judicious in how, where and how much they use chemicals to control the insects, viruses, molds and other pests that want to beat you to the foods you enjoy. They also employ a variety of “integrated pest management” techniques – including corn, cotton and other crops that splice Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) genes into the plant structure, to control pests that feed on those crops, thereby reducing the need for hand, tractor or aerial spraying with chemicals. 

(Organic farmers often spray live Bt bacteria on crops. But that carries risks that the spray could drift onto nearby plants and beneficial insects. It’s a mystery that EWG doesn’t wax apoplectic about that.) 

Those who still harbor concerns might be comforted knowing that the USDA conducts a Pesticide Data Program that’s been ongoing now for three decades. The PDP tests different (conventionally grown) produce every year – and issues a “report card” on how well US and international farmers comply with Environmental Protection Agency rules designed to protect moms and families from (conventional) pesticide-related health issues. 

While the annual EWG “Dirty Dozen List” is designed to instill unfounded fears about eating non-organic fruits and vegetables, because of alleged pesticide poisoning – the PDP analyses are scientific and data-driven. (At least it doesn’t blame manmade climate change.) The PDP goal is to ensure that all pesticide residues have fallen to levels that pose no risks to humans by the time they reach supermarkets. 

The latest 200-page report provides comforting news for consumers. It’s available here – or you can read plant pathologist Steve Savage’s summary and commentary here and here. 

One further issue deserves mention. Not surprisingly, Mom’s bags are made of kraft paper. Plastic bags (we’re told) are petroleum-based and clog landfills. Of course, it’s more complex than that. 

I operated bag-making machines during college. Paper and paper-bag-making processes are tree, energy and chemicals-intensive; and heavier, bulkier paper bags take years to break down in landfills. The volume of either is trifling, however, compared to pollution and waste from solar panels and wind turbines. 

The bottom line is simple. As the USDA and Risk Monger emphasize, pesticide residues on both conventional and organic fruits and vegetables almost never pose risks to moms, dads, kids, or other planetary creatures. Bee not afraid. Enjoy eating them, because they’re good for you. 

And correct or cancel Mom’s misinformation. 

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of many articles on the environment. He has degrees in geology, ecology and environmental law.

 

Thought for the Day: Bees and Flies Explain the World

Saving Pollinators From an Imaginary Bee-Pocalypse

Paul Driessen Apr 10, 2021 

A torrent of media stories from 2013-2014 presented frightening tales of “unprecedented” colony collapse disorder (CCD) among honeybees, conjuring up visions of a “bee-pocalypse” and “a world without bees,” a world in which flowers and agriculture would be decimated.

Many articles blamed neonicotinoid pesticides, while others added climate change and biotech (GMO) crops as likely culprits. Some mentionedVarroa destructor mites and various viruses and diseases as possible causes. Virtually none suggested that organic food industry chemicals could also be implicated in bee deaths. The overall tone was “deep concern,” bordering on hysteria. But it sold papers and air time.

Over the next few years, the number of US honey-producing bee colonies (hives) generally and gradually increased, though with bumps in the road. There were 100,000 more hives in 2014 than in 2013, and numbers went on a slight roller coaster in subsequent years, up and down in the same range as 1993-2012. 

A recent US Department of Agriculture honey report could ignite new concerns, especially in conjunction with recent data that shows a 4 percent decline in US bee colony numbers: 2,812,000 in 2019 versus 2,706,000 in 2020. This time, though, the more likely cause is the Covid-driven 2020 economy

Indeed, honey production dropped 6% but honey prices rose slightly to offset some of the lower production and sales. Almond grove and other pollination revenue went down 18% and other revenues fell even more sharply. But it’s also interesting that that there were 1,000 fewer apiary workers in 2020 than the year before – and spending on Varroa and other bee disease control declined almost 30% (the same drop as expenditures on syrup and other bee food). That largely explains the lower hive numbers.

(Also interesting, four states – Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota – accounted for 38% of all US honeybee colonies in 2020, many of them reliant on canola flowers. Their honey averaged $1.60 per pound in 2020, versus $6.30 per pound for boutique honey from four states – Illinois, Kentucky, New Jersey and Vermont – that collectively had just over 1% of all US hives.)

Even more fascinating and instructive is the trajectory of US honeybee colony numbers over the past five decades, showing no connection to neonics, other pesticides or much of anything else.

The all-time-high for US honeybee hives was in 1977 (4,323,000 colonies), and it was 6% higher than in 1972. The total then plummeted 25% by 1986 – and hasn’t been above 3,000,000 since 1992. The all-time-low for US honeybee colonies was 2,342,000 in 2008 – five years before the bee-pocalypse!

It gets even harder to decipher recent bee problems when you realize that Varroa mites didn’t arrive in the United States until 1987, and neonic use didn’t begin until the mid-1990s. But US honeybee colony numbers have been consistently in the 2.5-2.9 million range, with just a few dips to 2.4 million.

Varroamites are nasty threats largely because the American-European honeybee (unlike its Asian cousin) had no natural defenses against them. The mites bite into bees and bee larvae, feed on bee “blood,” and create pathways into bees for at least 19 viruses and diseases. Tracheal mites, Nosema intestinal fungi, parasitic phorid flies, the tobacco ring spot virus and other pests can also cause significant colony losses.

Beekeepers can accidentally kill entire hives, trying to address such problems, but professionals have become much better at getting treatments and doses right than have most hobbyist beekeepers.

As their name suggests, neonicotinoid pesticides are derived from synthetic nicotine.Some 90% are applied as seed coatings that dissolve and get absorbed into plant tissues as crops grow; they target and kill only pests that feed on the crops. Neonics also largely eliminate the need to spray with other insecticides that can easily harm bees and other beneficial insects.These innovative chemicals have nevertheless been targeted by anti-pesticide groups, and by organic food producers that themselves use various crop-protecting pesticides that are harmful or lethal to honeybees and wild bees.

Among those organic farm chemicals, pyrethrin pesticides are highly toxic to bees (in addition to being a likely human carcinogen. Nicotine sulfate can partially paralyze bee wings and legs, and can be poisonous to humans.Copper sulfate is highly toxic to bees, deadly to fish, and bio-accumulative in soil and water.

Changing agricultural and land-use practices, also play a role, including more houses, factories and highways replacing flowering trees and open fields of plants that provide pollen and nectar for bees. 

However, when they see lurid photos of dead bees, people should understand that bees have very short lives. Exactly how long depends on their species and sex, the climate where they live, food availability, overall bee health in the hive – and what time of year bees emerge from their cell.

Queen bees can live 2-3 years, even 4 years or more; they lay up to 2,000 eggs per day. Male drone bees live several months during warm weather, but die after mating with a queen, because their reproductive organs are ripped from their bodies in the process! Female worker bees live only 4-6weeks, because foraging for food takes them miles every day and wears their bodies out quickly; they live up to 20 weeks in the winter, when their job is keeping the hive warm.

Average honeybee colonies hit peak population counts of 50,000-60,000 in June – but those numbers plummet rapidly in autumn, as flowers disappear and cold weather sets in. So dead bees in and around hives is normal (but excellent fodder for fear-mongering).

As to “colony collapse disorder” (sometimes called “disappearing disorder”), major bee die-offs were reported in Ireland as far back as950 AD! The first recorded US case of worker bees suddenly abandoning hives full of honey occurred in1869; researchers reported25 significant bee die-offs between that one and 2003. The causes are unknown, but die-offs are not unprecedented.

Of course studies have purported to demonstrate the toxicity of neonics. But many were conducted in laboratories, using doses and application methods that bear no relation to what farmers do or what bees experience in the real world, where they might encounter neonic levels in pollen and nectar measured in parts per billion or trillion: the equivalent of a few seconds in 32 or 32,000 years, respectively.

Multiple field studies– in actual farmers’ fields –have consistently shown no adverse effects on honeybees at the colony level from realistic exposures to neonics. In fact ,bees thrive in and around neonic-treated corn and canola crops in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and elsewhere.

So it was highly surprising that a 2017 article in the respected journal Science claimed that two years of field studies in three countries showed exposure to neonicotinoid pesticides reduced the ability of honeybees and wild bees to survive winters and establish new populations and hives the following year. The article generated a fury of I-told-you-so declarations from the likes of Greenpeace and Pesticide Action Network. But it’s no longer available online. 

Perhaps that’s because, as I explained in my own detailed assessment, the authors violated multiple guidelines for scientific integrity. Not only did their own data contradict their primary claim; they kept extensive data outo f their analysis and incorporated only what supported their conclusions. That’s fraud.

When all the missing and doctored data were examined, of the258separate honeybee statistical data analyses involved in the study, 238 found no effects on bees from neonics and 7 found beneficial effects from the pesticide! Only 9 (a mere 3 percent) found harmful impacts, while 4 had insufficient data.

It’s vital that we protect our honeybees, bumblebees and wild bees. But that means understanding history, science, modern agriculture and bee life expectancy – so that we are not so easily snookered by lurid tales of bee Armageddon, and we don’t do more harm than good, for the best of intentions.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate and environmental issues.

 

 

Viewpoint: Wild bees on the decline? Lack of evidence challenges popular environmentalist narrative

Henry Miller | December 12, 2019

Did you catch the story about the swarm of 25,000 bees that had to be captured and removed (by a special police unit, no less) from the Staten Island Ferry Station in New York City?


After many years of media reports about honeybees and wild bees dying off, you’d think they were nearly extinct — so what were 25,000 of them doing at a ferry terminal in one of the world’s most densely populated cities?

Maybe they heard that New York was “all the buzz.”

Seriously, as I will explain, wild bee populations, like their honeybee cousins, are not endangered..........To Read More....

Viewpoint: How a small group of scientists and pliable media created a ‘catastrophe narrative’ that hurts bees and farmers

Henry Miller | December 5, 2019

Much of modern environmental activism, which owes more to zealotry than evidence, has spawned a nasty perversion — let’s call it the Pseudo-Scientific Method. As employed by environmental campaigners and the activist scientists who enable them, it has little to do with scientific discovery or the accumulation of knowledge; rather, it is “advocacy research” that creates “evidence” to support a pre-determined public policy — usually, inappropriate regulation or even bans.

The “target” is usually an ideologically disfavored industry or its products, such as nuclear power, genetic engineering, or pesticides. The result is flawed public policy choices and the ever-deepening corruption of the scientific enterprise.


Take the Great Bee Hoax, for example. If you’re still relying on the mainstream and social media for your information, you probably believe that honeybee populations are crashing worldwide, that without bees to pollinate our crops we’ll all soon starve, and that we’re in this sorry state because evil pesticide companies are reaping huge profits and despoiling the environment, while crony regulators look the other way.

At least, this is what Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer seems to believe. When the Agriculture Department recently suspended its annual census of U.S. honeybee hives due to budget cuts (a decision that was soon reversed), the Democratic senator from New York rose in high dudgeon claiming — what else? — collusion. .........To Read More....

Activist Junk Science Breeds Bad Policy

By Paul Driessen

The House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources recently approved HR 2854, the 2019 Protect Our Refuges Act, prohibiting the use of neonicotinoid insecticides in any of the nation’s 560 National Wildlife Refuges, some of which are the size of Delaware and even Indiana. The legislation will now be considered by the full House, while a companion bill (S 1856) makes its way through the Senate.

The legislation is unnecessary, misguided and based on embarrassingly bad science. Rather than protecting our refuges, it would force farmers to use other insecticides that truly are harmful to bees, birds and other wildlife (and even humans), or end programs to grow crops that nourish refuge inhabitants and visitors. Sadly, the forces driving it forward are par for the course on far too many ecological issues.

The twin bills are designed to reinstate a 2014 Obama-era US Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) ruling that banned neonic use in refuges, in response to sue-and-settle lawsuits and intense pressure from anti-pesticide groups. The FWS reversed the ban in 2018, after analyzing multiple scientific studies that found the insecticides are safe for bees, birds and other wildlife. The reversal once again allows the use of neonic-coated seeds or neonic sprays in parts of certain refuges where cooperative agreements between the FWS and farmers permit growing corn, alfalfa, sorghum, soybeans, wheat, clover and other crops.

Such agreements are employed when the Service determines that it cannot meet its wildlife enhancement and refuge management goals without assisting natural ecosystem processes. Refuges benefit from farmers providing more food for wildlife, including bees and migrating birds, under conditions set forth by the FWS. The farmers benefit from harvesting and selling the remaining crops.

The arrangements have worked well for decades. However, some environmentalist groups oppose any pesticide use (and even biotech crops) in refuges, while others oppose all farming (and grazing) in refuges. In recent years, they focused on neonics, alleging that this new insecticide technology threatens honeybees. After the 2018 decision, they sought legislation like HR 2854 to impose their views.

For years they had claimed neonics were causing “colony collapse disorder” around the world. When “bee-pocalypse” claims were disproven by studies in multiple countries, and by the rapid recovery of honeybee colonies from Varroa destrutor mites and other lethal pests and diseases, the groups shifted their attention to wild bees, about which far less is known. More recently, they have claimed birds are affected.

HR 2854 sponsor Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) insists that neonics are “toxic chemicals” that “infect” our soil and waterways, threaten biodiversity, bees and other wildlife in our refuges, and just pad “the bank accounts of chemical manufacturers.” She rarely lets reality get in the way of her rhetoric.

In a fascinating new article that should be required reading for every Member of Congress prior to voting on these bills, science journalist Jon Entine presents the facts about neonics, and depressing details about the junk science behind the ongoing activist and media frenzy about alleged threats to birds and bees.

For example, claims that bees are harmed by neonicotinoids are based on lab tests that exposed honeybees to dozens of times more neonics than they would ever encounter foraging for pollen or nectar. Assertions that birds are endangered by the same Imidacloprid are based on studies that force-fed sparrows the equivalent of at least 120 corn seeds at one time. Moreover, that earliest of all neonics is tens of times more toxic to birds than neonics that are actually used to coat corn, canola and other seeds today.

Moreover, neonics are used on only a few of the crops commonly planted in refuges (corn, alfalfa and wheat, for instance, but not clover), and not all those crops attract bees or birds. It’s a complex reality, which should not be (but too often is) simplified by cheap slogans and sound bites to drive agendas.

Neonicotinoids have become the world’s most widely used insecticide class because they work and are safe. At times they sprayed on fruits or vegetables, but about 90% of them are used as seed coatings. Either way, but particularly with coated seeds, their pest-killing properties are absorbed into plant tissues and so affect only insects that actually feed on the crops, especially early in the growing season. Neonics also reduce the need for multiple sprays, often with more harmful insecticides.

By the time the plants flower and attract bees, the amount of “neonics” in flowers, nectar and pollen can be measured in a few parts per billion, equal to a few seconds in 32 years.

This helps explain why dozens of extensive field studies in multiple countries found no harmful effects from neonics on bees under real-world conditions. That fact and increased success in controlling Varroa mites and bee diseases helps explain why hive numbers and honeybee populations have rebounded nicely. Most wild bees are also healthy, despite little-reported problems, such as diseases carried to wild bee colonies by their domesticated cousins.

Moreover, a 2015 study found that most wild bees never even come into contact with crops, or the neonics that supposedly threaten them. Only 2% of wild bees do much crop pollination in any event, and thus get exposed to various neonic pesticides; yet they are among the healthiest of wild bee species.

Bird counts are up, down or stable, depending on the species, while the sparrows used in the forced-feeding study have increased in numbers since neonics were introduced in the 1990s.

In recent decades, a lot of habitat and forage land has been lost to housing, business and shopping mall developments, solar installations, biofuel farms and other changes. The extra nourishment that crops planted in refuges can provide often offsets those losses. Farmers and ranchers should be given incentives to plant crops, not subjected to bans, disincentives, and increased costs that reduce flowers and forage.

More land dedicated to corn, sorghum, canola and other monoculture crops for biofuels has also reduced overall wildlife habitat land and flowers that bloom later in the season, nourishing bees during the critical weeks before winter sets in. Refuges planted with clover and other flowering crops can help here too.

For bee alarmists, Groundhog Day comes in June

Will activists finally admit their sins and break out of their pesticide-blaming time loop?

Paul Driessen

Did you think Goundhog Day only comes in February?

For anti-insecticide zealots and others in the environmentalist movement who’ve been preoccupied for years with bees and “colony collapse disorder,” it actually comes every June.  That’s when the Bee Informed Partnership – a University of Maryland-based project supported by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) – releases the results of its annual survey of honeybee colony losses and health.

In Bill Murray’s 1993 “Groundhog Day” movie, cynical TV weatherman Phil Connors is condemned to relive the same day over and over in a little Pennsylvania town until he learns the right “life lessons.” Each June, eco-campaigners work themselves into a carefully orchestrated lather over bee losses, getting caught in a time loop of endlessly repeating the same false and misguided claims about the BIP report.

Last week’s BIP report predictably garnered the usual hyperventilating headlines, sounding almost as alarming as in recent years. The 38% 2018-19 over-winter colony loss rate was the highest in the 13 years the survey has been taken. Combined with in-season (summer) honeybee colony losses of 20.5% this yielded an overall annual loss rate of 40.7% (computed using a special BIP methodology).

That’s slightly higher than 2017-18’s reported 40.1% overall loss rate and 2.9% higher than the average annual loss rate calculated since 2010. Hit the panic button.

Environmental worrywarts moved seamlessly into their annual spasm of anxiety and dire prognostication.  “Honey bees are no longer disappearing suddenly and mysteriously. They’re dying persistently, and in plain sight,” the Washington Post lamented.

Will there be enough honeybee colonies left to pollinate California’s lucrative almond crop next winter? an environmental “investigative news organization” agonized. (Ironically, but predictably, this story was posted four weeks after the USDA predicted another record almond harvest in the state.)

Is the BIP report further evidence that the hyperventilating media and eco-campaigners were correct about the “bee-pocalypse” they’ve been “documenting” for the last half-dozen years? Hardly!

First, the alarmists who routinely over-react to the annual BIP survey forget (or ignore) its limitations. As the report makes clear, the survey is entirely voluntary, returned by beekeepers who take time to fill it out. It consequently does not even purport to be a scientific sampling of American beekeepers. It is a compilation and analysis of responses from those who voluntarily self-report. The results show this.

The roughly 4,700 beekeepers who responded this year account for only about 12% of all US honeybee colonies. Professor Dennis Van Engelsdorp – founder of the Bee Informed Partnership  – showed in his own research that hobbyist and small-scale beekeepers (who account for the majority of the BIP respondents) have more severe parasite and pathogen infestations of their honeybee hives than large-scale commercial beekeepers. That increases colony loss rates.

Interestingly, while BIP survey results go up and down from year to year, the overall trend line over the survey’s first dozen years has been downward. But that may reflect small-scale beekeeper experiences.

In any case, US honeybee colony numbers aren’t shrinking; they’re growing, regardless of what the latest BIP survey results find. The USDA’s actual census of beekeepers and their colonies – which actually is systematic and scientific – shows that the overall number of US honeybee colonies grew by 4% in 2018.

Indeed, in releasing the latest BIP results, Van Engelsdorp himself said, “We’re not worried about honeybees going extinct.  We’re worried about commercial beekeepers going extinct.” Hive infections, long distance travel and other aspects of the business have driven more beekeepers to other professions.

Second, there’s good news in the latest Bee Informed Partnership survey. Finally, after years of misleading media and activist rhetoric seeking to pin the blame for honey bees’ problems on agricultural pesticides –neonicotinoid insecticides in particular – attention is now focusing where it should have been all along: on Varroa destructor mites. These tiny, nasty critters and the multiple virulent diseases they spread to honeybee colonies are the foremost scourge of our beloved, and vital, insect pollinators.

This year’s BIP survey announcement and most of the resulting press coverage emphasized this point.

It’s about time. Neonics have become the world’s most widely used insecticides because they work – and pose minimal risks to bees. Some are sprayed on fruits and vegetables, but nearly 90% are used as seed coatings for corn, wheat, canola and other crops. They are absorbed into plant tissues as crops grow.

That means they target only pests that actually feed on the crops, particularly during early growth stages. Since they don’t wash off, they reduce the need for multiple sprays with insecticides that truly can harm bees, birds, fish, other animals and non-pest insects. And they are barely detectable in pollen and nectar – which is why neonic residues are well below levels that can adversely affect bees.

That makes it ironic, and outrageous, that relentless anti-pesticide campaigners – especially those who profess to be alarmed about the “plight of the bumblebee” and want to ban neonics – have said virtually nothing about Varroa mites. Nor have they proposed any plan to deal with this scourge.

Thankfully, recent USDA research has identified a promising new approach of using RNA interference (RNAi) to disrupt the reproduction of another bee parasite, Nosema ceranae – the honeybee’s second-worst scourge. USDA is also reporting progress in efforts to breed more Varroa-resistant or Varroa-tolerant honey bees, which somehow have better hygienic habits: removing mites from one other.

Activists and journalists concerned about bees and pollinator health should have focused on this all along – particularly since available Varroa treatments no longer work as well, due to the mite’s uncanny ability to develop resistance to treatments. Instead, years of energy and millions of dollars have been wasted pursuing a wrong-headed crusade against neonic insecticides that are irrelevant to any challenges facing honey bees and other pollinators. 

Phil Connors finally escaped from his time loop after he ended his disdain for small town Punxsutawney, began performing good deeds and told Rita he truly loved her. Maybe now – finally – self-professed bee advocates and environmental crusaders will wake up from their Groundhog-Day-in-June time loop and devote some time, effort and honesty to addressing the real problems that affect honey and wild bees.

Maybe they will also stop treating modern conventional farming like an evil pariah, and organic farming like a planetary savior. Maybe they will stop repeating the organic food industry’s Big Lie: that it doesn’t use pesticides. In fact, as Professor David Zaruk explains on his RiskMonger.com website, organic farmers employ a dozen highly toxic “natural” pesticides and over 3,000 other “approved” pesticides.

Several are highly toxic to bees: acetic acid, copper sulfate, pyrethrins, hydrogen peroxide, azidirachtin, rotenone, citronella oil, eucalyptus oil and garlic extract, and spinosad. Several are very toxic to humans: boron can affect people’s brain, liver or heart; rotenone has been linked to Parkinson’s disease; nicotine sulfate is a neurotoxin that has actually killed several gardeners; and copper sulfate can readily and severely injure a user’s brain, liver, kidneys, stomach and intestinal linings, skin and eyes ... or even kill!

But again, Varroa is the villain, the real, enduring threat to bees – not pesticides, synthetic or organic.

Unfortunately, persuading environmentalists to acknowledge these realities is not likely. They have too much ideology, power and prestige invested in their campaigns against synthetic pesticides and conventional farming – to say nothing of the billions of dollars they’ve gotten from organic interests.

Bottom line? Lies, deception and fraud are unethical, immoral and illegal no matter who engages in it, devises the strategies or finances the campaigns. These environmentalist campaigns have been employed over and over because they work – and because too many legislators, regulators, judges and journalists have repeated, approved and applauded them. It will be an uphill battle to change that dynamic.

Let’s hope a few brave lawmakers start applying the same standards of truth and ethics across the board.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of many articles on the environment. He has degrees in geology, ecology and environmental law