Top level EPA officials observe California bee shortfall EPA senior

Top level EPA officials observe California bee shortfall
EPA senior staff put on a bee suits and look inside beehives
National Honey Bee Advisory Board (NHBAB) and the National Pollinator Defense Fund
(NPDF) hosted a tour this spring with High Level EPA officials to assess honeybee health in
almonds. Acting Director of the EPA Jim Jones; Don Brady Director of Environmental Fates and
Effects Division (EFED) and Anita Pease, Associate Director EFED, along with Cindy Wire
EPA Region 9 representative from the Pesticide Program, along with other industry officials
attended a two day tour through the Central California Valley to learn more about what is
harming honeybee populations.
The bees are in trouble and cumulative pesticide
exposure is the proximate cause.
The tour began with a PowerPoint presentation
which summarized potential pesticide exposures
to a bee operation for a year. It started with a
series of pictures from the 2012 EPA bee tour
which showed Darren Cox’s mountain bees just
before a bloom spray event, and the same hives a
week later, significantly weakened. Dependant on
year, bees can be exposed to as many as 6
pesticides applications during almond bloom. We;
NHBAB and NPDF discussed mislabeling of fungicides and Insect Growth Regulator’s with
EPA officials to make them aware of losses during spray bloom events.
Next we discussed follow-up pollinations such as cherries which can exposes the hive to more
pesticides; interwoven in the discussion was the problems associated with the spraying of bee
attractive adjacent crops.
Spring is a critical time of year because most bee operations split hives to make up losses; there
was discussion of what effect earlier pesticide exposures may have on the viability of the
splitting process.
The picture to left shows pulling out splits which had queens
started that laid a round or two of brood and then failed…
Corn planting dust
was discussed; we
talked about the
bio accumulation
in the soil, up to
26 parts per
billion. (Bayer’s investigation of Steve Ellis).
Perhaps the dirt itself, ie dust may be a contributor to
the mortality problem.
We described how this exposure causes hive depopulation
followed by queen supercedures several weeks later and
showed several pictures of this; left…
Hives were followed though
soybeans spray exposure quickly
followed by corn pollen; we
talked about the break in the late
summer brood cycle which may
cause a retention of older forage bees in the over winter clusters… We discussed short residual
spraying at night during bloom periods as a vast improvement to the 24/7 of ERT’s even during
the middle of bloom which currently happens. We discussed the fact that OECA and State
Primacy Partners are doing absolutely nothing to educate or fine errant applicators, which FIFRA
requires…
While each crop area has it own set of circumstances, all of them boil down to problems when
pollinator toxic pesticides are allow to be used indiscriminately on bloom.
Migratory bee stress from the early 60’s was compared it
to air ride trucks and better roads of today…
It was explained that California bee operations often
place bees for pollination from other operations that
choose not physically come to California. If you loose the
California operation you loose much more than just one
operation you lose pollination ‘infrastructure’
EPA was shown several pictures of merging hives in
January in a stock yard which had about a 2/3 loss.
It was mentioned that because the industry at large took such an large overall loss this season,
and that because both our Northern California and Southeastern beekeepers that generally supply
queens and packaged bees are affected, that it will be difficult to get replacement queens and
packages in a timely fashion this spring; this will likely suppress the number of hives that the
industry can produce in 2013… Higher honey prices may affect some bee operations decision to
split hives small to create numbers; they may opt to split to a more normal size hive creating
honey producing hives instead of simply beehives.
Left is a picture of stored over winter dead out
equipment.
This represents only about 1/3 of the losses post
2012 honey production for this 4500 colony
operation. We discussed the pesticide exposure that
precipitated the 70% losses.
After this discussion we toured bee hives in almond
pollination contracts; the good the bad and the ugly.
Idaho beehives which had been graded at 7
about 2 weeks prior to our inspection…
had about 3 frames of bees’ average; bee
almond orchard was pathetic.
Because we knew EPA was coming ahead
Jeff Anderson was able to stage an orchard
field run bees, and with hives which ended
the 2013 average; (below)
Good
Field Run
We had lunch in Oakdale hosted by Jeff and Christine Anderson
We inspected
frames of bees
These hives now
flight in the
of time, beekeeper
with good bees,
up being close to
2013 Average?
In the afternoon we met with bee broker, bee strength inspector
Denise Qualls and observed her crew doing strength
inspection… This season Denise’s crew inspected 25% of 48
thousand hives; this afternoon her crew was just under 1/3 of the
way through those inspections… the average frame count was
only 3.8 frames of bees.
The first 4 hives her crew
inspected while we were present
were stone cold dead; the largest
in the drop of 32 hives was about 4
frames of bees… Average was under
2 in this bee operation… this was an
8 frame average contract.
Denise stated that she has inspected
for 7 years now, and that by far and
way this was the worst year for hive
size. She also mentioned that each year the average number of
frames of bees is less. This afternoon Denise still had list 5 pages
long of people still actively looking for hives to rent…
What NHBAB/NPDF ‘heard’ from EPA
The bee industry has done a fair job of
getting EPA’s attention that our industry is
experiencing abnormally high
/unsustainable bee morality.
Foliarly applied pesticides…
Even though EPA acknowledges that their
incident reporting pipeline is absolutely
broken and they are working on it; because
of lack of bee kill incident reports reaching
them, they are not convinced that pesticides are a significant player in abnormal bee mortality.
EPA does not require the States to forward reports of bee kill incidents they investigate.
Historically EPA has not accepted reports directly from beekeepers as they have a ‘vested
interest’ which leads EPA to believe that the information they supply lacks veracity.
State Pesticide Enforcement people believe that mandatory language on pesticide labels is
unenforceable; EPA has no immediate plans to remedy the language/enforceability problems.
While EPA acknowledges that daytime applications of pollinator toxic pesticides commonly
occur on blooming crops, they claim to be powerless to change the paradigm.
EPA has no immediate plans to require State Primacy Partners applicator education programs
include pollinator protection education as a requirement for licensing.
Systemic Pesticides …
are not regulated as a pesticide because they are not foliarly applied.
While EPA acknowledges that pesticide coated seeds abrade toxic dust during planting, they
have no intention of doing mandatory regulating of this exposure; their approach is to allow
industry and equipment manufactures to determine how or if dust can be abraded. While there is
talk that a new polymer may be able to be utilized to ‘stick’ the pesticides more firmly to the
seed, EPA has no plans to re-assess the potential increase in toxins available in the root zone and
how this may affect the uptake into the pollen and nectar producing parts of the treated plants.
Federal EPA has no intention of ‘interfering’ with States individual rights to regulate pesticides
in their jurisdiction. What that means in practical terms, quoting Jim Jones “I can arrange to
bring all the stakeholders to the table”; you convince others in agriculture to apply pesticides
correctly.
NHBAB recognizes that significant action is
needed; we are however only an “advisory
board”; as such, limited in the scope of actions
that we can instigate. For this reason we are
advising the reader to consider a significant
financial contribution to the National
Pollinator Defense Fund. Check out their
website for more information
http://pollinatordefense.org
Donations can be made on line, or a check can
be sent to
National Pollinator Defense Fund
P.O. Box 193
Danbury, TX 77534