Bad Medicine for Bees

Bad Medicine for Bees

I write about plants but the great connection between all living things makes it impossible to limit the topic.  Can medicinal plants exist without insect pollinators particularly bees?

I was out in the garden early searching for a bee to photograph.  20 minutes and I saw none in spite of the incredible amount of plants flowering now on my place.  Later I went out again and found them on pennyroyal, itself a plant of medicinal interest like most of the mints.

 

Some of you know that I have been irritating our two local giant nurseries about their neo-nicotinoid or "bee killing" pesticides by publicly asking them to disavow their use.  Last year my effort made it into the Tahlequah paper, but the nurseries have not replied.  So at the OSU pesticide conference on Tuesday I heard some very interesting comments about the subject and have since done some research and have combined all this with my knowledge gained from professional chemical applications between the years 1975 and 1988 to give you this analysis.

The neo-nicotinoid pesticides were developed after I was involved with pesticides.  They were considered a vast improvement over the organo-phosphate poisons which were my primary weapon against insect pests.  The organo-phosphates which I used included malathion, di-methoate (cygon) diazanon, meta-systox R, and parathion among others.  Malathion is not especially toxic;  parathion is among the deadliest poisons ever developed, and gained notoriety for killing Mexican farm workers in California.  Some of them are considered to be systemic (they are absorbed into the plant and kill the consumer), others kill by contact only.  All of them have a horrible and penetrating odor, but they degrade relatively quickly and are less damaging to the environment than other chemicals.  They are largely responsible for my bladder cancer. 

I read that the neo-nicotinoids kill insects via pathways that are not toxic to mammals so humans can spray them with relative safety.  They are also systemic in their action, but unfortunately have a long half-life so that treated plants remain toxic to insects, both the damaging target pest and the honeybees which feed on the flowers nectar.  Germany was the first country to see the danger.  By 2008 the neo-nicotinoids were the number 1 pesticide world-wide.  German environmental scientists found that 50% of all insects had disappeared and so neo-nicotinoids were banned there in that year.

In our country also this data was well known and the EPA has been under heavy pressure to ban them here.  So far they have resisted and their use continues as before.  I paraphrase the conversation on the subject, "The nursery boys tell me they still use the "neo-nics" because the pyrethroids (another type) are under heavy fire and may be banned within a year. and they sure don't want to go back to the "OP's".  But Lowe's just came out and told the public that their plants will be neo-nicotinoid free within two years.  They're stuffing the nurseries just telling them, “You take care of the problem."”

You can be sure the nurseries don't want the OP's (organo-phosphates).  applicators aren't going to like the danger or the smell. Workers will not want to enter sprayed areas and the nurseries may have to open up plant spacing to get spray nozzles in instead of just blowing mist with giant 10 foot tall rigs over large plant blocks at 5 mph.

No wonder Greenleaf and Berry Company officials refuse to talk with me about the issue.  I worked 11 years as the groundskeeper at OSU Tulsa and at a 45 acre botanical garden in Houston and never sprayed insecticides.  Now I'm growing totally organic nursery plants at my place here.  Maybe they should talk to me.  Well at least they could go to OSU and read about IPM.