For Some, Groundhog Day Comes in June

Townhall.com ^ | June 29, 2019 | Paul Driessen

[Kaslin]

Did you think Groundhog Day only comes in February?

For anti-insecticide zealots and others in the environmentalist movement who’ve been preoccupied for years with bees and “colony collapse disorder,” it actually comes every June.  That’s when the Bee Informed Partnership – a University of Maryland-based project supported by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) – releases the results of its annual survey of honeybee colony losses and health.

In Bill Murray’s 1993 “Groundhog Day” movie, cynical TV weatherman Phil Connors is condemned to relive the same day over and over in a little Pennsylvania town until he learns the right “life lessons.” Each June, eco-campaigners work themselves into a carefully orchestrated lather over bee losses, getting caught in a time loop of endlessly repeating the same false and misguided claims about the BIP report.

Last week’s BIP report predictably garnered the usual hyperventilating headlines, sounding almost as alarming as in recent years. The 38% 2018-19 over-winter colony loss rate was the highest in the 13 years the survey has been taken. Combined with in-season (summer) honeybee colony losses of 20.5% this yielded an overall annual loss rate of 40.7% (computed using a special BIP methodology).

That’s slightly higher than 2017-18’s reported 40.1% overall loss rate and 2.9% higher than the average annual loss rate calculated since 2010. Hit the panic button. 

Environmental worrywarts moved seamlessly into their annual spasm of anxiety and dire prognostication.  “Honey bees are no longer disappearing suddenly and mysteriously. They’re dying persistently, and in plain sight,” the Washington Post lamented. 

Will there be enough honeybee colonies left to pollinate California’s lucrative almond crop next winter? an environmental “investigative news organization” agonized. (Ironically, but predictably, this story was posted four weeks after the USDA predicted another record almond harvest in the state.)

Is the BIP report further evidence that the hyperventilating media and eco-campaigners were correct about the “bee-pocalypse” they’ve been “documenting” for the last half-dozen years? Hardly!

First, the alarmists who routinely over-react to the annual BIP survey forget (or ignore) its limitations. As the report makes clear, the survey is entirely voluntary, returned by beekeepers who take time to fill it out. It consequently does not even purport to be a scientific sampling of American beekeepers. It is a compilation and analysis of responses from those who voluntarily self-report. The results show this.

The roughly 4,700 beekeepers who responded this year account for only about 12% of all US honeybee colonies. Professor Dennis Van Engelsdorp – founder of the Bee Informed Partnership  – showed in his own research that hobbyist and small-scale beekeepers (who account for the majority of the BIP respondents) have more severe parasite and pathogen infestations of their honeybee hives than large-scale commercial beekeepers. That increases colony loss rates.

Interestingly, while BIP survey results go up and down from year to year, the overall trend line over the survey’s first dozen years has been downward. But that may reflect small-scale beekeeper experiences.

In any case, US honeybee colony numbers aren’t shrinking; they’re growing, regardless of what the latest BIP survey results find. The USDA’s actual census of beekeepers and their colonies – which actually is systematic and scientific – shows that the overall number of US honeybee colonies grew by 4% in 2018.

Phil Connors finally escaped from his time loop after he ended his disdain for small town Punxsutawney, began performing good deeds and told Rita he truly loved her. Maybe now – finally – self-professed bee advocates and environmental crusaders will wake up from their Groundhog-Day-in-June time loop and devote some time, effort and honesty to addressing the real problems that affect honey and wild bees.

Maybe they will also stop treating modern conventional farming like an evil pariah, and organic farming like a planetary savior. Maybe they will stop repeating the organic food industry’s Big Lie: that it doesn’t use pesticides. In fact, as Professor David Zaruk explains on his RiskMonger.com website, organic farmers employ a dozen highly toxic “natural” pesticides and over 3,000 other “approved” pesticides.

Several are highly toxic to bees: acetic acid, copper sulfate, pyrethrins, hydrogen peroxide, azidirachtin, rotenone, citronella oil, eucalyptus oil and garlic extract, and spinosad. Several are very toxic to humans: boron can affect people’s brain, liver or heart; rotenone has been linked to Parkinson’s disease; nicotine sulfate is a neurotoxin that has actually killed several gardeners; and copper sulfate can readily and severely injure a user’s brain, liver, kidneys, stomach and intestinal linings, skin and eyes ... or even kill!

But again, Varroa is the villain, the real, enduring threat to bees – not pesticides, synthetic or organic.

Unfortunately, persuading environmentalists to acknowledge these realities is not likely. They have too much ideology, power and prestige invested in their campaigns against synthetic pesticides and conventional farming – to say nothing of the billions of dollars they’ve gotten from organic interests.

Bottom line? Lies, deception and fraud are unethical, immoral and illegal no matter who engages in it, devises the strategies or finances the campaigns. 

These environmentalist campaigns have been employed over and over because they work – and because too many legislators, regulators, judges and journalists have repeated, approved and applauded them. It will be an uphill battle to change that dynamic.

Let’s hope a few brave lawmakers start applying the same standards of truth and ethics across the board.

[TStro]

This is the time of year that I start fighting bees. I’ve killed 14 or 15 colonies that took up residence between the joists in my house over the years. I can now tell the difference between killer bees and honey bees. Bee keepers want $400 to remove the colony once I’ve exposed it, and they keep the bees. No thanks, I’ve go a bee suit (you still get stung) and keep the honey. No shortage of bees here in South Texas for sure.

[AuH2ORepublican]

Interesting. Thanks for posting.