Hi, everybody. I'm Scott Stewart with UT Extension,
and today we're a part of the pollinator tour
and we're really going to
specifically try to zero in on trying to
mitigate the negative impacts of agriculture
and in particular pesticides on pollinator
health.
Tell us why pollinators are so important.
Well, there's all kinds of pollinators.
There's bird pollinators, bat pollinators,
but the thing you hear the most about,
of course, is the bee pollinators
and probably the number 1 bee here about of
course is the honeybee.
Of course, they have a lot of importance.
The honeybee was brought over to this country
really to improve
production of vegetable crops because many
of those vegetable crops require pollination.
Also, those pilgrims that came over wanted
a source
of honey and bees are good source of honey
as well.
So that's economically important.
We raise bees, we pollinate crops,
they provide value to crops,
extreme value in some cases,
and they also provide food and other products,
bee's wax, there's all kind of things that
they provide to us,
and that's specific to the honeybee.
But I think there's other reasons that are
important, too.
First of all, these bees are part of our natural
ecosystem.
Even though the honeybee is not native to
the United States,
there are lots of pollinators that are native
to the United States,
and they all have roles in pollinating all
these wildflowers or
some flowers and plants that can't exist unless
they have their specific pollinator.
So they have a huge ecological role in the
environment,
not just the things we grow,
but the natural vegetation that's out there.
One again.
So I do want to make the point that bees are
very important pollinators,
and I think a lot of people are familiar with
some of the crops that have to be pollinated.
Things like the melons,
the almond production is a big deal.
They caught thousands of bees and bee colonies
out to
California and places they grow almonds to
make sure those crops get pollinated.
It's big business for the beekeepers,
but it's also big business for the farmers.
We do need to recognize that a lot of the
crops that we grow
in West Tennessee are primary field crops,
don't require pollination,
don't really benefit from pollination.
Things like cotton can be pollinated,
but mostly it crosses itself.
Soybean is the same way.
Corn is wind pollinated.
Wheat is wind pollinated.
So lot of the crops are grown in the major
field crops don't really need pollinators.
However, they are important habitat for those
pollinators and those pollinators are at
risk when they forage in those crops if they
get sprayed with pesticides, for example.
We hear a lot about honeybee health,
what do you think people need to know about
honeybee health?
Of course, there's other speakers on this
tour that are going to
address this probably in more detail than
I will,
but I can tell you one thing.
Honeybee health is complicated.
Honeybee keepers are struggling right now
to keep their hives alive and trust me,
I keep bees now and it is a challenge to keep
these hives go in long term.
I think you have to recognize that the honeybee
is really livestock.
You'll hear people talking about bees are
going to disappear in a year,
all the honeybees are dying.
The reality is we have just as many honeybee
colonies,
if not more, in recent years than we've had
in the past.
The challenge is that they're having a harder
time maintaining these bees.
Part of the problems is these bees have their
own pests.
For example, Varroa mites and there's diseases.
Varroa mite is an invasive.
They got introduced a number of years ago
and it's probably
the major problem, threat that's facing honeybees
right now.
It feeds on the honeybee,
but it also transmit diseases,
a number of diseases into the colonies,
and they have to treat for it with pesticides.
Otherwise, eventually, most of these hives
will die.
So diseases of their own are really a challenge
for these honeybees,
management is a big issue,
and a lot of the problems that are being experienced
or get the most publicity
are the management issues that these big beekeepers
have.
I mentioned people are trucking
sometimes hundreds or thousands of beehives
out to crops that require pollination,
and it's a real challenge to manage those
bees and move them around.
Anyhow, it's even more challenging when you
got to worry about those diseases.
I think we have a lot of part-time beekeepers
that also are not good at keeping bees,
and because of those diseases,
it really requires you to be on your A game.
You have to manage the diseases.
You have to feed the bees as needed
during certain times of the year when there's
not good nectar or pollen flow.
So that's an important thing.
Another issue we see with the pollinators
is habitat availability,
and I think that one's probably not talked
about enough,
but the people recognize it.
In fact, we're standing in front of a sign,
that's a signage for a pollinator plot that
you'll see here in a minute or two.
But there's some people putting some effort
into providing
good forage habitat for pollinators.
If you think about it, when you get in an
intensive agricultural area,
there's not a lot of native vegetation in
some of these areas.
So the bees are very reliant on the crops
themselves for a resource.
Those crops can provide a very good resource
for honeybees, for example,
but one of the challenges
is a lot of these crops are very temporary.
They bloom for two or three weeks,
sometimes not even that long,
and then the food dries up and there's nothing
else out there for the bees to feed on.
That creates some stress on the bees and stress
is not good,
it causes management problems.
So would you agree that pesticides are really
getting
the most attention when we talk about pollinator
health?
That's absolutely the case
and I think it's probably not deserve, to
be honest.
I think most of the beekeeping experts will
tell you that some of
the other problems like Varroa mite are probably
the primary problems,
but it's a contributing factor and it's something
we need to be aware of.
Of course, if you're following the social
media,
you hear a lot about pesticides,
in particular insecticides, of course.
If you really want to google stuff and
look at all the social media bickering back
and forth,
they mentioned the neonicotinoids insecticides
in particular,
they get a lot of attention.
Again, I think a lot of that based on some
of my research is undeserved.
But I think we need to recognize as
managers of crops that are applying insecticides
and other pesticides,
it could negatively infect the environment,
including the pollinators.
We need to manage for that and prevent mitigate
those risks that those pollinators are being
exposed to.
So when we're talking about pollinator health,
and today I'll talk a lot about honeybee,
but it goes beyond the honeybee.
There's a lot of different pollinators,
and we're standing in front of this,
essentially a food plot for pollinators,
and there's a whole mix of different flowers
in here.
They're not all designed for honeybees.
They're designed to support pollinators of
all different kinds.
So keep that in mind,
but I think also you can keep in mind that
things we do
that reduce the risk of causing damage to
honeybees
probably benefit the other pollinators that
are in the system.
One of the reasons we focus on honeybees is
because they are commodity.
There's people that are actually monitoring
their hives,
and when they have issues with hive health
or a pesticide kill,
they know it because they are aware of it.
Do some crops pose a high risk to pollinators
than others?
Yeah, that's good question
and I think it's pretty intuitive.
We have some crops that have very low insecticide
inputs.
We also have some crops that the bees don't
spend a lot of time in.
Wheat's a good example.
You don't see a lot of honeybees in wheat,
it may be a pollen source in some circumstances,
but it's not very attractive.
Corn is kind of the same way.
Bees will forage in corn,
but they won't spend a lot of time in it.
First of all, really all it does provide is
pollen.
It's not their favorite kind of pollen,
but the way the corn crop grows,
it only provides pollen for a week or so.
So it's a very short-lived resource.
So it's not a big risk factor
in those crops just because they don't spend
a lot of time in those crops.
The other thing about corn and wheat, as another
good example,
is they don't get sprayed a lot with insecticides
or pesticides in general.
Now, you take crop like cotton,
which is attractive to more and different
kinds of pollinators in over a longer period
because they're blooming, there's a bigger
risk.
In fact, the EPA has designated it as a high-risk
crop
because it's attracted with pollinators and
it's frequently
sprayed with insecticides because we have
some significant pest issues in cotton.
You've done a lot of research on pesticide
residues,
talk a little about that.
Yeah. There's a couple of things I'd mentioned
on that,
and one of our recommendations is for people,
when they're spraying in high-risk areas,
let's say you're spraying next to some beehives,
is to try to make those applications
late in the day and that's based on a couple
of things.
One is the behavior of the honeybee.
The honeybee tends to forage starting very
actively in mid-morning
during warm parts of the day,
and then as it gets closer to evening,
say six o'clock at night,
they kind of start closing up shop and they
spend less time out there foraging.
So if you spray later in the day,
you're less likely to catch those bees while
they're out foraging on that crop.
There's some crops that the blooms don't even
remain attractive during the whole day.
So those of you that grow pumpkins or melons
of some kind
probably know that those flowers open up in
the morning,
and by midday they're closed up and the bees
no longer have access to them.
So if you spray in the afternoon,
those bees are not going to be directly exposed
to the pesticides,
they're only going to be exposed to the residues
when they
come back the next day.
Cotton is similar.
Cottons blooms for one day,
but it has a number of blooms over a number
of weeks.
But that bloom by the end of the day is really
closed up and bee activity is greatly diminished.
The other thing that we've seen with foliar
applications,
and you'll see some graph probably up on the
screen,
is those pesticide residues actually diminished
pretty quickly.
We did some data.
Actually, the data was collected last year
in cotton and soybean.
I think the graphs you'll see will be on cotton,
where we pulled samples an hour after application
and then 24-hour intervals after that,
and you see a pretty dramatic reduction in
pesticide residues in the first 24 hours in
most cases.
There's some pesticides that break down more
quickly than others.
The other thing you'll notice is one of those
graphs is
showing contamination of the palm that's pulled
from
a cotton bloom and it drops almost completely
within 24 hours,
and it makes perfect sense because a cotton
bloom only blooms for one day.
So when we pull that sample one hour after
spraying,
those anthers have been directly exposed to
spraying.
The bloom that's opened the next day
where we pulled our samples is a brand new
bloom.
It was closed the day before.
So we can take advantage of these kind of
scenarios
to help preserve bees and reduce our impact.
So what else do farmers need to know and what
can they do?
I think one thing they need to recognize is
that they're being challenged.
They're being challenged by environmental
groups,
legislative groups on how they use pesticides.
Some of these activist groups are pretty active
and they're pretty well-funded,
and they're trying to challenge the ability
of farmers to use certain insecticides.
I think they need to be involved on their
end to make sure they
have the tools they need for pest management.
At the same time, they need to recognize that
some of
those concerns of the beekeeping community,
of the activist groups about negative impacts
on pollinators are real,
and there's definitely things we can do to
reduce our negative impact on these pollinators
in general.
One thing I think is to be aware of the problem,
and that's why we're here talking about it.
You need to be aware that this really is a
big issue that's driving policy
and potentially can have long-term impacts
on what pesticides you use or how you use
those pesticides.
So be aware of the problem.
The number 1 thing we need to do
particularly when we're talking about honeybees
is communicate with our neighbors,
in particular the beekeeping neighbors,
and also communicate with the applicators.
We have farmers that don't necessarily make
the application on their crops.
They have somebody hired to do that.
When we talk about pesticide application,
it needs be communicated not only at the farmer
level,
but to the pesticide applicator level and
then at the beekeeping level as well,
and we can coordinate a lot of things to improve
those relationships.
I think the most important thing is to develop
a relationship with
your beekeeper and actually become neighbors
and friends with them.
It solves a lot of problems on the front end.
It can be a simple phone call like,
"I'm going to plant this crop here.
Probably don't want to put your beehives right
next to this
because we're going to have to spray this
a lot,"
or "Hey, we're fixing to spray this."
In some cases, the beekeeper maybe able to
close up
those hives temporarily to protect his bees,
but it's really about communication.
Some of the biggest problems I've seen is
a lot
of times we don't communicate until something
bad happens,
and then everybody is mad.
A beekeeper has lost some hives,
he goes up to the grower and says, "Gosh,
dang it.
You killed my bees," and the grower is very
defensive and it starts off on the wrong foot.
Whereas I think if you have that good relationship
going in,
those things first of all aren't going to
happen,
and when they do happen,
they resolve themselves better because you
have a relationship.
I think there's a couple other things we can
talk about,
and I've already mentioned one.
Timing your spraying, thinking about things
like wind direction.
If there's apiary, whole bunch
colonies of bees close to the proximity of
your field, the edge of your field,
you want to make sure when you spray, your
drift isn't blowing right into that hive
because that's obviously can have a pretty
significant negative impact.
You can spray later in the day in those circumstances
to prevent some of that exposure.
In some cases, it's not often easy,
but there are pesticides that you could use
that may
be less impactful or less dangerous to the
bees than others.
We need to take advantage of that when the
opportunity arises.
I can tell you, more farmers are getting aware
about this.
I get calls every year, people asking me
what could I spray because I have this apiary
next door,
and they want to make sure they don't cause
problems,
not only for the beekeeper,
but ultimately it causes a problem for them.
The standard advice is read the label,
but sometimes labels can be a little hard
to understand,
particularly relating to these pollinator
protection statements.
Yeah, and they are.
A label is a big document and you really do
need to label it.
There are restrictions for some pesticides
about how you can apply them.
In fact, the new thing that's showing up on
more and more labels is the bee icon,
and it's literally a diagram of a bee that
draws
your attention to restrictions related to
pollinators.
I think you'll see on your screen
a screenshot from a product called Centric,
which is thiamethoxam,
a neonicotinoid insecticide that has that
bee diagram on there and it's pointing out
some of the restrictions related to applying
Centric in relation to pollinators.
There's a confusion a lot of times about the
wording,
and I'll give the EPA a little credit.
Sometimes I think it's almost
intentionally a little bit confusing to list
some wiggle room.
But if you read some of the statements,
it'll be on your screen,
one of the first things it says,
and this is, for example, would be relevant
to cotton or to soybean, is it says,
"Do not apply this insecticide anytime blooms
are present and bees are foraging,"
which is a problem because we need a lot of
times to apply insecticide during the blooming
windows of cotton and corn.
I think a lot of people stop there and
don't see some of the exceptions that allow
us to make these applications.
I think it's important to understand those.
Some of the exceptions are pretty obvious.
It's cold out, if it's below 50 degrees,
the bees aren't going to be foraging.
So you don't have to worry about it.
That's an exception.
There's exceptions for if you're spraying
malathion for mosquito control,
for human health reasons or something and
things like that.
The one exception that allows us to spray
Centric during bloom potentially is it says
you can do so.
If you don't, it's going to cause you yield
loss.
Essentially, you've got a pest problem and
you need to spray it.
Those restrictions can be different depending
on the crop and the scenario.
The one I got on the screen is showing you
a scenario for, say, cotton or soybean.
If you're an almond grower and you've got
a contract with
a beekeeper and he's got a bunch of hives
around your field,
there's a whole another level of responsibilities
there.
There's more on that grower to protect the
bees of
that beekeeper and there's specific language
related
to farmers that are applying insecticides
when they also have contracts with beekeeping
service providers.
What responsibilities do beekeepers have in
protecting pollinators?
Well, that's a great question too and I think
everybody has responsibility.
One of the key responsibilities of the growers
was to communicate with the beekeepers.
But that's obviously a two-way street,
and beekeepers need to communicate with their
growers.
A lot of beekeepers are actually using the
crops of a producer for their food.
In fact, oftentimes they're putting their
hives on
a grower's property and they make that arrangement,
of course.
But I don't want the communication to be,
"Hey, do you mind if I put bees over here,"
and that to be the end of it because I think
it needs to go far beyond that.
I think you need to have discussions about
where those colonies are going to be placed.
If they're going to be in higher risk areas,
you might want to move them or develop some
communication system like,
"Hey, we're fixing to spray this field with
product A,"
and that grower might again have some opportunity
to close up his hives for a short period of
time.
Just good cordial communication could go a
long way to eliminating some problems.
I think another thing beekeepers need to do
is do a good job of managing their hives.
Don't be part of the problem.
One of the big issues and everybody pretty
much agrees
with honeybees is it's not a big issue.
It's multiple issues that are causing health
problems,
and pesticides probably aren't at the top
of the list.
You need to make sure you're managing your
pest,
your Varroa mite, and you need to do it legally.
Unfortunately, we have a lot of beekeepers
that make off-label applications for Varroa
mites
and they often accuse the growers of doing
things they shouldn't do with pesticides.
But we see that beekeepers often,
because they're struggling with their own
pest problems,
are making treatments with things they shouldn't.
Follow the label, follow approved procedures
for making treatments for your pest, it's
very important.
If your bees need to be fed,
make sure you feed your bees.
Don't take too much honey in the fall.
Make sure they have enough money left over
for the winter and most people,
beekeepers would know that,
certainly big beekeepers would know that,
but sometimes you rob too much food.
Guess what, they run out of food before they
get to the spring.
For those folks that are doing commercial
beekeeping and maybe
transporting their beehives for pollination
services,
be very aware that's a very critical window.
When you truck bees across the country,
across the state, those bees are under stress.
It can be too hot,
they're in close proximity so there's opportunities
for disease transmission.
So you need to try to mitigate those effects.
But again, I still think the biggest number
1 thing we can do to mitigate
these effects is just good common sense approach
to how we apply pesticides,
how we manage our bees,
and then communication between beekeepers
and the pesticide applicators.
Are there resources available that will help
beekeepers and applicators communicate?
There are, and there's probably a lot of things
you could google in fact.
In some states, they've actually developed
essentially a coalition
of all the stakeholder groups and develop
essentially standards of behavior.
We've tried to do that in Tennessee,
but it's not quite been finished off yet.
But it's really all about communication and
sharing information back and forth,
making sure the farmers and the applicators
know where hives are at,
making sure there's that opportunity to communicate
and
everybody has the right phone number.
So that's available, but there's also some
online resources.
For example, the Tennessee Department of Ag
is promoting
a program that's really available nationwide
called DriftWatch, also called FieldWatch.
DriftWatch is really a component of FieldWatch.
What that is, it's an opportunity for beekeepers
to go in and
log in an area exactly where their beehives
are at,
and then cooperating growers would go in and
do the exact same thing.
So you'd be able to see where beehives are
in
association to certain crops that are in the
area.
You can go in there and actually notify people
that we're fixing to spray
this field right here and make a notification
through the online system.
I think there's a lot opportunity.
It is voluntary right now.
It's not mandatory, but I think there's opportunity
for that to grow.
Ultimately, who knows? It may become a mandatory
system.
Last question, can bees and agriculture coexist?
They always have. In fact, I say they should.
They almost have to. They should be compatible.
Certainly, for some of our crops that require
pollination,
there's a need for coexistence and that should
happen.
Even for the crops that don't require pollination,
we've always had bees in our environment and
been able to manage that.
I sometimes wonder whether beekeepers,
and farmers, and pesticide applicators can
coexist because this does become
often a very much a political environmental
argument
and sometimes facts don't enter into it anymore.
But I think, again, stressing the communication
part,
that if you develop good working relationships
in your geography, you can coexist.
Try to stay out of the national,
international fray of people that may not
be even representing your interest.
