 PAN UK's policy officer, Nick Mole, was one of the speakers at the London Bee Summit 2010. Here's what he said...
A few facts to begin with:
· Globally pollination is estimated to be worth £141 billion pa.
· In the EU honey bees play a key role in the successful production of 80 million tonnes of food every year – that is 160 kilos of food per EU citizen.
· In the winter of 2008/2009 around one fifth of honeybee hives were lost in the UK.
So what effect are pesticides having on bee populations?
It is fair to say that nobody is really clear on the role of pesticides in bee deaths given the range of other factors that could be having an effect. However, what is recognised is that there are three issues related to pesticide use that are part of the problem:
•Toxic pesticides having acute or chronic effects on bee health
•The effects of pesticide as stressors on bees making them more susceptible to parasitic, microbial and viral attack
•And loss of foraging habitat due to the overuse of herbicides and/or widespread monocultures in agriculture, which increase the use of pesticides.
A number of pesticides have been clearly identified as being toxic to bees. In May 2008 the UK Pesticide Safety Directorate, now the Chemicals Regulation Directorate, analysed 286 EU pesticides and identified 40 as being toxic to bees.
We have clear evidence from the US that pesticides are killing bees, an issue that was very clearly highlighted in the film Vanishing of the bees, a film I urge you to watch if you haven’t already done so. It contains a lot of information about bee deaths from the point of view of beekeepers who are unanimous in stating that pesticides are part of the problem.
India is currently suffering from a huge decline in bee and other pollinator species which is resulting in reductions in crop yields - something that India really can’t afford. Some of these pollinator losses have been linked with pesticide use.
In Europe there have been concerns for many years about the effects of pesticides on bees, particularly the class of pesticides known as neo-nicotinoids.
In 1999, over ten years ago, the French government banned the use of the product Gaucho as a seed dressing on sunflowers, which contains the neonicotinoid imidacloprid, when the loss of a third of French honeybees occurred after the widespread use of Gaucho had begun. Subsequent investigations into the impact of pesticides on bees led to further curbs on imidacloprid as well as fipronil.
In 2006 European beekeepers demanded an EU wide withdrawal of four bee toxic pesticides. This request was sadly ignored by the EU.
In 2008, Germany suspended seed treatments containing three insecticides toxic to bees. The President of the German Professional Beekeepers' Association, Manfred Hederer, is quoted as saying "It's a real bee emergency, 50-60% of the bees have died on average and some beekeepers have lost all their hives."
Tests on dead bees showed that 99% of those examined had a build-up of clothianidin. The chemical, produced by Bayer CropScience, a subsidiary of the German chemical giant Bayer, is sold in Europe under the trade name Poncho. It was applied to the seeds of sweetcorn planted along the Rhine. This same pesticide is approved for use in UK agriculture and is contained in seven products available to farmers.
In Paris bee numbers are on the increase due not only to the increasing popularity of urban beekeeping but also to the fact that Paris has been largely pesticide free for the last 10 years.
So what has the UK government done? Nothing at all, no withdrawals of potentially bee toxic pesticides, despite the fact that a major retailer banned certain uses of neonicotinoid in order to protect bees, a lack of research into the effects of pesticides on bees and a continued refusal to acknowledge the potential for harm as evidenced in 2009 when the then DEFRA minister Dan Norris stated: “There is no evidence that authorised pesticides pose an unacceptable risk.” Does that mean that there is some kind of acceptable risk to bees?
What needs to be done?
The key to bee survival is that we err on the side of precaution. We can’t legislate against the varroa mite or other diseases harmful to bees but we can legislate for reductions and bans on the use of pesticides toxic to bees and we can legislate for prohibitions on use of pesticides in certain areas such as parks. Such a prohibition would increase the areas that bees can forage in that are free of potentially harmful chemicals. These are all actions that could be taken today if the political will to do so was present.
Shamefully the UK government only yesterday has chosen to ignore the golden opportunity we have to do this by failing to include such measures in its intended implementation of progressive new EU legislation on pesticide use.
If the matter is to be addressed and bee populations are to be protected we need clear, progressive, visionary thinking from government, not a head in the sand approach and the persistent kowtowing to the opinions of the agrochemical industry as has been the case up until now.
We need actions not words and we need them now.
Thank you.
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