As a student back in the 1970s, I studied the biochemistry of pesticides. At that time, there was a clear demarcation between systemic and other types of pesticides. Systemics were used strictly for ornamental plants—those plants not eaten by humans or livestock. Yes, an animal could be stricken after consuming the plant, but for the most part, ornamental crops were small and covered little acreage.

But in the intervening years our government—through the actions of the EPA and USDA— has sanctioned the consumption of pesticides by humans. The old theory that you could wash it off is but a memory. By using systemic preparations or genetic manipulation, poisons are now incorporated into the very fabric of the foods we eat. When I see a bee pupa stricken with deformities or a worker bee shivering with convulsions, I always wonder when and where we will draw the line. Living things are, after all, more similar than different. I truly believe that where the honey bee goes mankind will follow.

These developments are not surprising in a system where safety testing is done by the companies who will gain from their approval . . . or in an economy where a company can buy out those who say inconvenient things. None of that has changed.

I also find it disturbing that our government has established no protocols for measuring metabolite toxicity, sub-lethal effects, and synergistic amplification of poisons. The popular press often refers to these chemical processes as if they were newly discovered evils—something we’ve never seen before—but in fact, Rachel Carson addressed all three of these issues by page 31 of Silent Spring.

Yes, the chemicals are different, the terminology is different, but the concepts are just the same. Rachel Carson laid out the facts for all of us to see. So why are we not paying attention? Haven’t we heard that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it?

In re-reading Silent Spring, I can’t help but single out her prophetic words about pollinators. “Man is more dependent on these wild pollinators than he usually realizes. Even the farmer himself seldom understands the value of wild bees and often participates in the very measures that rob him of their services.”

Now, fifty years later, after colony collapse disorder has devastated countless numbers of managed bees, we are suddenly asking what will happen if the honey bee dies out. Ironically, therein lies the beauty of colony collapse disorder: this devastating affliction has focused attention on pesticides like nothing else since Silent Spring. But we should have known . . . Rachel Carson told us this day was coming.

If we intend to turn the tide on the forever-expanding pesticide industry we must remember that education is job one. Armed with what you learn here tonight and a lawn chair, I invite you to spend some time in the gardening section of your local home improvement store. Sit a spell. Watch the pesticides fly out the door. You will be amazed at the trouble we’re in.

I commend MESA for selecting a topic so ironically on point fifty years after the publication of Silent Spring. Tonight, I want you to glean as much as possible from our distinguished panel, then pass it on to your friends and family. All of us—we humans as well as the birds, the bees, the fishes, and frogs—need all the help we can get.

Rusty
HoneyBeeSuite

The authors designed an experiment in which areas of non-contaminated brood comb and pesticide-contaminated brood comb were affixed side-by-side within active brood nests. The contaminants, the brood, and the resulting adult bees were monitored over several generations in order to assess the differences between brood raised on clean vs. contaminated comb.

The researchers found several significant differences:

• Delayed adult emergence occurred in brood raised in contaminated cells.

• Increased brood mortality occurred in contaminated cells.

• Bees reared in contaminated comb had shorter lifespans (about four days) than those reared in clean comb.

• Over time, the amount of pesticide decreased in the contaminated comb and increased in the clean comb, indicating that pesticides migrate throughout the hive. This is probably caused by movement of the nurse bees during their daily activities.

These differences can have far-reaching ramifications for colony health.

• Delayed adult emergence means more mites can be raised to maturity. In this experiment, some foundress mites were able to produce an extra mite per brood cycle. This can have catastrophic effects on a colony over time.

• Increased mortality of brood puts a greater strain on both the queen and the workers. The queen must lay more eggs to make up for the losses, and a smaller number of workers are available to care for the brood. In addition, valuable resources are expended on brood that doesn’t survive.

• A shorter adult life span means that each forager has fewer total foraging days in which to build colony strength before winter. In some cases, “under-aged” worker bees may be forced to forage, which decreases the number of nurse bees available to raise young.

From a practical point of view, in-hive chemicals should be avoided whenever possible, and brood combs should be rotated out of the colony on a schedule commensurate with total pesticide exposure.

Rusty

HoneyBeeSuite.com

It all started when my husband and I decided to sell a rental house we owned in downtown Olympia. The house was built in 1906 and was completely remodeled by a VA finish carpenter in the early 1980s. We purchased it in 1997 and kept it in rental service until September of this year. The house had been a great investment, but we were tired of being landlords and decided to get out.

We told our real estate agent in advance that we did not want to accept offers based on FHA loans, but he assured us it would be “no problem” so we reluctantly let him check off the FHA box. Sure enough, the first offer that came in was from a first-time home buyer seeking an FHA loan.

The problems started almost immediately when the certified pest inspector crawled under the house and photographed what he called an anobiid beetle infestation. Although neither of us had ever heard of such a creature, we studied the photos and decided he was crazy. When the carpenter re-built the house in the early 1980s he apparently found some weak joists under the floor, some of which had beetle holes. At the time he “sistered” these with new lumber. This simply means he installed new joists alongside the old ones to add strength and minimize distortion.

The photographs clearly showed the old wood with the beetle holes and the “new” (1980s) wood without a single hole or any other damage. We reasoned that if there were active beetles down there, they would have started boring into the “new” wood by this time. After all the “new’ wood is now thirty years old. Furthermore, an associate of my husband assured him that if anobiid beetles were active down there all these years there wouldn’t be a house left to sell.

Instead of listening to logic the bank was adamant. The spray had to be completed and the beetles “certified” dead. I couldn’t—and can’t—believe that a branch of the federal government would require us to spray poison in a dwelling as a condition of sale—a poison that will seep through the floorboards and into the home—a poison that isn’t necessary—a poison that the new owner will get to breathe and live with for who knows how long. I asked how this was ethical. But no one seemed to care. “Just do it and get it over with,” I was told.

So I did. It was the last thing on my list because I didn’t want to go back into that house after it was sprayed. I choose an exterminator—the $250 guy—who I liked better than the $500 guy, who I liked marginally better than the $600 guy.

Turns out, I really did like the $250 guy. He was a large man who arrived wearing a bushy gray beard and knee pads. He had a hand sprayer that he filled from a big tank on the back of his truck. I eyed him doubtfully but he managed to marshmallow himself into the tiny crawlspace opening. He spent all of fifteen minutes under there and then reappeared, spanking thirty years of dust from his fleece vest. “I’m done,” he said, “but there ain’t no beetles down there. Never was.”

I asked about the holes in the old wood. “Them’s exit holes,” he said. “No entrance holes. Dry as a bone down there.”

He went on to explain that in the old days, before wood was kiln dried, the lumber might contain anobiid beetles that entered the wood while the tree was still standing in the forest. If the wood was used in a damp environment, the beetles could thrive and you would see entrance holes and sawdust where the larvae bored back in. If you see only exit holes, the environment was too dry to support them and they died. End of story. Kiln drying kills the beetles, which explains why they are no longer a common pest.

I wrote a check and received my precious “pest certification.” As I walked back to my truck I could smell the pesticide seeping from the crawlspace. I thought of those molecules landing in the soil, washing away in the coming rains, and racing through the storm drains to pool in the estuaries where fingerling salmon try to survive their first year—all for a pest that doesn’t exist and never did. It’s so sad I wanted to cry.

Rusty

HoneyBeeSuite.com

Yesterday an urban beekeeper told me that, unlike rural honey, his honey was pesticide free. He went on to explain that he was miles from the nearest cropland and the concomitant pesticide abuse.

Now this really took me aback. I’ve studied pesticide use and abuse most of my adult life and such a thought never—ever—occurred to me. In fact, just off the cuff, I would guess there is greater abuse, greater variety, and higher spot concentrations of pesticides in urban and suburban settings than in rural ones.

So I did some poking around on various urban beekeeping sites and discovered that “pesticide-free” is a popular assertion among urban beekeepers.

While I’m not a fan of conventional agriculture, I know some things about it. For starters, most farmers are in an economic stranglehold due to a bunch of factors that I won’t touch here. But farmers need to watch every penny, and agricultural chemicals on a conventional farm are a big-ticket item. Farmers go out of their way to get the most for every pesticide dollar spent—and that means not applying more than necessary.

Chemicals on large farms are usually applied by licensed pesticide applicators, and the applicators most skilled in applying pesticides at the recommended rate without over applying will win the most contracts. For farmers, the slogan is “As much as necessary but as little as possible.” It’s a simple financial necessity.

Homeowners are a completely different story. On the first warm day of spring take a folding chair into your local home improvement center, drug store, or hardware store. I’m serious. Make yourself comfortable and watch the pesticides fly off the shelves. Poisonous powders, granules, sprays, gels, and aerosol cans are hard to keep in stock. Stores sell truckloads of this stuff and there’s at least one such store on every block. You can even buy pesticide at most grocery stores: just throw it in your cart along with bread, lettuce, and baby formula.

People take these preparations home and douse their precious flower beds under the assumption that if some is good, more is better. I once saw a woman empty half a can of insecticide on a single hapless spider. She just kept spraying and spraying and spraying until the poor creature keeled over from the sheer weight of the stuff. The really sad part is that insecticides are designed to kill—you guessed it—insects. Many of these products just annoy the spiders.

The problem is that homeowners are not trained to use these products and usually don’t bother reading the label. And even if they do read the label, they often can’t identify the thing they are trying to kill. The whole system is flawed.

It turns out that homeowners are not the only culprits. Several studies have shown that golf courses use 5 to 7 times more pesticide per acre than the most intensely managed farms. Other big users include highway departments, park departments, utilities, cemeteries, city and county governments, apartment complexes, and office parks. These are mostly urban and suburban entities. I would love to know the average pesticide use per acre in the urban versus the rural environment. I have a hunch it would be shocking.

Now, for those urban beekeepers who think their honey is pesticide free, I ask you: How do you get your bees to avoid lawns, planting beds, flower pots, hanging baskets, planter boxes, and gardens that contain these things? Remember that a bee during a nectar dearth may forage within a five-mile radius of the home hive. That is 78.5 square miles or 50,240 acres. Do you have any idea how many households or other entities can fit in that area? And how many of them are working overtime to keep the pesticide industry in business? The amount of pesticide use in urban and suburban areas is nothing short of staggering.

So which honey truly has more pesticide contamination? I don’t know. But I think it is unfair to assume that urban honey is purer than rural honey, and I think it’s even more unfair to promote it that way. Until someone has the time and financial wherewithal to make a detailed scientific study, it is irresponsible for either side to make such a claim.

Rusty

HoneyBeeSuite.com

I wrote back and suggested she contact a beekeeper in her area—not an exterminator or pest control company—and see if someone would come and get them. I also told her that a beekeeper might be able to save them by feeding them honey or sugar syrup but that they would almost surely die if left to their own devices. A swarm at this time of year is often known as a “starvation swarm” because, most likely, they were out of food at home so they absconded in a last-ditch effort to save themselves.

Much to my surprise she e-mailed back the next day and said a beekeeper had come to her home and captured the swarm. She also said the beekeeper promised he would do his best to keep them alive. But here’s the clincher: based on what I had written, she had put out sugar syrup for the bees until the beekeeper arrived!

I thought this was one of the sweetest (no pun) and caring things I’ve ever known a non-beekeeper to do. I was so impressed. In my experience, people like to run out and kill swarms—or pay to have them killed—immediately. And here was a complete stranger reading between the lines of my e-mail and feeding sugar syrup to a hoard of insects—stinging insects that can be strange and intimidating, not to mention just plain scary, to a non-beekeeper.

I thought about this incident a lot during the Christmas holiday. It occurred just several days after my daughter told me about a friend of hers who recently had a swarm land on her porch rail. Instead of calling a beekeeper she went to Home Depot, bought a spray can of poison, and emptied it on the bees. My daughter was incensed over this indiscriminate use of pesticide—not only because of the dead bees but because of the unborn twins the woman is carrying. Chances are she was not wearing protective gear and she (and the twins) got a good dose of whatever it was before she was finished. So sad. So unnecessary.

To the lady in Arizona I say “Thank you!” To the lady in Washington I say “Hope your kids are okay.” To everyone else I say, “Call a beekeeper before an exterminator.” Just a little bit of empathy can go a very long way.

Rusty