More on Wildlife and ACC: Bees

It is now relatively common knowledge that pollinators such as bees have been in severe decline in recent years. This is a troubling prospect, given the fact that 75% of all crops in the United States are dependent on insect pollination. The decline of pollinators is not well understood and the only consistently studied bee species is the European Honey Bee (apis mellifera) with wild species largely ignored in the scholarly literature. Studying these insects will be more difficult, because wild hives have been largely wiped out due to a combination of factors: changing land use which reduces habitat and nectar-bearing plants which bees use for food, neonicotinoid pesticides, climate change, as well as diseases and parasites that are made more deadly by the preceding stressor factors.

The most robust evidence for pollinator declines as a result of anthropogenic climate change are in butterflies. Essentially, climate change is throwing off the reproductive cycle of butterflies when winter comes too early or spring too late. The increasing rate of extreme weather events can also have a huge impact on butterfly populations, especially during vulnerable times of the year.

Pesticide companies are applying tobacco and fossil fuel industry tactics to protect profits by attempting to take attention away from the causal function of neonicotinoid seed treatments and pesticides. These companies such as Bayer and Syngenta claim that “parasites and diseases” are the main factor in pollinator decline without mentioning that pesticide makes bees more vulnerable to mites and diseases. Pesticide manufacturers also distract from the situation by blaming farmers for improper use of pesticide (maybe if your product can be so easily misused to the detriment of the environment, it’s not a good product) and funding research institutes that downplay the role of pesticides in pollinator decline. As we can see, pesticide giants are using Big Tobacco’s classic “doubt is our product” playbook to sew public controversy and discord around the alarming decline of bees.

Potts, Simon et al (2010). Global pollinator declines: trends, impacts and drivers. Trends in Ecology and Evolution Vol. 25 No. 6 1-9 CEL Press. http://www.ufz.eu/export/data/1/22686_Potts_et_al_2010.pdf

Simon, Michele (2015). Follow the honey: seven ways pesticide companies are spinning the bee crisis. Friends of the Earth. http://libcloud.s3.amazonaws.com/93/f0/f/4656/FollowTheHoneyReport.pdf