Wik-Bee Leaks: EPA Knowingly Allowed Pesticide That Kills Honey Bees | Hacker News Reader

Wik-Bee Leaks: EPA Knowingly Allowed Pesticide That Kills Honey Bees

fastcompany.com

217 pointsmonkeygrinder40 comments

There is corporate "ethos" and "greed is good" etc... But what I find disturbing is that these wankers (corporate and government) are stupid/greedy enough to fuck over honeybees.

The same honeybees that are providing us with 1 in 3 meals every single friggin day! Maybe big-pharma is confident that it can feed the humanity - but I see it as an incredibly shortsighted strategy that WILL cause us our lives - before global warming or nukes - since we're apparently trying extremely hard to exterminate the little critters.

"The same honeybees that are providing us with 1 in 3 meals every single friggin day!"

citation needed

Citation: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1702377/figure/f...

In old days every farmer in our village had a beehive - the honey and pollination services were both much appreciated. My father has always taught me that killing a bee is a horrible crime.

Forget old days - in modern days there are entire businesses dedicated to renting out and delivering mass quantities of beehives to pollinate fields for farmers.

The technology and industry has changed indeed. I wanted to emphasize how man used to treat bee as a companion - nowadays however we seem to disregard its share in getting us to where we are. We used to fight to keep them alive.

This describes the important of pollinators, but honey bees are not the only pollinators. I don't see enough evidence supporting the case that honey bees exclusively are responsible for pollinating 1/3 of all food, nor that the absence of honey bees would reduce food production by the same amount (which seem to be the positions you have put forth).

Can you support those claims?

Honeybees are so important that huge colonies are trucked around the US to pollinate fields.

Which is to say: they're so important that local populations of pollinators are inadequate to requirements, so they have to be supplemented by these mobile colonies.

Can you support a contra position? That bees are not significant pollinators? Please do not forget other Apidae family members - they probably don't benefit from pesticides either.

Oh... Another reference: http://www.pnas.org/content/99/26/16812.full - you can check references [6,7] yourself.

Edit: I apologize - since I did limit my rant to honeybees initially.

The contra position would be that honey bees are responsible for supporting less than 1/3 all food production (which is a bit easier to prove). Bees are important pollinators but there are other pollinators and the case that the absence of honey bees would result in the absence of 1/3 of crop production is very weak, since the absence of competition from honey bees would likely result in some degree of compensation from other pollinator species (such as wasps).

The 2nd reference is the best so far, it provides some quantitative information about how dominant the honey bee is as a pollinator of commercial crops.

Personally I think bees are hugely important and it's quite sad the way bee populations have been mistreated, but it doesn't help to overstate the case (the case for being kind to bees is already very strong).

Honeybees are not native to the US. It would be odd to rely on a non-native species for our food supply.

Why would it be odd? When Europeans arrived they imported European agriculture and cuisine, most of which is non-native.

For instance I had pancakes for breakfast this morning. The eggs were from non-native chickens, the milk from non-native cows, the flour from non-native wheat, the canola oil I cooked it in from non-native rapeseed, and the butter I put on it from non-native cows. However all is not lost, I used maple syrup from native maple trees, and put blackberries in it that might have been native. (The baking powder and salt are chemicals that to the best of my knowledge do not come from animals or plants, native or otherwise.)

Edit: When I looked up blackberries I found out that there are several hundred species, and some of the popular ones for cultivation are not native. So I don't know whether that was a native berry.

I think what he means to say is there was food here before honey bees, there can be food here after honey bees.

aren't all species non-native unless you'e exactly at the spot where they evolved?

You have to realize that our food supply is a horribly unnatural beast, not reliant on anything "native" to anywhere. Native species could easily pollinate the amount of food required to support the Native American population in 1450 -- the New York City population of 2010, not so much.

To be clear, there were bees in North America before the European Honeybee was introduced, and they did the pollinating and still do today to a small extent, but the European variety is simply more productive and domesticated. That's not to say that native bee species still around are anymore resistant to this systemic pesticide. You're splitting hairs here.

Not everybody here is from US :)

My ancestors managed to create arguably the best bee btw :) [http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Apis_mellifera_carnica]

Important is the life cycle of a swarm. Unlike wasps, bumble-bees and lots of other insects a bee swarm survives the winter as a whole and can start the pollination cycle earlier than other insects. Furthermore honeybees have a structured way of flying "on: plants, meaning that they do commonly not change pollination rate.

Bees are actively used for guided pollination, which is not possible with most other insects (not withstanding some experiments with bumblebees in greenhouses). Interesting fact is that you will often find the phrase "crop xxx requires yyy hives" while describing the role of bees in pollination.

hth.

Considering the EPA's past lies about the air quality at ground zero, the mercury levels in fresh water fish, etc., let's just say that if you believe anything they say then I've got a boat load of perfectly safe shrimp from the gulf to sell you.

Not to mention their stance on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing .

FYI the ORIGINAL Grist article much better and full of detail:

http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-12-10-leaked-document...

Is there any reason these beekeepers can't sue Bayer and the EPA for the side effects of the pesticides? Couldn't such a suit call for an injunction preventing its use pending the results of the lawsuit?

They did sue Bayer in 2003, though for a different drug. The suit was thrown out by a judge in 2008. Info in this article:

http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/08/news/honey_bees_ny_times.for...

Bayer gets sued all the time and they are probably pretty good at working the legal system.

This article has additional history:

http://www.thenhf.com/article.php?id=598

My only guess is that the evidence provided was not legally obtained.

I don't understand how politicians are allowed to campaign with corporate money.

Don't worry. We'll lock down campaign contributions so much that only the six major corporations that control the mainstream media in the U.S can cover their campaigns.

>Back in 1983, approximately 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the United States. Today, ownership of the news media has been concentrated in the hands of just six incredibly powerful media corporations.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/who-owns-the-med...

That's not actually true. It's more fragmented than that.

Really, it's not even close to that concentrated. Don't believe everything you read - I can think of several large media companies not on that list.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

http://www.npr.org/blogs/politicaljunkie/2010/01/court_rulin...

My condolences.

(I know this is naive, but) Corporations are made of people. All that money belongs to someone. So if those people decide to give that money to politicians, why does that make problems?

In general, publicly traded corporations are run by people aiming to get bonuses by maximizing shareholder value. Those shareholders could be very indirect, in particular for pension funds.

With this level of abstraction, the final shareholders usually are not (or don't want to be) aware of things done in their name. The situation makes it very easy to look the other way.

IMHO, Adam Smith would be disgusted about this.

It makes problems because political hay can be made over how campaigns are financed. Most people want the gov't to have a large degree of control over how others conduct their affairs. Politicians believe that making reforms to campaign finance is a platform on which they can be elected. The issue is not whether campaign finance reform actually works, or improves the situation, the issue is whether you can be elected for promoting it.

People don't like the gov't but believe that it's a matter of who is in charge rather than the structure of the system.

Corporations are not "made of people". Legally, corporations have individual free speech rights like people (in the U.S.). People individually deciding to give money to politicians is different from the corporation giving money to politicians, but both acts are considered free speech in the U.S.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Elec...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

While you're logically correct based on that assumption, what happens when a corporation breaks a law? It's one thing if an individual within the corporation, but what a violation occurs due to a collective action taken by the company? Who goes to jail? Who exactly pays the fines owed?

because the SCOTUS believes money = free speech.

I couldn't deduce from the article that money changed hands, much less in a campaign-situation? I don't know exactly how the EPA is structured, but it seems unlikely that elected officials would have much clout at such a low level.

Context.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/24/tea-party-climat...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_Pro...

The timing seems incredible.

That's ok, we'll just replace honey with high-fructose corn syrup - problem solved!

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