It's a huge problem that should have attracted a lot more attention, and it might have if the mainstream media - which has plenty of resources, yet uses few to cover the environment - had been less interested in Britney Spears' addictions and more focused on the real issues affecting life on this planet.

Honeybees, which pollinate every food crop from almonds to strawberries, and make possible $15 billion in food sales in the U.S. alone, are dying at an alarming rate. In some countries, the death rate is 60%. In the UK this past year, one out of three hives failed, according to a survey by the British Beekeepers Association.

Scientists have supposedly been scrambling around to discover the cause for a year or more, and have targeted colony collapse disorder (CCD), a mixed bag of affects including blood-sucking varroa mites, lethal viruses, malnutrition, pesticides, and a lack of genetic diversity. It's kind of like a doctor telling you that you have a metabolic disorder, which can mean anything from low thyroid to heart disease and includes up to 30 diseases, some of unknown origin and without a cure.

In other words, CCD is a quick copout, and enables perplexed and underfunded researchers to move on to something more lucrative, like Botox or brown fat.

The real causes, charge German and French authorities, are the neonicotinoid pesticides clothianidin (Bayer; Poncho) and imidacloprid (Antarc, Chinook and Faibel), which act like neurotoxins. France banned imidacloprid in 1999, and rejected clothianidin this year. Germany, whose agricultural groups have been protesting the use of the chemicals since 2004, put a halt to clothianidin in May.

Clothianidin, made by German chemical company Bayer, was approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2003 as a seed treatment. This, despite the fact that the EPA's own report acknowledges clothianidin is highly toxic to honeybees.

A recent presentation at the American Chemical Society's national meeting verified that dozens of pesticides - including some neonicotinoids - have been found in every aspect of life in CCD-affected honeybee colonies, from adults to larvae and across the food chain from pollen to wax. 

Now, with U.S. honeybee deaths climbing to more than 36 percent year-over-year (and some die-offs in Texas exceeding 70 percent), the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a U.S. non-profit environmental advocacy group, has filed a suit against the EPA. The suit demands the release of documentation the EPA used to approve Bayer's clothianidin submission five years ago.

In its conditional 2003 approval to Bayer, the EPA asked for additional studies on the effects of clothianidin on the complete life cycle of the honeybee, including peripheral effects on a queen bee's ability to reproduce. No one knows if the studies were actually performed, or if they met EPA - and scientific - standards for completeness and accuracy.

NRDC's first request for this information, filed under the Freedom of Information Act (which requires a response within 20 business days), was ignored. The EPA did, however, issue a self-serving press release which purports to deal with the issue.

NRDC then filed the aforementioned lawsuit (dated Monday, August 18). The EPA, which says it has not seen the lawsuit, has declined to comment on the legal action as well. For its part, the NRDC continues to believe that the EPA does, in fact, have evidence from these studies which would show the connection between neonicotinoid pesticides and honeybee deaths, and charges that the EPA has, willfully or simply negligently, failed to make it public.

"Pesticide restrictions might be at the heart of the solution to this growing crisis, so why hide the information they should be using to make those decisions?" NRDC attorney Aaron Colangelo asks.  

Greg Coffey, speaking for Bayer CropScience from its Research Triangle Park, N.C., location, argues that field studies have proven that clothianidin, correctly used, will not harm honeybees, and insists that all the paperwork needed for conditional clothianidin approval has been submitted to the EPA. 

The key may be in the words "correctly used". Safe clothianidin use requires a sticky seed coating to make sure the pesticide stays on the seed rather than being dispersed into air or water, or on bee's feet. In Germany, a reported failure to abide by this precaution resulted in the pesticide being blown into a nearby field where bees were collecting nectar.

In the U.S., clothianidin is restricted to commercial applicators, who - the EPA assumes - use sticky coating even though it is not EPA-mandated. EPA spokesperson Dale Kemery has said the agency will, in future, review its policies on seed-treatment labels to insure sticky coatings are part of the protocol. Unfortunately, as one chemist points out, nothing is yet known about the ability of these new pesticides to bioaccumulate. They may endure in the environment for years, continuing to kill honeybees long after their use is banned.

In 2007, Congress recognized CCD as a potential disaster and funded the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) an unrevealed amount to study the problem. The USDA also gets an additional $20 million a year - under the 2008 Farm Bill - to pursue solutions.

In spite of that, the USDA has not been able to account for the funds, nor has it arrived at any consensus. A House Agriculture subcommittee hearing (June 26) further demonstrated that the USDA doesn't even know how much more money or time it will need to find a solution.

Entomologist Maryann Frazier, who reported the results of a 2002 study showing nearly half of French honeybee colonies were contaminated with neonicotinoid pesticides, argues that the funding is too limited. Honeybees, who work quietly behind the scenes to insure human food supply by pollinating crops, are not as dramatically apparent as cows, pigs, or chickens, and their secondary product (honey) is not as widely disseminated or enjoyed, but their role in food production is immensely more profound and far-reaching.

"How would our government respond if one out of every three cows was dying?" Frazier asks pointedly.

Further Reading:

• Commercial Bees Spread Disease to Wild Bees: A Hint to Solving Colony Collapse Disorder?
• The Potential Impact of Colony Collapse Disorder: An Excerpt from "A Spring Without Bees"
• Disappearing Bees - Colony Collapse Disorder Affecting Honeybees
• Pollution, Pesticides and GM Crops Killing Bees?
• The Bats and the Bees
• 60 Minutes on Disappearing Bees
• The Vanishing of the Bees
• Bee Die-offs from Multiple Causes
• Organic Bees Surviving Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)