Pesticide manufacturers Syngenta and Bayer appear to have secreted away studies that showed their pesticides did serious harm to honeybees, rather than revealing the results to the public. After Greenpeace obtained the studies from the EPA through the Freedom of Information Act, scientists are calling on the two companies to operate with more transparency, says The Guardian.
“The newly revealed studies show Syngenta’s thiamethoxam and Bayer’s clothianidin seriously harmed colonies at high doses, but did not find significant effects below concentrations of 50 parts per billion (ppb) and 40ppb respectively. Such levels can sometimes be found in fields but concentrations are usually below 10ppb,” says The Guardian.
But even if it’s still questionable whether honeybees are regularly exposed to the chemicals at high enough concentrations to do damage, the companies should have been forthcoming with the data, scientists say. They point out that pollinators are often confronted with a cocktail of chemicals, not just one, and the compounded effect could be more dangerous. Scientists have argued that the studies were unrealistic, because they don’t take into account all the other ways that a bee might be exposed to the poison, apart from pollination, including in planting dust and water and seed treatments.
“Given all the debate about this subject, it is hard to see why the companies don’t make these kinds of studies available,” said Professor Dave Goulson, at the University of Sussex. “It does seem a little shady to do this kind of field study — the very studies the companies say are the most important ones — and then not tell people what they find.”
Syngenta, for its part, said in a statement to Greenpeace in August that “none of the studies Syngenta has undertaken or commissioned for use by regulatory agencies have shown damages to the health of bee colonies,” according to The Guardian. Obviously, the latest tests contradict that point.
Bayer has said that the company plans to discuss its study results at an International Congress of Entomology meeting next week.
As proof of the harm pesticides can wreak on pollinators, scientists might point to the rusty patched bumblebee. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed that Bombus affinis be listed as an endangered species since the population has dropped 87 percent in recent years, says the Los Angeles Times. The species is one of a few that rely on “buzz pollination,” in which the pollen is released from a flower by the vibrations of the bee’s body.
“The rusty patched bumblebee — so named for a distinctive colored patch on the abdomens of worker bees — is particularly apt at pollinating cranberries, plums, alfalfa, onion seed and apples. Its life cycle begins earlier in spring and extends later into the fall than most other types of bumblebees,” essentially filling a niche that the honeybee can’t, says the Times. Fish and Wildlife blames habitat loss, farming practices, pesticides and climate change for the decline.