Bee vs. Bee

I have this desire to grow my hair out and wear it in long white braids.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has given endangered status to seven species of bees from the genus Hylaeus (yellow-faced bees) native to the Hawaiian Islands. These species were not the first Species of bee proposed for listing as endangered; the patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis) was proposed earlier than the 2009 petition for the Hawaiian Hylaeus species. This first listing of a bee has been widely, but erroneously, linked to the perceived decline of commercial honeybees (Apis melifora) in the US.

The factors putting pressure on honeybees are not the same as those endangering the Hawaiian yellow-faced bee species. In fact, honeybees themselves are considered to be a significant contributing factor in the decline of the native bees. This is in stark contrast to the perceived notion that neonicotinoid pesticides are to blame for most bee problems. I have written earlier about the lack of measurable decline in honeybee populations in the US; bee populations actually have been increasing, and are now the highest (2014 was a 20 year high) they have been in decades.

A major factor in the more rapid listing of the seven Hylaeus species as endangered is the biology linked to two unique aspects of evolution. Foster’s rule (or “Island effect”) where perturbations in competitive pressures leads to unique evolutionary outcomes for isolated species. The other are the unique evolutionary outcomes caused by plant-pollinator mutualism. These mechanisms synergistically resulted in an evolutionary démarche that shaped the newly listed Hylaeus species into unique cogs of a wonderful tropical ecology

Another factor is the well written petition(s) prepared by members (Lisa Schonberg, Sarina Jepsen, and Scott Hoffman Black) of the Hawaiian Xerces society. Lisa plays drums in the “Secret Drum Band” which performs rather spacey music that probably went over very well in Portland where they recently toured.

“On the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics.” --statement by Richard Feynman after an introduction mentioning that he played bongo drums; Messenger Lectures at Cornell University

The petition(s) drove home the potential impact of extinction of these particular bee species on the overall ecology of a specific area. Extinction of a particular bee species can mean extinction of the plant it is mutualistically tied to. Lose the specialized pollinator and you lose the plant which requires a specialized pollinator in order to reproduce.

Solitary bees need to do all of the tasks required for survival of their nest with limited resources, and so they cannot afford many failures when attempting to perform those tasks. Eusocial bees, like the honeybee, can have a significant failure rate since there are many members of the hive attempting the same task. If a bee goes out in search of nectar or pollen it can search large areas that might not be productive if it is a honeybee, but the solitary bee must confine its search to areas with a higher potential for success; if the solitary bee fails at finding nectar it has spent valuable food resources and this might negatively impact its reproduction success.

Honeybees have the added selective advantage of learning as a hive; the worker that successfully finds nectar or pollen communicates the location of that find to the hive using a dance. So a single honeybee finding a flowering plant might result in hundreds of honeybees draining all the nectar from all the flowers on that plant; while the discovery of a flowering plant by a solitary bee would not bring additional bees to the plant.

Honeybees go after any source of food they can find, and have been observed feeding at plants that are also fed at by the yellow-faced bees. They therefore compete directly with them for sustenance.

“This study reports the results of an experiment run over two years on the impact of commercial honey bees on the fecundity of a solitary native bee, Hylaeus alcyoneus. Registered apiary sites were used as treatment sites (with honey bees) while control sites (without honey bees) were interspersed between. The fecundity of H. alcyoneus was measured using trap nests. We compared the number of nests produced, number of eggs per nest and emerging progeny mass of H. alcyoneus in sites with and without commercial bee hives. The number of nests produced by H. alcyoneus was 23% less (Wilcoxon’s T) at treatment sites than control sites.” -- Paini, Dean R. and Roberts, J. Dale. (2005) Commercial honey bees (Apis mellifera) reduce the fecundity of an Australian native bee (Hylaeus alcyoneus). Biological Conservation Volume 123, Issue 1, May 2005, Pages 103–112

The species of the genus Hylaeus look a lot like wasps, and use a specialized crop for carrying pollen. The seven Hawaiian species of Hylaeus that were listed as endangered also display some of characteristics of mutualism-induced phonotypic specialization. Hylaeus mana, for instance, has evolved into a very tiny bee capable of dropping into the specialized flowers of the parasitic forest sandalwood plant (Santalum freycinetianum).

Hylaeus mana is so small, and the flowers it feeds at so limited, that it was not described until 2002. It had just avoided notice.  Only four specimens have been collected.

The mutualistic evolution of plant-pollinator pairs provides benefits to both. The specialized pollinator –often a solitary bee- almost exclusively feeds at the specialized flower, and it therefore would most likely be carrying pollen from that species of flower to another of the same species. A general pollinator –like the honeybee- would most likely be carrying pollen from whatever was the most abundant flower at the time, and for rare flowers this is most likely not pollen from other flowers of that rare species. The plant in a plant-pollinator pair often evolves the ability to display specific attractants (like the wonderful smells and colors many flowers have) that improve the chances of a specialized pollinator being successful in finding food by finding it.

The specializations and attractants from these mutualistic pairings have created some of the most beautiful things on our planet.

Honeybee competition can result in a vicious feedback loop. They over-graze a specialized plant, and that reduces the reproductive success of the specialized pollinator. This causes a reduction in the specialized pollinator, which reduces the reproductive success of the specialized plant. Less of the specialized food source increases the effect of honeybee competition, and this can cause both the plant and specialized pollinator to spiral into extinction.

The Xerces society petition(s) also describe predation by ants and parasitism by wasps. The prioritization of ecological factors appear heavily weighted towards actions by members of the order Hymenoptera. This may be due in part to the shadow cast by Roy Snelling who died just months before the petition(s) was delivered.

Roy Snelling was a curmudgeonly self-taught entomologist and loud outspoken Atheist who wore his hair in long gray braids and would talk to anyone about the insects that captured his focus for most of the 73 years of his life. He studied all things Hymenoptera, and, though he was employed in Los Angeles at the Natural History Museum there, had a fondness for the bees and ants of the Hawaiian Islands. He described the competition between honeybees and solitary bees. He had also discovered new species of bees and ants. On April 23rd of 2008 he died in his sleep of a heart attack while on safari in Kenya looking for more Hymenoptera.

The problem with this story. This story that is literally about the bees doing the things that make for the better part of the “birds and bees” idiom. This story where long-haired thinkers dance crazily to spacey drum accompaniment through sandalwood scented forests of a tropical paradise. This story where a reasoned petition wins the glacial support of government conservation rules. The problem with this story is that the bees are killing bees; there is no Monsatan or cardboard villain who simplistically decimates the universe in an accelerating bid to increase its evil. We cannot easily partisanize this story in the way an election year requires of everything.

But come November we will again be living in the beautiful complex world of scents and buzzing that makes the study of ecological-evolutionary biology resonate within that thin film that supports life as we know it on this blue sphere of a planet we call Earth. Recognizing how those interactions get out of whack and doing something about the more fragile margins will make future Novembers a little more beautiful.

The beepocalypse will NOT be televised

Every single day, usually a half-dozen times a day, some social media informs me that the beepocalypse is nigh. It isn’t.

It would be incorrect to state that there are not real problems –big political and biological problems- with commercial beekeeping. There have been problems for some time, and there are some new problems. The problems which social media tells me are going to cause the beepocalypse are very specific. There is one class of chemical insecticide, and sometimes GMOs. The beepocalypse will be catastrophic because between 75% and 90% of all human food is the result of honeybee pollination.

The warnings of the beepocalypse are a blend of truth, and hyperbole, and misinformation. I often get sidetracked when discussing it as I believe there are problems that can be addressed, and I reflexively believe that it is always better to point out a solution than a problem. In this post I am just going to ignore my reactionary personality and just point out a couple problems with the idea of a beepocalypse:

1. There is no imminent beepocalypse
2. Focusing on eliminating neonicotinoids threatens to harm agricultural workers.

The reason I say there is no imminent beepocalypse is that there has been no reduction in registered hives in the US. The numbers of bees have to drop below some critical level for there to be a beepocalypse , and the bees are simply not dying off. The number of managed hives has even increased slightly. Honey production in the US, which is a crude measure of overall hive health, is up 5% this last year, with the average yield per hive increasing by 1%.

Statistics compiled by the Australian Government Department of Agriculture.
Downloaded from http://www.daff.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0011/1942481/graph1.gif on 19 May 2014

Despite the fact that there are lots of happy honey-producing hives there are an alarming amount of bees dying. However, there are fewer dying than there were a couple years ago. The overwinter death rate (OWDR), which represents the largest loss of hive statistic, is two thirds of its eight-year average. Still, the OWDR is over 20%, and that is too high.

Summary of the total overwinter colony loss (October 1 – April 1) of managed honey bee colonies in the US across the 8 annual national surveys (red bars). The acceptable range (blue bars) is the average percentage of acceptable loss declared by the survey participants in each of the 8 years of the survey. Downloaded from http://beeinformed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ColonyLossWinterup2014-v2.png on 19 May 2014

A 20% (one in five) annual death rate sounds catastrophic, and if bees reproduced like humans it would be. Of course if humans reproduced like bees then a child entering kindergarten could have over 50 kids, more than 1,000 grandkids, more than 20,000 great grandkids, more than 300,000 great-great grandkids, and more than 2,400,000 great-great-great grandkids. There are only about 2,500,000 commercial honey bee colonies in the US. Of course honeybee queens usually die by age 4 so they would not make it to kindergarten, and honeybee hives are usually not induced to create the maximum number of queens, but you get the idea.

At this point you may be asking: “What about those real problems you mentioned?” There are real problems. The greatest of which appears to be weakening of hives by Varroa mite infestation. Nosema infection is another. There are a handful of viruses that are causing issues. Air pollution is a big problem in some areas. Insecticide exposure can be a big problem as insecticides are chemicals designed to kill insects, and bees are insects. The one problem that captures most headlines is Colony Collapse Disorder.

In 2006-2007 a new problem was documented in hives. Some hives experienced rapid (less than two weeks) loss of workers; leaving the hive empty except for ample honey stores, and even a queen with drones. This was a bizarre event, and was named Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Groups and commissions were formed to study this phenomenon. If CCD spread it would be catastrophic. Fortunately CCD did not spread. The discovery of CCD was not followed by an overall decrease in viable commercial hives in the US, and the numbers of CCD hive losses has decreased in recent years. Unfortunately “CCD” sounds dramatic, and it has become synonymous with all causes of honeybee colony death.

The oversubscription of the term CCD is not exclusively due to the scientific illiteracy of journalists. Even respectable apiologists (bee scientists) confuse the term to create hyperbole. Alex Lu and collegues at Harvard recently published a widely quoted paper linking neonicotinoids to CCD-like behavior. The introduction to the paper states: “The persistence of CCD worldwide was highlighted in a recent United Nations report (UN News Center, 2011), which calls for changes in honey bee colony management in order to save this important insect.” A search of the “UN News Center, 2011” article they link to in their bibliography turns up no mention of CCD, although it does present a host of problems impacting bees worldwide. The actual UNEP report the article summarizes does talk a little about CCD; stating that :"CCD only accounts for about 7% of losses in the USA [2008-2009] and even less in Europe."

One of the most used neonicotinoid insecticides is called Imidacloprid. It is the chemical used by Alex and his colleges in the Harvard study. It is a moderately toxic chemical, and as little as 21 grams might kill a 70 kilogram human if they drank it pure. One of the non-neonicotinoid insecticides that has been used in huge quantities worldwide is called parathione. If a 70 kilogram human got a little over a tenth of a gram (0.14 grams) of parathione on their food they would have the same chance of dying. That is just a drop. Many agricultural workers who were used to working with the much less toxic DDT were poisoned when it was replaced –because of concerns about how DDT affected the environment- with parathione.

Because parathione is so toxic there has been some successful efforts to replace it with less toxic materials. Monocrotophos is almost 10 times less toxic than the parathione it replaces. Just last summer 25 school kids in India died when their lunch was contaminated with small amounts of monocrotophos. Un-noticeable amounts of these organophosphate insecticides in food can cause severe poisoning and death.

Banning of neonicotinoid pesticides will likely result in replacing of them with much more toxic chemicals. This will put agricultural workers, and their families, at risk. Who are these agricultural workers in the US?

The 2001-2002 National Agricultural Workers Survey conducted by the US department of labor talls us a little about who these people are that would be put at risk in the hopes that bee mortality would be decreased. 83% of them identify as Hispanic. 87% of them did not finish high school. The wages and career prospects of agricultural workers are shockingly low. In other words the term “Agricultural Worker” is essentially synonymous with a racial/class group that is regularly subjected to racist attacks by the privileged minorities more prevalent in social media.

What does it say that the remote possibility of decreasing some bee deaths is worth more than an agricultural worker’s life? Do you really want to be telling another person that they are of less importance to you than an insect?

Virgil's Colony Colapse Disorder

Spring hints through the occasional snowfall, and my thoughts turn towards the birds and the bees … especially the bees for some reason.

I have decided to raise honeybees again. I will be raising the carnelian strain (Apis mellifera carnica Pollmann) because it, of the strains available to me, is the best adapted to “long winters”, and at the altitude I will be raising them the winters are still longer than those experienced by flatlanders.

I have received a pile of wood from Mann Lake, and I will soon assemble the Langstroth hives my bees will live in. My bees will arrive at CAL ranch in a screen-sided wooden box sometime in May. I might name them “Raymond”.

Internet chatter would suggest that a malady called CCD (for Colony Collapse Disorder) threatens the continued existence of bees. It is unfortunately true that CCD is amongst the ever-growing number of threats to any hive. I lost my last hive to a harshly cold winter and -probably Nosema-induced- dysentery. The bees emerged from the hive on a too-cold winter day to paint little black stripes on just about everything. There were none left to emerge in the spring.

Long before 2006, when CCD was named, hive deaths were a problem. In the winter of 2000-2001 50% of Pennsylvania hives were lost. But the problem of hive deaths goes back in time much farther than that. In-or-around 29 BCE Virgil published his now famous book of four poems called the Georgics; the fourth of these was devoted to Apiology, with special attention to hive collapse.

Virgil sat down with Octavian shortly after he returned from the battle of Actium as the most powerful man in the Western World (in 31 BCE), and read him a pre-publication copy of the Georgics.

“It's monstrous labour, when I wash my brain, and it grows fouler.”
          -- Gaius Julius Octavius (Caesar Augustus) to Marc Antony in “Antony and Cleopatra” by William Shakespeare (Act II Scene VII)

Virgil is perhaps best known as Dante’s guide through the environs of Hell. In the “Inferno” Dante recounts wild and wacky adventures in Hell with Virgil; his posthumous friend and mentor. In Hell they see the sights, go skinny dipping with strange women in the river Lethe, and sightsee the ongoing torture of the damned.

“He with the cloven tail assumed the figure
The other one was losing, and his skin
Became elastic, and the other's hard.” -- Dante from “Inferno”

Dante chose Virgil as his guide through hell because the complexity of Virgil’s verse could compactly communicate many themes. When talking about placement of hives Virgil could have simply stated “avoid swallows as they eat bees”. Instead he said:

“And Procne smirched with blood upon the breast
From her own murderous hands. For these roam wide
Wasting all substance, or the bees themselves
Strike flying, and in their beaks bear home, to glut
Those savage nestlings with the dainty prey.” – from Virgil’s Georgics

Procne was Tereus’s Wife. Tereus raped his sister-in-law Philomena one day, and then ripped out her tongue to prevent her telling. Philomena wove a tapestry to tell her sister about her husband’s escapades, and together they behead, then cook, then feed Procne’s son to his father. Tereus becomes angry when he finds out, and the two sisters narrowly escape his axe by being turned into birds by the Gods.

Beekeeping is even more interesting when one realizes that some threats to the hive are not delicately chirping birds but vengeful cannibals.

So important is the message in Virgil’s beekeeping description that one French translator for the Georgics was recommended to the Académie française by Voltaire. Jacques Delille served as professor for Latin poetry through the French revolution, he would translate Virgil’s Aeneid, he would write original poetry, but his translation of the Georgics would remain one of his most treasured works.

Delille would be succeded as professor of Latin Poetry by Pierre François Tissot. Tissot was the brother-in-law of Jean Marie Claude Alexandre Goujon. Goujon, a famous “La Montagne” revolutionary, famously stabbed himself to death with a knife Tissot supplied while on his way to be beheaded.

As Jacques “The French Virgil” Delille lay in state Tissot allowed a young historian by the name of Aime Nicolas Leroy access to the body of his predecessor. Leroy removed a large swatch of skin from Delille’s chest, and another from his leg. Leroy then used this human skin to bind a copy of Delille’s translation of the Georgics. History does not suggest that Tissot supplied Leroy with the knife he used to flay the French poet, but I like to think he did.

“I don't think I was seen by anyone; rich with my little treasure, I left and disappeared at once. Some will perhaps find a little fault with the act I have just confessed. When I got the idea of stealing these fragments, so frail but so precious for me, it overcame me, and I felt myself driven on by my respect for an illustrious dead man . . . and I committed; this Larceny by way of reverence.”
Aime Nicolas Leroy quoted in “Religatum de Pelle Humana” by Lawrence S. Thompson

It is fitting that the Georgics should have such a complex and bloody history as this complements the causes of colony collapse that it describes.

Not content with the standard theist “God Did It” explanation for natural phenomenon, Virgil provides a backstory for the collapse of a particular set of hives. The backstory is full of the type of jealousy, betrayal, and carnage that makes for great telling. In order to resurrect the hives the beekeeper is sent on a journey into hell; for advice and ingredients.

This is Virgil’s method of reversing CCD:

“ But not Cyrene, who unquestioned thus
Bespake the trembling listener: "Nay, my son,
From that sad bosom thou mayst banish care:
Hence came that plague of sickness, hence the nymphs,
With whom in the tall woods the dance she wove,
Wrought on thy bees, alas! this deadly bane.
Bend thou before the Dell-nymphs, gracious powers:
Bring gifts, and sue for pardon: they will grant
Peace to thine asking, and an end of wrath.
But how to approach them will I first unfold-
Four chosen bulls of peerless form and bulk,
That browse to-day the green Lycaean heights,
Pick from thy herds, as many kine to match,
Whose necks the yoke pressed never: then for these
Build up four altars by the lofty fanes,
And from their throats let gush the victims' blood,
And in the greenwood leave their bodies lone.
Then, when the ninth dawn hath displayed its beams,
To Orpheus shalt thou send his funeral dues,
Poppies of Lethe, and let slay a sheep
Coal-black, then seek the grove again, and soon
For pardon found adore Eurydice
With a slain calf for victim."” -- Book 4 of Virgil’s Georgics

Virgil offers proof that this works.

“But sudden, strange to tell
A portent they espy: through the oxen's flesh,
Waxed soft in dissolution, hark! there hum
Bees from the belly; the rent ribs overboil
In endless clouds they spread them, till at last
On yon tree-top together fused they cling,
And drop their cluster from the bending boughs.” -- Book 4 of Virgil’s Georgics

Birds and Bees

Earth day is fast approaching, and as it draws nearer the calls for civil action against the agricultural mega-corporation Monsanto grow louder and louder. It is a great and powerful buzzing. Like a giant hive of bees.

Bees are in fact a significant prop in this anti-Monsanto play.

Industrial agriculture has a long history of causing significant environmental damage.Rachel Carson's 1962  book “Silent Spring” helped to popularize the very idea of environmental damage with the story of how the organochlorine insecticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) might be causing damage to the ecosphere.

DDE is the toxic breakdown product of DDT that can be found in animal tissue. DDE is perhaps the most famous marker of food chain magnification of a toxic material. Since banning  of DDT others, like mercury and PCBs, have become famous as well.  Though DDT is not extremely toxic to vertebrates at the levels it was applied to crops DDE concentration would be magnified by food chain accumulation till high-level predators might have thousands of times the concentration initially applied to crops for insect control.

DDE was especially damaging to birds as at high enough concentrations it inhibits a key enzyme in eggshell formation.

The class of insecticides known as neonicotinoids made by Bayer are implicated as one of the factors that is applying stress to bees. These nicotine-related insecticides apparently do not magnify in the food chain like DDT/DDE.  The use of the neonicotinoid insecticides adds to the combined stresses on modern beehives which together are thought to be causing significant numbers of hive deaths; including those attributed to colony collapse disorder.

I know that I've not made a connection between Monsanto and the bees, but this is the road one must go down to understand where the connection comes from.

What Monsanto has done is successfully market genetically modified crops (GMO) for food use.

The very idea of GMOs offends the strongly held religious beliefs of many people. Man should not “play god” by creating “Frankenfoods”. Many people believe that tampering with the genetic code in a living organism is tampering with some divine plan, and it invites some unspecified divine retribution. The battle against GMOs has taken on the flavor of a jihad.

I personally think that the application of techniques for genetically modifying crop plants will result in wonderful foodstuffs for future consumption. I can imagine a wonderful world with decreased chemical contamination, and increased variety and flavor. Because of these utopian fantasies I have been branded a “Frankenfooder”. It sounds like an evil label.

Should I be worried that farmers armed with pitchforks and torches will storm my garden and mistakenly destroy my heirloom tomatoes? If they want to be effective they will have to get to them before the deer eat them,

Unfortunately the first few large-scale GMOs are not what I would have chosen. Though I like the idea that GMO processes can bring products from the laboratory to the table I think they could have chosen much more wisely.

The roundup ready soybeans were the first plants I noticed hitting the market. In order for this genetic modification to be useful the farmer has to also be ready to use roundup, and then he has to apply a bunch of it. The active ingredient in roundup is the enzyme inhibitor glyphosate (N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine). The genetic modification is the insertion of an enzyme that is resistant to glyphosate inhibition. The gene comes from a common soil bacterium

Inseertion of a bacterial gene is not the only way to combat glyphosate inhibition. I would assume there are all sorts of mutations in either the susceptible enzyme or the physiological processing of  glyphosate that can result in resistance. If I was to design a large-scale experiment to discover some new ways of relizing glyphosate resistance I would simply apply large quantities regularly to a large variety of weeds, and see what grew. This is in essence what growing roundup ready soybeans does. Unfortunately the farmer growing roundup ready soybeans cannot afford to simply collect some roundup resistant weeds, and declare a success. The farmer must apply more and larger quantities of roundup in the hopes of achieving a concentration that is just enough to kill off the resistant weeds, but not enough to kill off the soybeans. Natural selection at work.

The other GMO that I think is a mistake is MON810. MON810 is a corn transformed with Bacillus thuringensis toxin (BtT). BtT is a protein insecticide that specifically targets certain types of insects. It is extremely effective against lepidopterans (butterflies and moths)

I don't have the same problem with BtT transformed corn that I have with Roundup-ready soybeans, but natural selection is still the complicating factor in the use of this product.

In the typical soil of a farm one might expect to find several strains of crystal-protein producing Bacillus. It would be surprising to not find a BtT. Many farms use BtT as an effective organic insecticide. Some produce can apparently be labeled organic is only BtT is used as an insecticide on it. BtT can be aerially sprayed on people's homes. It has been repeatedly sprayed on several Washington Dc suburbs to control Gypsy Moth infestations; I bet there are several Monsanto lobbyists in those high-dollar neighborhoods. However, in all these cases the BtT is not chronically present in the environment in high enough concentrations to provide a constant selective pressure.

Unlike DDT BtT is a protein and its breakdown products are amino acids, and neither it nor its breakdown products bio-accumulate as toxic materials in the food-chain.

In the fields around a field of BtT GMO corn insects will come into contact with sub-lethal amounts of BtT. After the corn is harvested, and the stalks are plowed into the soil insects there will be exposed to sub-lethal concentrations of BtT.

Closer to the field of GMO corn, and perhaps near the roots in the soil around them insects will be exposed to lethal but sub-optimal concentrations of BtT.

This gradient of BtT will persist as long as the crop does; likely through generations of insects. This sets up a situation where, even in the absence of outright resistant insects to be selected for, BtT resistance will provide a clear selective advantage. Since insects can have thousands of offspring the ability for just a couple of resistant individuals to graze several acres of land made unsuitable to their closest competitors can result in huge numbers of resistant progeny in one generation. The synergies of partial and co-dominance could result in even more resistance in subsequent early generations.  The risk of resistance to BtT is very real.

BtT is a wonderful product. It is used for all sorts of things. The one used in MON810 is so very specific to lepidopterans that beekeepers can spray their bees directly with it to eradicate wax moths.

Unfortunately my objections to the current crop of GMOs involves invoking natural selection, which is an anathema to many people who religiously object to GMOs. It also does not paint the process of developing GMOs as evil, only the examples of having done it. For that reason these -I think reasonable- objections are not often given voice by those objecting to GMOs.

This is how the anti-GMO folks I know and I can effectively agree on controlling the use of current GMOs, and yet they can malign my position and label me a “Frankenfooder”. The fight against Monsanto apparently also resembles a religious movement in that purity of thought is highly valued.

So the relationship between Monsanto and bees is that Monsanto made MON810 which has an insecticide in it, and there is another group of insecticides made by another company which may be causing significant damage to beehives. To me this is not a very satisfying connection, but to many in the anti-GMO movement is is sufficient. Not a week goes by that I am not offered an article to read that implies a relationship, and simply refuses to point out that one does not exist.

I should point out that the lack of lethality of BtT toxins on bees is not simply inferred from lack of evidence. It is also not simply inferred from the fact that many beekeepers have for decades regularly applied large concentrations of BtT directly to their beehives with no deleterious effects. I infer it from controlled scientific experiments published in peer-reviewed literature.

Several European countries have apparently banned planting of MON810, and at least one has specifically cited protecting bees as the reason. In Poland protestors dumped about a hive of dead bees and a painted sculpture of a human skull on the steps of their Ministry of Agriculture. When the Polish minister of agriculture announced the MON810 ban he apparently mentioned the need to safeguard bees. He also apparently mentioned that MON810 had already produced millions of hectares of pesticide resistant “superweeds” in the US. The later is interesting because it not only does make use of the natural selection concerns it confuses the genetic modification in the MON810 with that in the roundup-ready soybeans.

Several of the articles mention work done by a bee researcher that linked MON810 to colony collapse disorder. The bee researcher's name was John McDonald who turns out to be a blogger-beekeeper from Pennsylvania whose haphazard experiments have earned him a byline in publications originating as far away as San Francisco.

John did run a couple of experiments where he put hives in interesting places, and then weighed them. Unfortunately the level of resolution he exercised in his control over the hives does not allow one to point to any particular cause for the difference between his strategically placed hives. If one interprets his results in light of the controlled laboratory experiments it appears as if something other than casual exposure to some MON810 pollen was the more likely cause of his problems.

John recognizes the limitations of his experiments, but instead of using Occam's razor to interpret them in the simplest way he imagines hidden effects appearing just bellow the surface of his results. Such speculation is actually fine for stimulating interest and investigation, but it does not rise to the level of actionable information that should inform policy.

“Is it not possible that while there is no lethal effect directly to the new bees, there might be some sublethal effect, such as immune suppression, acting as a slow killer? “ – John McDonald

Of course, as I mentioned earlier, I'm not opposed at all to restrictions on the use of these Monsanto GMOs. I just wish the road to deciding to restrict them was not so logically bumpy.

The most problematic fallout from this crusade might be the elimination of neonicotinoids. Without them what will farmers use? Will they go back to the organophosophates and carbamate insecticides they partially replaced? Neonicotinoids may be highly toxic to bees (bees are insects), but the organophosophates and carbamate insecticides are both highly toxic to bees, and humans...and all sorts of living things.

VX nerve gas, amongst the scariest of the weapons of mass destruction, is an organophosphate compound similar to the insecticides.

On the 2nd of December 1984 a plant making precursors for carbamate insecticides in Bhopol india had a leak which killed as many as 16,000 people (why are there not good numbers for things like this?), and injured over 500,000 others.

Of course it may not be a question of returning to using poison on our food in order to ban neonicotinoids so we can halt GMOs. We may all start sustaining ourselves with organically grown heirloom tomatoes, and fat-marbled suburban venison.

Bee vs WASP

I found myself thinking of bees today. One friend was panicking in response to a hymenopteran bedroom invader, and another saw some Polish beekeeper anti-GMO rebellion as an example of what was wrong –by comparison- with the USA. So I began thinking of bees, and there I was.

I was picturing the dimensions of a Langstroth hive scaled to accommodate the gigantic Apis dorsata. I somehow imagined that because Ad is a almost twice the size of Apis mellifera that its behavior would be more obvious. The dances and buzzes that communicate the most efficient food source pathways to the rest of the hive became intricate entanglements of sound and movement. I could imagine the bees dancing through abstract thoughts and poetry, but this was just because of the residual these activities left in my brain; I'm sure the sexless female worker bees just chat about how best to serve dinner to their hoards of hungry maggots.

Bees achieve an enhanced communal efficiency not by supporting the efforts of each individual until the average activity enjoys a higher rate of successes, but by suffering the incompetence of so many of their number through the accidental successes of a few. A worker bee can only live around twelve weeks, but over half of them will live less than half that span. The enormous die-off is hidden behind the phenomenal fertility of their queen. Could the bees survive if they were cognizant of the mortality constantly eliminating more of their identical twins than they could ever possibly have the opportunity to meet?

What would the Langstroth-organized buzzing of A dorsata tell us. Would they pine for the grayanotoxin-festooned wild hives of Nepal? Would they divulge the secrets to a happy short life despite the presence of so many depressive triggers? Would they spawn buzz-cults who would mimic their songs till oral paresthesia left them drooling through slurred platitudes?

The most successful flying hymenoptera are the parasitic wasps. Because of solitary periods in their life they must effectively carry out critical tasks or die. Some of my favorite parasitic wasps are the tarantula hawks of the genus Pepsis. Even larger than A. dorsata the Pepsis wasps speak directly to the human psyche with their buzzing. They say: “I carry pain – give me room!”. I have a Pepsis wasp mounted on ornately decorated mat-board sitting on one of the shelves in my living room.

Pepsis under glass

Sometimes called solitary wasps the Pepsis meet at prearranged bushes for orgies of reproductive element exchange. It was at such a bush that I bagged the specimen mounted in the photo. The bush was alive with the crawling and buzzing jet black wasps. I know quite a few people who would have –if the skittering forms were spiders- fainted at the sight.

Once they mate the female Pepsis wasps fly off to find one of the most arachnophobia-inspiring of the spiders: the tarantula. The tarantula with its barbed hairs, spinnerets and poison fangs is just breakfast for the Pepsis maggots.

They are fairly bad-ass those Pepsis wasps.