A panel of bee experts told a House Agriculture subcommittee Tuesday that the high death rate of bees is due to a number of factors, while Friends of the Earth issued a report criticizing the pesticide industry for delaying regulatory action on neonicotinoid (neonic) pesticides.


Jeff Pettis
At a hearing of the House Agriculture Horticulture, Research, Biotechnology and Foreign Agriculture Subcommittee, Jeff Pettis, the research leader on pollinators at the Agriculture Department’s Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, said that bees have been dying early at a faster rate since the Varroa destructor, a mite pest, arrived in the United States in the late 1980s.

The most recent phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder in which bees do not return to their hives has increased the death rate, but may or may not be due to the Varroa destructor, Pettis said. Insecticides, and a monodiet rather than a varied diet may be factors in colony collapse disorder, he said.

Pettis said it is impossible to identify one thing that could resolve colony collapse disorder because it would probably involve a number of farm practices and land use decisions.

He also said that the role of bees has shifted from primarily being honey producers to being pollinators, and that they should be thought of as “livestock.”

The European Union has banned most neonics.

In 2013, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., introduced the “Saving America’s Pollinators Act,” which seeks to suspend the use of neonics on bee-attractive plants until EPA reviews all of the available data, including field studies.

Friends of the Earth in a report issued this week detailed the public relations campaign that Bayer has used to discourage the U.S. government from putting a ban in place.

▪ Jeff Pettis testimony ▪ Dan Cummings testimony ▪ Jeff Stone testimony ▪ David Fischer testimony ▪ Friends of the Earth — Follow the Honey: 7 Ways Pesticide Companies are Spinning the Bee Crisis to Protect Profits