Why Have 2 Billion Bees Disappeared?

Once our field experiment had concluded – one in which we confirmed that the ingestion of extremely low doses of neonicotinoid insecticides had triggered Colony Collapse Disorder in fifteen hives – we set about clearing the apiary site. The results of our experiment were harrowing. Every upright hive was an empty hive, bereft of bees, like a gravestone. We sacrificed fifteen hives to obtain the knowledge we ought to have had about the toxicity of neonicotinoid insecticides – knowledge that had been concealed from us.

Our experimental hypothesis had been that a colony of bees ingesting low doses of neonicotinoid insecticides would exhibit the toxicity of CCD, and yet when I witnessed this catastrophe, I was still profoundly shaken. Anyone unfamiliar with the experiment, standing before those empty hives, would feel an immense bewilderment and dread.

Bewilderment, because how could a hive that had been perfectly healthy before winter’s arrival stand utterly empty once winter came? And dread, because if the cause of the bees’ disappearance also happens to us, will humanity disappear too?

But when I stepped from a vibrant, buzzing hive – the control group hive – to the one-metre-distant dead, silent, empty hive beside it, I realised I was living through another “Silent Spring”. The hives that had suffered CCD over winter now lay silent in the fullness of spring, a silence so unsettling it felt more suffocating than the calm before a storm.

Compared with the “Silent Spring” of the twentieth century, the “Silent Spring” of the twenty-first has replaced the little bird with the bee, and DDT with neonicotinoid insecticides as the culprit. Yet both are new ecological crises wrought by pesticides – a hidden pesticide toxicity that has imposed upon the world a silence in spring that should never have been.

This “Silent Spring” time tunnel has been traversed by humanity for over sixty years. When the toxicity of DDT insecticides came to light and the importance of protecting wild animals was recognised, environmental awareness rose in the more progressive nations, which established government bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency.

More than sixty years on, the indiscriminate use of another pesticide has conjured yet another Silent Spring, as though the far end of that twentieth-century time tunnel of environmental protection turned out to be the threshold of the twenty-first. The ecological crisis spawned by a new pesticide has hurled us back to the starting point of sixty years ago, forcing us to watch, helpless, as the bees struggle and perish.

Opening the Pandora’s Box of Seed Coating

From the results of the two CCD experiments at Harvard University, one might conclude that the culprit behind CCD is the ingestion of extremely low doses of neonicotinoid insecticides – imidacloprid and clothianidin – that bees absorb from high-fructose corn syrup. Because of the multigenerational inheritance of mitochondrial DNA toxicity caused by neonicotinoid insecticides, the generations of bees that need to produce the most energy to survive the winter in the hive suffer functional damage to their mitochondrial DNA, age prematurely, and ultimately experience an unprecedented CCD.

That neonicotinoid insecticides are the cause of CCD in bees is a fact beyond dispute, yet the pathway through which bees are afflicted is a relatively little-known agricultural technology – seed coating.

In shifting from conventional pesticide spraying to seed coating, what we have changed is not merely the way pesticides are applied. Whether deliberately or inadvertently, we have altered the impact of these systemic insecticides and fungicides on the survival conditions of non-target organisms and on environmental biodiversity.

The pesticide manufacturing industry has hailed the combination of systemic pesticides with seed coating as a major milestone in agricultural technology at the close of the twentieth century, proudly declaring that plant protection could henceforth, like human medicine, deliver precision in the use of chemicals. But the mass disappearance of bees worldwide has led the European Union to impose an indefinite ban on the three most widely used neonicotinoid insecticides, puncturing all such boasts.

The advent of seed coating was, in truth, a strategic development for the pesticide manufacturing industry. On the surface, seed coating offers farmers a one-stop service for purchasing seeds and pesticides together; in practice, it has also substantially increased the industry’s revenues.

Coated seeds do not contain neonicotinoid insecticides alone; the seed exterior can also be coated with systemic fungicides, plant growth regulators, nutrients and more. So, exactly how many kinds – and how much – of neonicotinoid insecticides and systemic fungicides a single maize seed carries, I believe not even government regulatory agencies can confirm.

But since I personally conducted the CCD experiments, witnessed this terrible ecological crisis of bee disappearance, gained a deeper understanding of the transgenerational toxicological effects of mitochondrial DNA damage caused by low-dose ingestion of neonicotinoid insecticides, and learned of the harm that coated seeds inflict on the environment and ecology, I must – as my career nears its end – come forward to oppose the very existence of neonicotinoid insecticides and the legitimacy of seed coating treatment.

Neonicotinoid Insecticides on Our Tables

Many experimental results have demonstrated that a substantial proportion (80–98%) of the pesticides applied in seed coatings seeps directly into the soil and subsequently enters surface water and groundwater. The remaining 2–20% is absorbed by the plant after germination; owing to the hydrophilicity of systemic pesticides, these chemicals travel with the growing crop until, once the crop is harvested, they enter the human food chain.

In other words, as soon as seeds coated with neonicotinoid insecticides are sown, those insecticides become ubiquitous in the environment and in our food.

While neonicotinoid-coated seeds contaminate the soil and surface water, a small fraction of the neonicotinoid insecticides is absorbed by the plant’s roots, translocated upward from the seed into the plant’s own vascular system, and distributed to every part of the plant—including the pollen and nectar within its flowers—before ultimately being released into the air.

The organisms most severely affected by this pollen-borne route of exposure are, of course, pollinating insects—including bees—for whom pollen is their primary source of protein. Yet the creatures harmed by pollen exposure extend far beyond these vital pollinators. During the spring flowering season, whether or not we are admiring the blossoms, simply being outdoors means we inhale pollen indiscriminately. Some people suffer severe allergic reactions while others are unaffected. But because neonicotinoid insecticides are used extensively in agriculture, urban greening, parks and home gardens, the annual pollen season has become a peak period of neonicotinoid exposure—particularly for those who enjoy springtime outings to enjoy the blossoms.

Owing to the hydrophilicity of systemic pesticides, the vividly coloured seeds treated with neonicotinoid insecticides can, in theory, protect a plant from sowing through harvest against both subterranean and above-ground pests, thereby safeguarding food production. So, from the standpoint of plant protection, coated seeds would appear to play an indispensable role.

But agriculture cannot focus solely on crop growth and yield. After all, crops are themselves part of the ecological environment—like all other living things, they breathe the same air, drink the same water, and draw on the resources the soil provides to sustain our lives. Agriculture, therefore, should enjoy no special privilege, and still less should it perpetually invoke “ensuring food security” as a shield behind which to do as it pleases.

The history of pesticides in human societies tells us that their misuse only breeds resistance. Year after year, we pour millions of kilograms of insecticides into the soil—that is misuse, a reckless dumping of toxic chemicals, a method that stops at nothing to achieve agricultural production.

By the time we are left with no tools with which to combat agricultural pests and look back to question whether seed coating has been a sustainable plant protection strategy, it will be too late. This is no alarmist prophecy—it is something bound to happen sooner or later.

When a Beekeeper Cannot Keep the Bees Well

Mr Wallholl told me that this year (2023) should be the last year of beekeeping he will ever do. He said: “If even I cannot keep the bees healthy, then all the knowledge passed down about beekeeping is a lie. There are ever more threats in the environment preventing the entire colony from growing healthy and strong.” This filled him with sadness and helplessness.

Mr Wallholl said: “I have tried selling organic honey, because organic honey fetches two to three times the price of ordinary honey. But every year the honey tests positive for neonicotinoid insecticide residues, so I cannot do it.” Mr Wallholl also said: “The spread of neonicotinoid insecticides in the environment is faster and more widespread than I ever imagined, and it caught me completely off guard. Continuing to keep bees has become a struggle – there is no longer any economic point to it.”

Mr Wallholl is not fearmongering, nor is he seeking sympathy. In June 2023, the Associated Press, a leading US news agency, reported: “Sixty per cent of American beekeepers lost large numbers of their colonies in 2022, resulting in income that is economically unsustainable.”

The Associated Press report makes no mention whatsoever of the impact of neonicotinoid insecticide ingestion on bee survival. It considers climate factors to be the primary cause of colony losses attributed to Varroa mites, finding that beekeepers of every scale – from the average person’s backyard to professional apiaries – cite “bad weather” as the leading cause of colony death. The Associated Press presents substantial evidence showing that, as the climate changes, bees and the many flowers they pollinate are falling out of synchrony, with severe consequences for both. But the Associated Press neither does nor can connect the scourge of Varroa mites with the difficulty bees face in collecting pollen and nectar as a result of climate change.

Cherish the Bees You See

Between fearmongering and stating the facts, there truly is nothing but a thin sheet of paper. Is the disappearance of bees fearmongering? Is the importance of bees to humanity and the ecosystem fearmongering? Are the irreversible health effects caused by mitochondrial toxicity fearmongering? Are the environmental harms wrought by neonicotinoid insecticides and seed coating fearmongering too? The phrase “fearmongering” is a remark that demands no accountability, the least costly reply of all, a soothing phrase that buries the truth.

The causes and consequences of bee disappearance are already an established scientific fact. Deliberately downplaying the ecological disaster brought about by neonicotinoid insecticides and seed coating only pushes human civilisation further into the abyss. The health effects of mitochondrial toxicity on populations across species and their offspring is also a scientific fact; what humanity now faces is a vast planetary-scale biological experiment designed to test that very fact.

By the time we accumulate sufficient scientific evidence to confirm that our current understanding of the mitochondrial toxicity of neonicotinoid insecticides and the harm seed coating inflicts on the environment is correct, it may already be too late, or the price already too high.

Whether 21st-century agriculture should continue to rely on chemical pesticides is a deeply contentious question. Since the introduction of DDT, not a single widely used pesticide has stood unchallenged, never to be phased out. Most have been banned owing to their known toxicity and the development of resistance in the environment.

We need to think from multiple angles and approach the ecological and health risks of pesticide use with caution. Until we find a balance that simultaneously safeguards agricultural production, ecological protection, and public health, the question of whether pesticides are needed at all is not an urgent one. What we need are pesticides with the least possible impact on the ecosystem and on public health.

The disappearance of bees has negated the neonicotinoid insecticides and seed coating technology we chose in the 21st century. I believe we still have a little precious time to make amends for the mistakes we have made—and this may well be our last opportunity. So please cherish the next unexpected encounter with a bee in the wild or in a park. Who is to say it will not be the last bee you see in your lifetime.