SAVE THE BEES
David against Goliath?
A French photographer Marie Lasource, from Marseille, I'm following on
Facebook, has released a series of beautiful pictures on bees. I invite you to
see them on the following link:
It gives me the opportunity to address the subject of bees, which I have
not yet spoken.
As an illustration of the article I will post a picture I made this
spring. It is not a professional quality photo, but I like it.
The controversy about the effects of insecticides on bees swells day by
day worldwide.
The subject has been widely taken up and over-used by various
environmental lobbies, with the primary purpose to suppress an entire family of
insecticides, neonicotinoids or neonics, widely used in world agriculture.
Yet the scientific evidence put forward are largely questionable. Even
the own world scientific community agrees that the problem is extremely
complex.
Not being a scientist myself, I will not get into that debate.
We must first point out that the decline of bees is a very worrying
phenomenon, but the actual severity is relative, since the overall population
of bees is not in a so bad situation as some would have us believe. The graphic
below, derived from http://pflanzenschuetzer.ch/mit-den-honigbienen-geht-es-aufwaerts/?lang=fr
and from FAO data shows that bee colonies and honey production (proving
that bee colonies are active) follow a positive trend in progression.
What we observe in general, are sudden local aggravations, with
sometimes tragic deaths, but more often punctual.
The Epilobee study in Europe shows significant variations in mortality
colonies from one year to another (http://ec.europa.eu/food/animals/live_animals/bees/study_on_mortality/index_en.htm) .
The trend over the long term still remains positive.
It is therefore important to relativize the severity of the problem,
even if we have to consider it very seriously. Today, according to FAO and
Epilobee, there is no reason to fear the disappearance of bees.
I want to place me again on the side of the farmer.
In this debate, as in many others, farmers are believed to defend these
insecticides in an essentially productivist goal.
Yet there is a very contradictory point in the debate in question.
One of the arguments put forward is that the disappearance of bees would
cause the disappearance of many plant foods whose production would be
practically annihilated.
The first affected by pollination problems would therefore farmers
themselves, with damage far more serious than those caused by the disappearance
of a family of insecticides. So they are the first after the beekeepers course,
to have a vested interest in the preservation of the bees.
I am specialized in peach production, which pollinate very well without
assistance, but also in plums, which hardly produces without the active
participation of bees. Yet I use pesticides, even néonicotonoïdes but with
infinite care, the same way I use any other pesticide, taking into account all
side effects.
What must be understood is that the use of insecticides addresses a
concern of another sort. This is primarily to ensure the health of plants and
the quality of produced food. If pesticides are used properly, whether chemical
or biological, they do not represent a danger to bees. And it is the same for
neonicotinoids. They suffer from a terrible reputation with the public, mainly
due to unexpected effects of seed coating. This technique, practiced in the
years 1990-2000, had a serious impact on bees foraging during several weeks or
several months after sowing. Once identified problems, this use was banned. But
this group of insecticides remained the target of unwarranted attacks.
The debate about the effects of products on bees is far from simple. On
the following link you will find (in English) an article, in fact a call to ban
two biological insecticides, rotenone and azadirachtin for their serious side
effects on bees and environment.
http://risk-monger.blogactiv.eu/2015/06/17/save-the-bees-ban-these-two-toxic-pesticides-immediately/
Also be aware that the simple spray of water, without any added product
of any kind, in hours of bee foraging, causes the death of a large number of
individuals. Bees are very fragile insects. Farmers know this and always take into
account. They need bees, and they know how to preserve them.
But deleting an entire family of insecticides, will inevitably cause the
overuse of the few remaining products, and in conditions that are not
necessarily favorable to bees, or more generally to the environment.
The interest for a farmer to have a diversity of products and modes of
action to protect crops, is primarily have the possibility to alternate
families. This increases the efficiency while reducing the number of
applications needed and the risk that appear resistant strains of the disease
or insect to fight.
In the past fifteen years, the European Community, as I have already
explained, removed about 70% of authorized pesticides. Deletions responded to
several types of considerations, especially environmental risks, the ability of
these molecules to degrade rapidly in air, water, soil and food, and health
risks.
Currently licensed products had to pass many experimental phases to
verify that they are able to be authorized. National governments remain free to
be more stringent than the European regulations. In no case they can be more
lax.
To be clear, we will ban neonicotinoids, but we won't solve the problem
targeted. But cons, we will cause other serious problems, with consequences
difficult to predict.
Indeed, bee mortality is a complex phenomenon in which it is likely that
insecticides play an aggravating role, but probably not the main role.
Why else do the bees die in mountain areas where pesticides are used
very little, or in some parts of Africa for example, where agriculture is very
traditional with a very low use of pesticides?
The main causes are uncontrolled development of a number of health
problems of bees and hives (Varroa, American foulbrood and European foulbrood
bacterias, Asian hornet, more than 20 types of viruses, etc.), a worrying
reduction of biodiversity in some areas, and the importation of bees from other
origins, not always prepared to survive in their new living conditions (see in
this respect, the recent Huffington Post article, in its French edition http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/2015/06/17/abeilles-victimes-pesticides-pas-aussi-simple_n_7604548.html#
.)
Bees need flowers. Plant diversity allows them to find food throughout
their period of activity. The local reduction of this diversity causes, in bee
colonies, lacks during periods of time which forces them to fly even further to
find flowers, and also forces the bees to start flying younger. In short, the
bees are hungry, and one solution is to feed the hives. See the following
article in French. http://www.forumphyto.fr/2014/09/05/pour-la-sante-des-abeilles-une-seule-priorite-les-nourrir/
All this causes a depletion of the worker bees and weakening of hives,
which makes them more susceptible to attacks of pests and combined side effects
of pesticides and pollution.
This loss of biodiversity is very marked around cities and around the
roads, railways and other public services. In regions a priori not very
sensitive to this kind of phenomenon, it is also affected by climate change. It
is also marked in terms of agriculture, especially through specialization of
entire regions. A cereals area, for example, can seek biodiversity in
maintaining or establishing forested or uncultivated areas, and fallow. A
region specialized in open air fruit and vegetable crops will have little risk
of biodiversity loss.
The important thing to understand is that we stigmatize a unique
problem, in this case a secondary one, so that we don't act on the root causes.
Instead of deleting an entire family of helpful pesticides, I am more in
favor of a revision of their conditions of use, with a strict control, so as to
further reduce their impact on the environment.
In my opinion, the prohibition would be an agronomic and environmental
aberration.
Fortunately, were created some multidisciplinary research organizations,
as Epilobee study in Europe, to understand the phenomenon as a whole.
This prohibition, if it occurs, will make the little people happy. They
will have the impression of having won a battle against political evil and the
terrible farmers, probably in the pay of lobbies that seek to dominate the
world, and against almighty chemical companies.
David against Goliath.
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