All About Neonicotiniods

Neonicotiniods are the primary suspect in the investigation for the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder. The next several blog entries will discuss the investigation and the evidence. This blog entry will introduce neonicotiniods.

Neonicotinoiods were welcomed as a ground-breaking class of insectides when they were first marketed in 1991 by Bayer A.G. By 1995 they were the top selling insecticide in the world and generated $360B in annual sales.[i] The most common neonicotinoids in use are imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam.

Neonicotinoids are acetylcholine agonists related chemically to nicotine. Acetylcholine is the most common neurotransmitter in the body and is found in both the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). In the CNS, acetylcholine plays a major role in our sensory perceptions, making us more alert and sharpening our attention to details. In the PNS, acetylcholine plays a major role in muscle activation.[ii]  As an acetylcholine agonist, neonicotinoids block the site on neurons where acetylcholine will bind and prevent the neuron from firing. This will effectively stop neural transmissions, resulting in loss of focus, loss of muscular control, lethargy, and, ultimately, paralysis and death. What a great way to kill an insect!

Neonicotinoids are typically applied in what is called a seed treatment. Seeds are ‘dressed’ or coated in the insecticide prior to planting. The insecticide is then absorbed by the plant is it grows and develops, so the insecticide provides long lasting protection against pests. Seed treatments are generally considered more environmentally friendly since their precise application results in lower soil contamination from run-off and an overall lower amount of insecticide is applied to the environment.

The popularity of neonicotinoids can be attributed to three main reasons, as outlined by Randy Oliver on scientificbeekeeping.com:

1. They are far more toxic to insects than to mammals, making them much safer for humans.
2. They are absorbed by plants and translocated via the vascular system, giving effective control of sap sucking and boring insects which other sprayed insecticides might not contact.
3. They can be applied as seed treatments, thus being a solution to the longstanding problem that roughly 99% of sprayed treatments never actually hit a target pest, and thus are unnecessarily dumped into the environment.[iii]

In summary, when neonicotinoids were first introduced to the market in the 1990s, they were considered the important development in pesticide development over the prior 50 years due to lower environmental impact and lower toxicity to humans. They are currently the most commonly used pesticide on the market today.

 

 

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[i] Legocki, Jan, and Iwona Polec. “Contemporary trends in development of active substances possessing the pesticidal properties: neonicotinoid insecticides.” PESTYCYDY / PESTICIDES 1 (2008): 143-59. http://www.wydawnictwa.ipo.waw.pl/pestycydy/2008-1-2/Legocki.pdf. Institute of Industrial Organic Chemistry. 10 Feb. 2013.

 

[ii] Cherry, Kendra. “What Is Acetylcholine?” About.com Psychology. About.com. 10 Feb. 2013 <http://psychology.about.com/od/aindex/g/acetylcholine.htm&gt;.

 

[iii] Oliver, Randy. “ScientificBeekeeping.com.” Scientific Beekeeping RSS. Sept. 2012. ScientificBeekeeping. 10 Feb. 2013 <http://scientificbeekeeping.com/neonicotinoids-trying-to-make-sense-of-the-science-part-2/&gt;.

 

Don’t Call Me Honey!

Like all good recipes, this one starts with ingredients first. It is a fairly simple list; in fact there is only one ingredient. All honey starts out as nectar, which is produced by flowering plants. Specifically, nectar is produced and stored by glands called nectaries at the base of petals in a flower. Nectaries are usually located near the plant’s reproductive structure, so when a pollinator, such as a honeybee, extracts the nectar from the plant, it will also brush up against the reproductive organs and begin the fertilization process for the plant. Nectar is composed of many different chemicals, including water, oils to add insect-attractant aromas, amino acids, and saccharides such as sucrose.[i] The saccharides make nectar sweet, have energy rich bonds, and are the reason that honeybees consume nectar.

The honeybee has special equipment to help it extract the nectar from the plant, namely its proboscis, a long, hollow straw like organ located in the mouth where a tongue would be. [ii] The honeybee inserts its proboscis into the stigma of the flower, which is another long hollow tube that leads to the flower’s nectaries, and extracts the nectar by sucking it out.[iii]  The nectar is stored in a special organ in the bee called the honeygut.  The foraging honeybee will continue to extract nectar from various flowers throughout the day until its honeygut is full.[iv]  The honeygut can hold 70 mg of nectar at full capacity – the weight of the bee- and a foraging bee must visit between 100-1500 flowers to fill its honeygut to full capacity. [v] That is a lot of flowers and flying around – I guess that is where the saying ‘Busy as a Bee’ comes from. These foraging bees will literally work themselves to death and survive only an average of 35 days once foraging season begins. [vi]

In the honeygut, the nectar begins the transformation to honey. The enzyme invertase breaks down the complex sugars into simpler sugars through a process called inversion.  When the foraging bee returns to the hive, it will regurgitate the processed nectar into the mouths of hive bees. These bees will continue the transformation process in their honeyguts and pass the honey-in-the-making around to other bees (mouth-to-mouth, regurgitation style). Passing the honey-in-the-making around so much allows much of the water content of the nectar to separate and evaporate off. In addition, the hive is kept at a toasty 90.5 F or 32.5 C, which also aids in the evaporation process. [vii] The honey will be eventually deposited into the honeycomb once it is deemed ready by the worker bees.  There worker bees will fan the air with their wings to keep an air current across the honeycomb and further aid in evaporation. Nectar is about 80% water, and after the bees transform it into honey, it is 17%-18% water – that is a lot of evaporation! [viii]

And that is how you make honey. The final product is a viscous liquid of fructose and glucose.

If you learned nothing else from this entry, know this…  if someone calls you ‘Honey’, they are really calling you regurgitated nectar or bee vomit!

 

 

 

 

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[i] “Nectar.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 21 Feb. 2013. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.

[ii] Blackiston, Howland. “How to Identify the Basic Body Parts of Honey Bees.” For Dummies. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.

[iii] Manal, Naima. “Diagram of the Parts of a Flower.” EHow. Demand Media, 25 Feb. 2009. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.

[iv] Hadley, Debbie. “How Do Bees Make Honey?” About.com Insects. About.com, n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.

[v] “How Do Bees Make Honey?” 7/30/97 – How Do Bees Make Honey? Michigan State University, 30 July 1997. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.

[vi] “How Do Bees Make Honey?” How Bees Make Honey. BeesWax Co., n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.

[vii] “How Do Bees Make Honey.” Australian Honey Bee Industry Council. Australian Honey Bee Industry Council, n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.

[viii] “How Do Bees Make Honey?” How Bees Make Honey. BeesWax Co., n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.

Just What Are You Adding to Your Tea?

Two new vocabulary words for the day:

Palynologists – studies pollen

Melissopalynologist – studies pollen in honey

 

I just read an article that features Professor Vaughn Bryant at Texas A&M University. He specializes in Archaeological Palynology, Paleoenvironmental Studies, Coprolite Studies, Forensic Palynology, and Melissopalynology.[i]

Since this is a blog about bees, his melissopalynology speciality is what is of interest.  In 1967, Professor Bryant was hired by the US Department of Agriculture to determine if the honey it had purchased as part of a farm subsidy program was from domestic sources. Professor Bryant created a technique to wash the honey in various acids which destroyed everything in the honey except for pollen. He then analyzed the pollen to determine its original source. He was able to show that 6% of the honey purchases in the farm subsidy program actually came from Mexico and was being fraudulently sold to the Department.[ii]

Flash forward to the present time…  Professor Bryant’s expertise in analyzing pollen in honey has once again been called upon.  The Food Safety News website hired Professor Bryant to analyze 60 containers of honey purchased at various drugstores, grocery stores, and farmer’s markets across 10 states.  They wanted to know the origin of the honey samples. And, what Professor Bryant found is very disturbing:

• 76 percent of samples bought at groceries had all the pollen removed, These were stores like TOP Food, Safeway, Giant Eagle, QFC, Kroger, Metro Market, Harris Teeter, A&P, Stop & Shop and King Soopers.

• 100 percent of the honey sampled from drugstores like Walgreens, Rite-Aid and CVS Pharmacy had no pollen.

• 77 percent of the honey sampled from big box stores like Costco, Sam’s Club, Walmart, Target and H-E-B had the pollen filtered out.

• 100 percent of the honey packaged in the small individual service portions from Smucker, McDonald’s and KFC had the pollen removed.[iii]

The majority of the honey had no pollen, and with no pollen, the origins of the honey cannot be traced. The first question is how can honey have no pollen? The answer is filtration. Honey that is heated, watered-down, and then forced through a very small filter will have all of its pollen removed. This process is called ultra-filtration. The second question is why would anyone bother removing pollen from honey? And, the answer to that question is honey laundering. Millions of pounds of honey that have been found unsafe due to high levels of antibiotics and trace metals are being funneled to other countries around the world and then illegally imported and sold in the United States, and, without pollen, the guilty party cannot be identified. The most likely culprit of this crime is China.[iv]

A question from reporter Tom Philpott in Mother Jones, “Ever wonder why the ongoing collapse of US honeybee populations hasn’t caused a scarcity of honey or a spike in prices?” [v] And the answer is… because we have been filling the void with cheap, illegal imports from a country not known for strict safety and quality standards.

The bad news… Unfortunately, not much is being done to ensure the safety of the US honey supply. The FDA is only able to check 5% of honey imports for toxins, and it does not check for pollen in any honey sold here. [vi]

The good news… Professor Bryant found that the honey from farmers markets, co-ops and stores like Trader Joe’s had not been stripped of pollen.[vii] I guess this is where my family will be buying our honey from now on.

 

 

 

 

 

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[i] Bryant, Vaughn. “VAUGHN BRYANT – Department of Anthropology.” Department of Anthropology. Texas A&M University, n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.

[ii] Schneider, Andrew. “Top Pollen Detective Finds Honey a Sticky Business.” Food Safety News, Marler Clark Law Firm, 7 Nov. 2011. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.

[iii] Schneider, Andrew. “Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn’t Honey.” Food Safety News. Marler Clark Law Firm, 7 Nov. 2011. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.

[iv] Philpott, Tom. “Honey Laundering.” Mother Jones. Mother Jones, 7 Nov. 2011. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.

[v] Philpott, Tom. “Honey Laundering.” Mother Jones. Mother Jones, 7 Nov. 2011. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.

[vi] Schneider, Andrew. “Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn’t Honey.” Food Safety News. Marler Clark Law Firm, 7 Nov. 2011. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.

[vii] Schneider, Andrew. “Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn’t Honey.” Food Safety News. Marler Clark Law Firm, 7 Nov. 2011. Web. 25 Feb. 2013.