Kate Griffith’s honeybee colony functioned as they all do: with near-impossible efficiency, as thousands of bees performed individually assigned tasks to keep the hive running smoothly.
Her colony’s queen produced eggs, the male drones ensured those eggs were fertilized, and the female workers took care of the rest: foraging for nectar and pollen, keeping things clean, building beeswax combs, and caring for the queen.
“Bees are very organized,” Griffith said. “They’re very structured. It’s obvious what they’re doing, and each one has a job, and they know what their job is.”
But one day, things changed.
Griffith’s bees began acting erratically, flying in aimless circles and falling on their backs. Then, in a matter of minutes, they’d roll over and die.
The deaths continued for weeks, until the once-thriving colony had entirely collapsed.
“Usually when bees die, they disappear,” Griffith said. “Bees normally don’t die in their own hives. They go away to die.”
Griffith, who had been beekeeping in Lompoc for four years, had never before experienced such a collapse.
“It was devastating,” she said. “I lost thousands and thousands of bees in a short amount of time.”
The collapse’s culprit: neonicotinoids, the most popular class of pesticides in the U.S. and an alleged force behind the nation’s declining bee health. Beekeepers in Northern Santa Barbara County constantly face the insecticide’s effects, which many beekeepers and environmentalists say are neurologically harmful and ultimately fatal to pollinators.
Neonicotinoids, or neonics, are largely banned in the European Union, and Home Depot and Lowe’s are phasing out neonics from their shelves. However, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been slow to confirm suspicions.
The EPA began reassessing the pesticide class in 2009 and in early January produced its first of four preliminary risk assessments. The report focused on imidacloprid, a type of neonic. The findings were generally unsurprising: In most cases, imidacloprid harms bees. The chemical’s effects include pollinator deaths and less honey produced.
Enraged by the EPA’s slow assessment, the Center for Food Safety filed a lawsuit against the agency on Jan. 6 on behalf of beekeepers, farmers, and sustainable agriculture and conservation groups. The lawsuit holds the EPA responsible for neglecting to curb widespread wildlife health issues caused by neonics.
But the EPA is calling its years-long risk assessment period thorough, not neglectful. In an email to the Sun, EPA pesticides program representatives said the assessment “took this long because the pollinator risk assessment protocol did not exist until fairly recently, and the studies it requires take time to conduct.”
It continued: “Until very recently, scientific uncertainty and a lack of a standardized risk assessment for pollinators made it practically impossible to authoritatively answer questions about the degree to which bees are affected by pesticides.”
The email pointed out that the agency has halted review of new neonicotinoid applications. The EPA also proposed last year to prohibit foliar application, or direct application to crop leaves, for highly toxic pesticides, including neonics. However, this proposition is not yet in effect.
“[The] EPA is reviewing the over 100,000 comments that were submitted and plans to finalize this action by summer 2016,” the EPA’s email said of its proposed restrictions.
Most treated crops reviewed in the imidacloprid assessment showed harmful effects to individual bees with an “uncertain” impact on colonies. However, a 2012 study by the Harvard School of Public Health showed imidacloprid to cause colony collapse, and beekeepers often observe pesticide poisoning at the colony level.
Louise Larson is one such beekeeper. Larson lost a colony last summer, most likely due to neonics.
“The hive that I’d had was going on its second year and doing really well in my backyard,” she said. “All of a sudden, my husband called and said there were a bunch of dead bees out in front of the hive, and the bees seemed to be coming out there and falling off.”
Larson, who has crop fields near her Lompoc home, said her dying bees’ symptoms resembled those of neonicotinoid poisoning.
“I think this particular colony found a nectar source that was treated with pesticides and brought that back to the hive,” she said, “and it just poisoned the whole hive.”
Santa Barbara County Farm Bureau Director Paul Van Leer said the best way for farmers to safeguard nearby bee populations is by following the EPA instructions on their neonics.
“Any product you use, the label describes what you can and cannot do and what you should and should not do,” Van Leer said. “That’s how most growers and people do it. That’s how we go about our business.”
Growers are legally obligated to follow the directions on their pesticides’ labels, which will sometimes advise not to spray during bloom or times of day in which bees are particularly active. The EPA’s email confirmed that as long as a grower is following a pesticide’s label, its use is legal.
Van Leer said growers should also notify nearby beekeepers when they plan to spray their crops, giving the beekeepers time to move or cover their hives.
“It’s the good neighbor policy,” he said. “Let them know what you’re doing.”
The EPA’s email echoed Van Leer’s suggestion: “[The] EPA is encouraging beekeepers, growers, and applicators to communicate with one another about when pesticide applications are planned and the location of bees.”
On that token, Grower-Shipper Association of Santa Barbara President Claire Wineman said there’s a reason so many growers use neonics: They are effective against unwanted pests.
“There’s certainly a need and a reason for using them, and there’s often multiple tools in the toolbox, and it’s important to have a variety of options to choose from,” Wineman said, “You wouldn’t be using a hammer when you need a screwdriver.”
Neonicotinoid use goes beyond the farmer and the crop field. Beekeeper Griffith pointed out that systemic pesticides—which include imidacloprid—are often built into plants, soils, and plant foods used by home gardeners. For this reason, many gardeners could be unintentionally harming bee populations.
“Plants are sold as being bug-resistant, and guess why?” Griffith said. “They come this way because of the fact that they’ve got systemics already in their system.”
She added that aside from reading product labels and communicating with neighbors, beekeepers can’t do much to protect their bees from pesticide poisoning.
“You can’t control what farmers or home gardeners do,” she said. “Bees can travel several miles to gather their pollen and nectar, so it’s really hard to control the environment around, especially since we live in an area where there’s so much agriculture and gardening.”
Opinions on alternatives to bee-harming pesticides vary. Griffith recommended organic, non-toxic insecticides. However, Van Leer said such products are often less effective.
In its email to the Sun, the EPA said it’s “not recommending that growers use alternatives to imidacloprid for these particular crops at this time. Many alternatives to imidacloprid are older chemistries that are almost as risky for bees as imidacloprid, but are more risky for humans and wildlife.”
The EPA said it’s “premature to speculate on what action” the agency will take in response to its preliminary risk assessments. The imidacloprid report is available for public comment until March 15, at which point the “EPA will incorporate public comments and decide on what actions to take at that time.”
The EPA will take appropriate regulatory action only if it determines a pesticide is unreasonably risky, the agency wrote.
“At this time, the EPA has only published a preliminary pollinator risk assessment for imidacloprid,” the email said. “We have not finalized the assessment or concluded that imidacloprid is causing unreasonable risks to bees.”
Meanwhile, beekeepers suspecting pesticide poisoning can report the incident to the EPA and request an investigation by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation.
Staff Writer Brenna Swanston can be reached at bswanston@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 21-28, 2016.
