Bees Get Support From the Top Man.

Today I read an article about how, none other than the President of the United States ... Obama, has come out in defense of the honey bee.  Read the article here

Now, don't get me wrong, I think this is amazing, however, just how much "saving" it will actually do is debatable.

Last June (2014) the White House created a task force to find ways to save the bees.  See, even though big corporates run the western world, I will say that Obama at least has enough savvy to realize that if the bees go ... so does life as we know it.  And the extinction of the bees (and other pollinators) is getting all too close. 

So the task force has come out with a 10 year plan.  In a nutshell this is it: 

1. Bump monarch butterfly numbers to 225 million.
2. Reduce winter honey bee colony losses by about half. 
3. Make 7 million acres of land more pollinator-friendly.
4. Research how to minimize bees’ exposure to pesticides.
5. Re-evaluate the effects of neonicotinoid insecticides.

Perhaps they can achieve the increase in monarch butterfly and maybe they can reduce the winter honey bee losses.  They definitely can make 7 million acres of land more pollinator-friendly.  But the last two????  They already know that neonicotinoid insecticides and pesticides are the number one killer of bees - see my bog post here.  

And how many bees will die while they do their research?

Of course we know that the White House is organic and has it's own bees.

Maybe that's one of the reasons the President took this stance.  However, he's not gone far enough and groups are now by-passing the President and asking the First Lady to help as reported by the Washington Examiner.

 

A letter provided by Friends of The Earth asks that Michelle Obama use her influence with the administration and support a ban on these chemicals.

Let's hope she can be a mother for the bees and defend them.  This is a critical situation and a lot more urgency is needed ..... the bees can't wait much longer.

You can help by choosing organic or spray free whenever you can.

Neonicotinoids and Bees

It really does upset me that this beautiful country that I live in (N.Z.) is so backward when it comes to environmental and animal welfare issues.

Recently I read an article about the neonicotinoid pesticides having such a devastating effect on bees and how in June 2014 a team at Harvard announced that when hives were treated with neonicotinoids, half of them collapsed.

Back around July 2013, after evidence against neonicotinoids had begun to accumulate, the EU had moved to ban three neonicotinoids from use on cereals and flowering crops attractive to bees which came into effect in December 2013.

US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently issued a report saying that there is a connection to the health of the honey bees saying "pesticides may be part of the problem, including both the pyrethroid and neonicotinoid classes of pesticides".  But their recommendations are more about best management practices and technical advancements for applying pesticides to reduce dust, etc. than about the actual threat or banning them.

New Zealand just loves to follow USA and again our "clean, green" image comes into some question as once more the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), which has the authority, has not even begun to investigate this new research ...... but then New Zealand is known for dragging the chain when it comes to banning pesticides along with other environmental and animal issues.

I wonder what Sir Edmund Hillary - our famous bee keeper mountaineer would say about this.

By the way, I applaud the EU for making this move even if it is on a "trial" basis for 2 years.  They did this in the face of intense lobbying and interference by Bayer and Syngenta who make and sell the chemicals.