Nature vs nurture: Bees tell all
Wednesday, 03 November 2010
The Australian National University
The study represents a giant step closer to
solving the nature-nurture debate.
The nature-nurture debate is a “giant step” closer to being resolved after scientists studying bees documented how environmental inputs can modify our genetic hardware.
The research team was led by Professor Ryszard Maleszka of The Australian National University’s College of Medicine, Biology and Environment, working with colleagues from the German Cancer Institute in Heidelberg, Germany. Their work has uncovered the extensive molecular differences that occur in the brains of two types of genetically identical, but behaviourally different, female honey bees – worker bees and queen bees. The workers and queens develop along very different paths when put on different diets.
Their work reveals for the first time the intricacies of the environmentally-influenced chemical ‘marking of DNA’ called DNA methylation, which has the capacity to alter gene expression without affecting the genetic code – a process referred to as ‘epigenetic’, or above the genome.
“This marking determines which genes are to be fine-tuned in the brains of workers and queens to produce their extraordinarily different behaviours. This finding is not only crucial, but far reaching, because the enzymes that mark DNA in the bee are also the enzymes that mark DNA in human brains,” said Professor Maleszka.
“In the bees, more than 550 genes are differentially marked between the brain of the queen and the brain of the worker, which contributes to their profound divergence in behaviour. This study provides the first documentation of extensive molecular differences that may allow honey bees to generate different reproductive and behavioural outcomes as a result of differential feeding with royal jelly.”
Professor Maleszka said that the work goes a long way to answering one of life’s biggest questions.
“This study represents a giant step towards answering one of the big questions in the nature-nurture debate, because it shows how the outside world is linked to DNA via diet, and how environmental inputs can transiently modify our genetic hardware,” he said.
“Similar studies are impossible to do on human brains, so the humble honey bees are the pioneers in this fascinating area.”
The researchers’ paper, ‘The Honey Bee Epigenomes: Differential Methylation of Brain DNA in Queens and Workers’ is published in this week’s PLoS Biology.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Friday, October 8, 2010
ANOTHER THOUGHT on CCD and the Plight of the BEE
Scientists and Soldiers Solve a Bee Mystery
Mike Albans for The New York Times
Members of a joint United States Army-University of Montana research team that located a virus that is possibly collapsing honeybee colonies scanning a healthy hive near Missoula, Mont.
By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: October 6, 2010
DENVER — It has been one of the great murder mysteries of the garden: what is killing off the honeybees?
Related
*
Green Blog: Giving the Honeybee Its Due (October 7, 2010)
*
Bees Vanish, and Scientists Race for Reasons (April 24, 2007)
Honeybees inside a healthy hive near Missoua, Mont.
Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.
Now, a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two.
A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana in the online science journal PLoS One.
Exactly how that combination kills bees remains uncertain, the scientists said — a subject for the next round of research. But there are solid clues: both the virus and the fungus proliferate in cool, damp weather, and both do their dirty work in the bee gut, suggesting that insect nutrition is somehow compromised.
Liaisons between the military and academia are nothing new, of course. World War II, perhaps the most profound example, ended in an atomic strike on Japan in 1945 largely on the shoulders of scientist-soldiers in the Manhattan Project. And a group of scientists led by Jerry Bromenshenk of the University of Montana in Missoula has researched bee-related applications for the military in the past — developing, for example, a way to use honeybees in detecting land mines.
But researchers on both sides say that colony collapse may be the first time that the defense machinery of the post-Sept. 11 Homeland Security Department and academia have teamed up to address a problem that both sides say they might never have solved on their own.
“Together we could look at things nobody else was looking at,” said Colin Henderson, an associate professor at the University of Montana’s College of Technology and a member of Dr. Bromenshenk’s “Bee Alert” team.
Human nature and bee nature were interconnected in how the puzzle pieces came together. Two brothers helped foster communication across disciplines. A chance meeting and a saved business card proved pivotal. Even learning how to mash dead bees for analysis — a skill not taught at West Point — became a factor.
One perverse twist of colony collapse that has compounded the difficulty of solving it is that the bees do not just die — they fly off in every direction from the hive, then die alone and dispersed. That makes large numbers of bee autopsies — and yes, entomologists actually do those — problematic.
Dr. Bromenshenk’s team at the University of Montana and Montana State University in Bozeman, working with the Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center northeast of Baltimore, said in their jointly written paper that the virus-fungus one-two punch was found in every killed colony the group studied. Neither agent alone seems able to devastate; together, the research suggests, they are 100 percent fatal.
“It’s chicken and egg in a sense — we don’t know which came first,” Dr. Bromenshenk said of the virus-fungus combo — nor is it clear, he added, whether one malady weakens the bees enough to be finished off by the second, or whether they somehow compound the other’s destructive power. “They’re co-factors, that’s all we can say at the moment,” he said. “They’re both present in all these collapsed colonies.”
Research at the University of California, San Francisco, had already identified the fungus as part of the problem. And several RNA-based viruses had been detected as well. But the Army/Montana team, using a new software system developed by the military for analyzing proteins, uncovered a new DNA-based virus, and established a linkage to the fungus, called N. ceranae.
“Our mission is to have detection capability to protect the people in the field from anything biological,” said Charles H. Wick, a microbiologist at Edgewood. Bees, Dr. Wick said, proved to be a perfect opportunity to see what the Army’s analytic software tool could do. “We brought it to bear on this bee question, which is how we field-tested it,” he said.
The Army software system — an advance itself in the growing field of protein research, or proteomics — is designed to test and identify biological agents in circumstances where commanders might have no idea what sort of threat they face. The system searches out the unique proteins in a sample, then identifies a virus or other microscopic life form based on the proteins it is known to contain. The power of that idea in military or bee defense is immense, researchers say, in that it allows them to use what they already know to find something they did not even know they were looking for.
But it took a family connection — through David Wick, Charles’s brother — to really connect the dots. When colony collapse became news a few years ago, Mr. Wick, a tech entrepreneur who moved to Montana in the 1990s for the outdoor lifestyle, saw a television interview with Dr. Bromenshenk about bees.
Mr. Wick knew of his brother’s work in Maryland, and remembered meeting Dr. Bromenshenk at a business conference. A retained business card and a telephone call put the Army and the Bee Alert team buzzing around the same blossom.
The first steps were awkward, partly because the Army lab was not used to testing bees, or more specifically, to extracting bee proteins. “I’m guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very complicated.”
The process eventually was refined. A mortar and pestle worked better than the desktop, and a coffee grinder worked best of all for making good bee paste.
Scientists in the project emphasize that their conclusions are not the final word. The pattern, they say, seems clear, but more research is needed to determine, for example, how further outbreaks might be prevented, and how much environmental factors like heat, cold or drought might play a role.
They said that combination attacks in nature, like the virus and fungus involved in bee deaths, are quite common, and that one answer in protecting bee colonies might be to focus on the fungus — controllable with antifungal agents — especially when the virus is detected.
Still unsolved is what makes the bees fly off into the wild yonder at the point of death. One theory, Dr. Bromenshenk said, is that the viral-fungal combination disrupts memory or navigating skills and the bees simply get lost. Another possibility, he said, is a kind of insect insanity.
In any event, the university’s bee operation itself proved vulnerable just last year, when nearly every bee disappeared over the course of the winter.
Mike Albans for The New York Times
Members of a joint United States Army-University of Montana research team that located a virus that is possibly collapsing honeybee colonies scanning a healthy hive near Missoula, Mont.
By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: October 6, 2010
DENVER — It has been one of the great murder mysteries of the garden: what is killing off the honeybees?
Related
*
Green Blog: Giving the Honeybee Its Due (October 7, 2010)
*
Bees Vanish, and Scientists Race for Reasons (April 24, 2007)
Honeybees inside a healthy hive near Missoua, Mont.
Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.
Now, a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two.
A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana in the online science journal PLoS One.
Exactly how that combination kills bees remains uncertain, the scientists said — a subject for the next round of research. But there are solid clues: both the virus and the fungus proliferate in cool, damp weather, and both do their dirty work in the bee gut, suggesting that insect nutrition is somehow compromised.
Liaisons between the military and academia are nothing new, of course. World War II, perhaps the most profound example, ended in an atomic strike on Japan in 1945 largely on the shoulders of scientist-soldiers in the Manhattan Project. And a group of scientists led by Jerry Bromenshenk of the University of Montana in Missoula has researched bee-related applications for the military in the past — developing, for example, a way to use honeybees in detecting land mines.
But researchers on both sides say that colony collapse may be the first time that the defense machinery of the post-Sept. 11 Homeland Security Department and academia have teamed up to address a problem that both sides say they might never have solved on their own.
“Together we could look at things nobody else was looking at,” said Colin Henderson, an associate professor at the University of Montana’s College of Technology and a member of Dr. Bromenshenk’s “Bee Alert” team.
Human nature and bee nature were interconnected in how the puzzle pieces came together. Two brothers helped foster communication across disciplines. A chance meeting and a saved business card proved pivotal. Even learning how to mash dead bees for analysis — a skill not taught at West Point — became a factor.
One perverse twist of colony collapse that has compounded the difficulty of solving it is that the bees do not just die — they fly off in every direction from the hive, then die alone and dispersed. That makes large numbers of bee autopsies — and yes, entomologists actually do those — problematic.
Dr. Bromenshenk’s team at the University of Montana and Montana State University in Bozeman, working with the Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center northeast of Baltimore, said in their jointly written paper that the virus-fungus one-two punch was found in every killed colony the group studied. Neither agent alone seems able to devastate; together, the research suggests, they are 100 percent fatal.
“It’s chicken and egg in a sense — we don’t know which came first,” Dr. Bromenshenk said of the virus-fungus combo — nor is it clear, he added, whether one malady weakens the bees enough to be finished off by the second, or whether they somehow compound the other’s destructive power. “They’re co-factors, that’s all we can say at the moment,” he said. “They’re both present in all these collapsed colonies.”
Research at the University of California, San Francisco, had already identified the fungus as part of the problem. And several RNA-based viruses had been detected as well. But the Army/Montana team, using a new software system developed by the military for analyzing proteins, uncovered a new DNA-based virus, and established a linkage to the fungus, called N. ceranae.
“Our mission is to have detection capability to protect the people in the field from anything biological,” said Charles H. Wick, a microbiologist at Edgewood. Bees, Dr. Wick said, proved to be a perfect opportunity to see what the Army’s analytic software tool could do. “We brought it to bear on this bee question, which is how we field-tested it,” he said.
The Army software system — an advance itself in the growing field of protein research, or proteomics — is designed to test and identify biological agents in circumstances where commanders might have no idea what sort of threat they face. The system searches out the unique proteins in a sample, then identifies a virus or other microscopic life form based on the proteins it is known to contain. The power of that idea in military or bee defense is immense, researchers say, in that it allows them to use what they already know to find something they did not even know they were looking for.
But it took a family connection — through David Wick, Charles’s brother — to really connect the dots. When colony collapse became news a few years ago, Mr. Wick, a tech entrepreneur who moved to Montana in the 1990s for the outdoor lifestyle, saw a television interview with Dr. Bromenshenk about bees.
Mr. Wick knew of his brother’s work in Maryland, and remembered meeting Dr. Bromenshenk at a business conference. A retained business card and a telephone call put the Army and the Bee Alert team buzzing around the same blossom.
The first steps were awkward, partly because the Army lab was not used to testing bees, or more specifically, to extracting bee proteins. “I’m guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very complicated.”
The process eventually was refined. A mortar and pestle worked better than the desktop, and a coffee grinder worked best of all for making good bee paste.
Scientists in the project emphasize that their conclusions are not the final word. The pattern, they say, seems clear, but more research is needed to determine, for example, how further outbreaks might be prevented, and how much environmental factors like heat, cold or drought might play a role.
They said that combination attacks in nature, like the virus and fungus involved in bee deaths, are quite common, and that one answer in protecting bee colonies might be to focus on the fungus — controllable with antifungal agents — especially when the virus is detected.
Still unsolved is what makes the bees fly off into the wild yonder at the point of death. One theory, Dr. Bromenshenk said, is that the viral-fungal combination disrupts memory or navigating skills and the bees simply get lost. Another possibility, he said, is a kind of insect insanity.
In any event, the university’s bee operation itself proved vulnerable just last year, when nearly every bee disappeared over the course of the winter.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
the SECRET to white whipped honey is.....
that it is WHIPPED - go to DYCE PROCESS at google.com and learn how and why and when.
Monday, August 23, 2010
NEW SPECIES OF BEE....
A new species of bee was found at the Cowichan Garry Oak Preserve -
Mason-bee Cowichnius?
The non-aggressive mud-nest maker is among many of the bee species found at the preserve where native numbers are thriving due to the recovering site's diverse ecology so world Mason Bee expert, Terry Griswold, and Simon Fraser University biologist Elizabeth Elle reported. " The preserve has done a great job of getting rid of invasive species... Helped by a flock of sheep nibbling the preserve's invasive plant and grass shoots, and saving its native wildflowers. Eco-divsity is boosted by bees pollinating and fertizing all plants - including crops. ..Out of every three bites you eat give thanks to a bee." SPOTLIGHT May issue 2010
BC Canada
Mason-bee Cowichnius?
The non-aggressive mud-nest maker is among many of the bee species found at the preserve where native numbers are thriving due to the recovering site's diverse ecology so world Mason Bee expert, Terry Griswold, and Simon Fraser University biologist Elizabeth Elle reported. " The preserve has done a great job of getting rid of invasive species... Helped by a flock of sheep nibbling the preserve's invasive plant and grass shoots, and saving its native wildflowers. Eco-divsity is boosted by bees pollinating and fertizing all plants - including crops. ..Out of every three bites you eat give thanks to a bee." SPOTLIGHT May issue 2010
BC Canada
BEEKEEPERS STUNG BY LIFTED QUARANTINE - BC, Canada
August 2010 we visited Vancouver Island to meet up with fellow bee keepers - to share ideas and stories on what is happening in the bee community in their part of the world. President of Cowichan Bee Association, George Field and wife, Delphine, were gracious enough to take the time. We met at Shawnigan Steeples Restaurant for dinner and a chat.
From an email: "this is the busy season, many of the
beekeepers are moving, splitting or chasing their bees at this time of year.
Here on the island there is a big controversy at this time over the movement
of bees on and off of Vancouver Island. The change in government policy has
many beekeepers hopping mad.
We had the Cowichan Beekeepers club meeting last Thursday evening and I read
your letter out at the meeting to see of interest, the problem here is that
last fall and through the winter many of the beekeepers of Vancouver Island
had up to 90% bee losses. The old "Colony Collapse" situation is what they
are calling it, many of the commercial beekeepers are now working very hard
to get their number of hives up so as to fulfill some pollination contracts
and get some honey for this year."
The Canadian government has allowed importation of bees from Chili and Argentina but no equipment (wood etc...) as the island has been 'safe' from unregulated importation; but recently all that has changed. The ban was lifted on equipment/bee importation onto the island and apparently the quarantine was not adhered to; one of the large pollinators fulfilled his pollination contracts first then brought the equipment etc for quarantine - by then the 'foreign invader' had infected the entire island hence the 90% loss among the bee keepers. The sanctuary of the island is now breached and has fallen prey, like the rest of the world to the Varroa mite, American/European Foulbrood, honeycomb-eating greater wax moth, small hive beetle...
According to the SPOTLIGHT, Friday May 28,2010 issue the headline reads: Beekeepers stung by lifted quarantine
The article goes on to state ..."The policy change basically lifts a 1987 honeybee importation quarantine. Commercial producer Larry Lindahl (beekeeper for 64 years), a former agricultural inspector with 180 bee colonies is stinging mad about the legislative changes made with little notice to beekeepers.....The quarantine had kept a list of honeybee pests out of Cowichan's 250 registered hives - you can double that figure for non-registered ones... What's the possible justification for a major change to the status quo without involving key stakeholders like island beekeepers? Demanded Annie Roman of the Cowichan Beekeepers Club. Beehaven Farm's Steve Mitchell saw his 20 colonies reduced to one thanks largely to last year's infestation by the Varroa mite. He too wants the quarantine reinstated to keep disease levels low among the island bees....."
From an email: "this is the busy season, many of the
beekeepers are moving, splitting or chasing their bees at this time of year.
Here on the island there is a big controversy at this time over the movement
of bees on and off of Vancouver Island. The change in government policy has
many beekeepers hopping mad.
We had the Cowichan Beekeepers club meeting last Thursday evening and I read
your letter out at the meeting to see of interest, the problem here is that
last fall and through the winter many of the beekeepers of Vancouver Island
had up to 90% bee losses. The old "Colony Collapse" situation is what they
are calling it, many of the commercial beekeepers are now working very hard
to get their number of hives up so as to fulfill some pollination contracts
and get some honey for this year."
The Canadian government has allowed importation of bees from Chili and Argentina but no equipment (wood etc...) as the island has been 'safe' from unregulated importation; but recently all that has changed. The ban was lifted on equipment/bee importation onto the island and apparently the quarantine was not adhered to; one of the large pollinators fulfilled his pollination contracts first then brought the equipment etc for quarantine - by then the 'foreign invader' had infected the entire island hence the 90% loss among the bee keepers. The sanctuary of the island is now breached and has fallen prey, like the rest of the world to the Varroa mite, American/European Foulbrood, honeycomb-eating greater wax moth, small hive beetle...
According to the SPOTLIGHT, Friday May 28,2010 issue the headline reads: Beekeepers stung by lifted quarantine
The article goes on to state ..."The policy change basically lifts a 1987 honeybee importation quarantine. Commercial producer Larry Lindahl (beekeeper for 64 years), a former agricultural inspector with 180 bee colonies is stinging mad about the legislative changes made with little notice to beekeepers.....The quarantine had kept a list of honeybee pests out of Cowichan's 250 registered hives - you can double that figure for non-registered ones... What's the possible justification for a major change to the status quo without involving key stakeholders like island beekeepers? Demanded Annie Roman of the Cowichan Beekeepers Club. Beehaven Farm's Steve Mitchell saw his 20 colonies reduced to one thanks largely to last year's infestation by the Varroa mite. He too wants the quarantine reinstated to keep disease levels low among the island bees....."
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
China's Honey Trade Buzzing With Corruption
China's Honey Trade Buzzing With Corruption
By Alexa Olesen, Associated Press Writer
MANUFACTURING.NET - June 30, 2010
BEIJING (AP) -- Businessman Yan Yongxiang was trying to get around stiff U.S. levies on imports of cheap Chinese honey. So he sent 15 shipping containers of cut-rate honey to the Philippines, where it was relabeled and sent on to the United States.
It's called honey-laundering, and the subterfuge let Yan skirt $656,515 in taxes before he was caught in a bust and pleaded guilty. Yan's factory in central China's Henan province even filtered the metals and pollen from the honey so that U.S. tests would not show it came from China, according to the 60-year-old's plea agreement. Now he awaits sentencing in a U.S. jail.
Honey-laundering is just one of many unsavory practices that have besmirched China's vast honey industry and raised complaints from competing American beekeepers. China produces more honey than anywhere else in the world, about 300,000 metric tons (660 million pounds) a year or about 25 percent of the global total. But stocks are tainted with a potentially dangerous antibiotic and cheaper honeys are increasingly getting passed off as more expensive varieties.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration seized 64 drums of Chinese honey tainted with chloramphenicol, an antibiotic, at a warehouse in Philadelphia. Last year, the agency said two Chinese honey shipments were found to contain the drug, which is approved for medical use but banned in food products because in rare cases it can cause aplastic anemia, a potentially fatal illness.
Experts say quality problems are hard to avoid in a business dominated by small manufacturers, many of whom are poor and uneducated.
Chinese honey collectors like Min Junguo, 47, spend every spring and summer chasing the flowers, lugging their bees from the chasteberry trees of south China to the yellow acacia blossoms around Beijing. While on the road, Min lives with his wife in a collapsible woodframe hut with a tarp draped over it and sleeps on a board propped up on boxes. He has a fifth-grade education and makes about $4,500 in a good year, though much of that gets spent on sugar to feed his bees in the winter and transportation fees.
Compared to the average rural income, which was just 5,153 yuan (about $760), in 2009, he is doing pretty well.
"I am not getting rich doing this, but it buys my freedom so I can be my own boss," said Min, as he stood in a shady patch of trees and flowers near the Great Wall, surrounded by more than 100 of his bee boxes.
Min denies using antibiotics. But China's supply chain for honey is long and little policed, so that it's hard to tell what corners are cut where. Min sells 5 tons of honey a year to roving middlemen, who batch it with other honey and resell it to factories and exporters.
One of Min's buyers, Wei Nianhai, said Chinese authorities have cracked down on illegal antibiotics like chloramphenicol in recent years, but it's still a hard habit to break for many bee keepers.
"If their bees got sick, the first thing in their mind is saving their bees instead of caring about the quality of honey," said Wei, a honey dealer from Chengde in central China's Henan province. "They can't afford the loss of bees."
He also admitted that he doesn't test the honey he buys for the antibiotic because he doesn't have the time or the equipment -- an indication of the lax enforcement behind China's food safety regulations.
Peter Leedham, managing director of the Suzhou office of the food testing company Eurofins Technology Service, says many Chinese bee keepers are untrained and unknowingly give their bees the medicine.
"A lot of the honey farmers or honey collectors here are small businesses or even families and they do it basically to supplement income," he said. "They often will be told to add this wonderful mixture to whatever they are doing because it will help improve their yields. And they are not told what's in it by the sellers or what it does."
Leedham said his clients, who rely on Eurofins to test samples of Chinese honey to ensure it meets export standards, are increasingly concerned about authenticity or cheaper Chinese honey being passed off as more expensive varieties.
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer of New York has called for a federal standard for pure honey similar to guidelines already established for olive oil to help combat fakes or blends. He has also lobbied for tougher measures against customs cheats like Yan and says that between $100-200 million in duties are being lost because of Chinese honey being laundered through India, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia and other countries.
Honey fraud and honey-laundering are part of a controversial debate over whether or not the U.S. needs heavy subsidies to protect its homegrown honey industry.
Eric Mussen, an apiculturist or bee expert at the University of California, Davis, said it costs U.S. beekeepers about $1.40 to make a pound of honey, including colony maintenance, transportation to honey production areas, harvesting and packing. Before tariffs, he said, Chinese honey was coming into the U.S. at about 35 cents per pound.
"Obviously, this is not a 'level playing field,'" Mussen wrote in an e-mail response to questions.
Mussen said if the antidumping tariffs were lifted, sales of U.S. honey "would probably drop way off, but not necessarily to zero. Many U.S. beekeepers would go out of business."
Fewer bees also could affect crops like California almonds, which rely on commercial crop pollination services that are carried out by bees, he said.
But Chinese honey makers and the Chinese government say the U.S. duties, which can be nearly double the sale value of the honey, are unfair and discriminatory.
China argues that because the U.S. subsidizes honey farmers, it doesn't need to protect them so vigorously from import competition. Chinese bee keepers this year welcomed a new measure that waived their highway toll fees, and they sometimes get local government support, but are not covered by a federal subsidy program.
Asked by a reporter to comment on honey laundering at a press briefing this month, Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman Yao Jian sidestepped the question and expounded on China's frustration with U.S. import duties instead.
"Currently, the U.S. levies $2.63 in antidumping duties for every kilogram of Chinese honey," Yao said. "We hope to resolve this issue as soon as possible, and do away with this discriminatory measure. However, so far the U.S. side has not been very energetic in this regard."
The case of Yan, the seller busted for transshipping honey through the Philippines, so angered American beekeepers that a group of them wrote to Illinois District Court Judge Wayne Andersen in January, arguing he should get "the stiffest sentence that you are able to order."
E-mails seized by customs agents from Yan's buyer, a German company with offices in Chicago, showed staff there referred to him as "famous Mr. Non stop smoker." The buyer, Alfred L. Wolff, Inc., is being investigated for fraud.
Yet to his son, Yan is "a self-made entrepreneur who worked hard all his life," and became an unlucky pawn in an international trade dispute.
"I feel that this case is mainly about a controversy between the two countries and we're caught in the middle," said Yan Chaofeng by telephone from Changge, Henan province where his father's factory is located. "We've hired a lawyer but I'm afraid it won't make any difference, since the (U.S.) government is behind this."
Associated Press researcher Xi Yue contributed to this report.
By Alexa Olesen, Associated Press Writer
MANUFACTURING.NET - June 30, 2010
BEIJING (AP) -- Businessman Yan Yongxiang was trying to get around stiff U.S. levies on imports of cheap Chinese honey. So he sent 15 shipping containers of cut-rate honey to the Philippines, where it was relabeled and sent on to the United States.
It's called honey-laundering, and the subterfuge let Yan skirt $656,515 in taxes before he was caught in a bust and pleaded guilty. Yan's factory in central China's Henan province even filtered the metals and pollen from the honey so that U.S. tests would not show it came from China, according to the 60-year-old's plea agreement. Now he awaits sentencing in a U.S. jail.
Honey-laundering is just one of many unsavory practices that have besmirched China's vast honey industry and raised complaints from competing American beekeepers. China produces more honey than anywhere else in the world, about 300,000 metric tons (660 million pounds) a year or about 25 percent of the global total. But stocks are tainted with a potentially dangerous antibiotic and cheaper honeys are increasingly getting passed off as more expensive varieties.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration seized 64 drums of Chinese honey tainted with chloramphenicol, an antibiotic, at a warehouse in Philadelphia. Last year, the agency said two Chinese honey shipments were found to contain the drug, which is approved for medical use but banned in food products because in rare cases it can cause aplastic anemia, a potentially fatal illness.
Experts say quality problems are hard to avoid in a business dominated by small manufacturers, many of whom are poor and uneducated.
Chinese honey collectors like Min Junguo, 47, spend every spring and summer chasing the flowers, lugging their bees from the chasteberry trees of south China to the yellow acacia blossoms around Beijing. While on the road, Min lives with his wife in a collapsible woodframe hut with a tarp draped over it and sleeps on a board propped up on boxes. He has a fifth-grade education and makes about $4,500 in a good year, though much of that gets spent on sugar to feed his bees in the winter and transportation fees.
Compared to the average rural income, which was just 5,153 yuan (about $760), in 2009, he is doing pretty well.
"I am not getting rich doing this, but it buys my freedom so I can be my own boss," said Min, as he stood in a shady patch of trees and flowers near the Great Wall, surrounded by more than 100 of his bee boxes.
Min denies using antibiotics. But China's supply chain for honey is long and little policed, so that it's hard to tell what corners are cut where. Min sells 5 tons of honey a year to roving middlemen, who batch it with other honey and resell it to factories and exporters.
One of Min's buyers, Wei Nianhai, said Chinese authorities have cracked down on illegal antibiotics like chloramphenicol in recent years, but it's still a hard habit to break for many bee keepers.
"If their bees got sick, the first thing in their mind is saving their bees instead of caring about the quality of honey," said Wei, a honey dealer from Chengde in central China's Henan province. "They can't afford the loss of bees."
He also admitted that he doesn't test the honey he buys for the antibiotic because he doesn't have the time or the equipment -- an indication of the lax enforcement behind China's food safety regulations.
Peter Leedham, managing director of the Suzhou office of the food testing company Eurofins Technology Service, says many Chinese bee keepers are untrained and unknowingly give their bees the medicine.
"A lot of the honey farmers or honey collectors here are small businesses or even families and they do it basically to supplement income," he said. "They often will be told to add this wonderful mixture to whatever they are doing because it will help improve their yields. And they are not told what's in it by the sellers or what it does."
Leedham said his clients, who rely on Eurofins to test samples of Chinese honey to ensure it meets export standards, are increasingly concerned about authenticity or cheaper Chinese honey being passed off as more expensive varieties.
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer of New York has called for a federal standard for pure honey similar to guidelines already established for olive oil to help combat fakes or blends. He has also lobbied for tougher measures against customs cheats like Yan and says that between $100-200 million in duties are being lost because of Chinese honey being laundered through India, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia and other countries.
Honey fraud and honey-laundering are part of a controversial debate over whether or not the U.S. needs heavy subsidies to protect its homegrown honey industry.
Eric Mussen, an apiculturist or bee expert at the University of California, Davis, said it costs U.S. beekeepers about $1.40 to make a pound of honey, including colony maintenance, transportation to honey production areas, harvesting and packing. Before tariffs, he said, Chinese honey was coming into the U.S. at about 35 cents per pound.
"Obviously, this is not a 'level playing field,'" Mussen wrote in an e-mail response to questions.
Mussen said if the antidumping tariffs were lifted, sales of U.S. honey "would probably drop way off, but not necessarily to zero. Many U.S. beekeepers would go out of business."
Fewer bees also could affect crops like California almonds, which rely on commercial crop pollination services that are carried out by bees, he said.
But Chinese honey makers and the Chinese government say the U.S. duties, which can be nearly double the sale value of the honey, are unfair and discriminatory.
China argues that because the U.S. subsidizes honey farmers, it doesn't need to protect them so vigorously from import competition. Chinese bee keepers this year welcomed a new measure that waived their highway toll fees, and they sometimes get local government support, but are not covered by a federal subsidy program.
Asked by a reporter to comment on honey laundering at a press briefing this month, Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman Yao Jian sidestepped the question and expounded on China's frustration with U.S. import duties instead.
"Currently, the U.S. levies $2.63 in antidumping duties for every kilogram of Chinese honey," Yao said. "We hope to resolve this issue as soon as possible, and do away with this discriminatory measure. However, so far the U.S. side has not been very energetic in this regard."
The case of Yan, the seller busted for transshipping honey through the Philippines, so angered American beekeepers that a group of them wrote to Illinois District Court Judge Wayne Andersen in January, arguing he should get "the stiffest sentence that you are able to order."
E-mails seized by customs agents from Yan's buyer, a German company with offices in Chicago, showed staff there referred to him as "famous Mr. Non stop smoker." The buyer, Alfred L. Wolff, Inc., is being investigated for fraud.
Yet to his son, Yan is "a self-made entrepreneur who worked hard all his life," and became an unlucky pawn in an international trade dispute.
"I feel that this case is mainly about a controversy between the two countries and we're caught in the middle," said Yan Chaofeng by telephone from Changge, Henan province where his father's factory is located. "We've hired a lawyer but I'm afraid it won't make any difference, since the (U.S.) government is behind this."
Associated Press researcher Xi Yue contributed to this report.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Malte Baesler's 'take' on CCD - Hamburg
I. Worldwide Situation
In 2006 beekeepers reported for the first time a weird situation: large
populations of bees had abruptly disappeared. The hives were abandoned
by the worker bees. Since then, every year colony losses above average
are reported from countries all over the world. The term colony collapse
disorder (CCD) was introduced and scientists in many countries are
searching for the cause of this ecological and economical disaster. Till
this day, the reason could not be identified. But it is assumed that CCD
is the symptom of a complex problem due to a harmful environment for
bees caused by agriculture, diseases, and beekeepers.
Agriculture: Since end of World War II a diverse amount of different
pesticides have been developed and applied. Fortunately, some of them
have been prohibited again but, nevertheless, most of the nowadays
permitted pesticides are harmful to bees. Even if chemical companies
attest nontoxic to bees, these tests cannot eliminate risks because they
only determine the lethal dose of toxic for isolated adult bees. These
tests do not analyze the impact on the brood, on fertility, on the
orientation of the bees, and on accumulation in food and wax.
Furthermore, genetically modified crops are cultivated on our fields
that are suspected to be toxic for bees, too. Genetically modified crops
that are resistant to novel classes of highly potent pesticides and
plants that produce toxics by themselves primarily benefit the chemistry
companies.
Moreover, modern agriculture prefers mono cultures. Wild flowers with a
continuously and diverse flow of nectar and pollen are eliminated by
herbicides so that for the bees the environment appears like a desert
with some peaks of nectar and pollen flow, but unbalanced nutrition.
These malnourished bees are prone to parasites and diseases.
Diseases: Several parasites, bacterias, viruses, and fungal pathogens
are suspected to cause CCD or at least stress that contributes to CCD.
The usual suspect is varroa destructor mite, the world's most
destructive honey bee killer, that spread viruses such as deformed wing
virus, acute bee paralysis virus, and Israel acute paralysis virus.
Other scientists have suggested that diseases such as nosema apis and
nosema cerana are contributors to CCD, too.
Beekeepers: The beekeepers might also be a factor of influence of CCD.
Not only the bees carry in pesticides that might accumulate in honey,
pollen and wax, but also the beekeepers do. Medications to fight varroa
mite and other diseases are applied. Furthermore, the colony management
causes stress to bees leading to a weakened immune system. The beekeeper
uses frames with foundation to specify the cell types and cell sizes and
to suppress drone cells. But naturally the bees build different cell
sizes for brood and storage. A natural swarm knows at best which type of
cells are required and does not need any guideline. It is suspected that
during the past century the honeybee was accustomed to larger cell size
(from 4.9 mm to 5.4 mm diameter), supporting varroa mite. The growth of
drones is suppressed by foundations, too. In spring and summer time
drones are an integral part of the colony and are important for the
colony's harmony. Moreover, the beekeeper suppresses an other integral
instinct of the bees: swarming. Swarming is the only natural way of
reproduction. It is important, because both, the swarm and the remaining
colony, have a period with absence of brood and the colony can recover.
During colony management the brood nest is often torn by the beekeeper
and frames are interchanged. This management also causes stress to the
colony. Furthermore, in most regions wrong races of the European
honeybee are kept. Due to extensive queen breeding the bees are selected
for maximum honey production, gentleness, no propolis accumulation, and
a strong swarm sluggishness. As a result, thousands of queens are
daughters of the same mother, the gene pool depletes, and diseases might
spread easily. In addition, propagation of diseases is boosted by
national and international bee transports and package bees.
In 2006 beekeepers reported for the first time a weird situation: large
populations of bees had abruptly disappeared. The hives were abandoned
by the worker bees. Since then, every year colony losses above average
are reported from countries all over the world. The term colony collapse
disorder (CCD) was introduced and scientists in many countries are
searching for the cause of this ecological and economical disaster. Till
this day, the reason could not be identified. But it is assumed that CCD
is the symptom of a complex problem due to a harmful environment for
bees caused by agriculture, diseases, and beekeepers.
Agriculture: Since end of World War II a diverse amount of different
pesticides have been developed and applied. Fortunately, some of them
have been prohibited again but, nevertheless, most of the nowadays
permitted pesticides are harmful to bees. Even if chemical companies
attest nontoxic to bees, these tests cannot eliminate risks because they
only determine the lethal dose of toxic for isolated adult bees. These
tests do not analyze the impact on the brood, on fertility, on the
orientation of the bees, and on accumulation in food and wax.
Furthermore, genetically modified crops are cultivated on our fields
that are suspected to be toxic for bees, too. Genetically modified crops
that are resistant to novel classes of highly potent pesticides and
plants that produce toxics by themselves primarily benefit the chemistry
companies.
Moreover, modern agriculture prefers mono cultures. Wild flowers with a
continuously and diverse flow of nectar and pollen are eliminated by
herbicides so that for the bees the environment appears like a desert
with some peaks of nectar and pollen flow, but unbalanced nutrition.
These malnourished bees are prone to parasites and diseases.
Diseases: Several parasites, bacterias, viruses, and fungal pathogens
are suspected to cause CCD or at least stress that contributes to CCD.
The usual suspect is varroa destructor mite, the world's most
destructive honey bee killer, that spread viruses such as deformed wing
virus, acute bee paralysis virus, and Israel acute paralysis virus.
Other scientists have suggested that diseases such as nosema apis and
nosema cerana are contributors to CCD, too.
Beekeepers: The beekeepers might also be a factor of influence of CCD.
Not only the bees carry in pesticides that might accumulate in honey,
pollen and wax, but also the beekeepers do. Medications to fight varroa
mite and other diseases are applied. Furthermore, the colony management
causes stress to bees leading to a weakened immune system. The beekeeper
uses frames with foundation to specify the cell types and cell sizes and
to suppress drone cells. But naturally the bees build different cell
sizes for brood and storage. A natural swarm knows at best which type of
cells are required and does not need any guideline. It is suspected that
during the past century the honeybee was accustomed to larger cell size
(from 4.9 mm to 5.4 mm diameter), supporting varroa mite. The growth of
drones is suppressed by foundations, too. In spring and summer time
drones are an integral part of the colony and are important for the
colony's harmony. Moreover, the beekeeper suppresses an other integral
instinct of the bees: swarming. Swarming is the only natural way of
reproduction. It is important, because both, the swarm and the remaining
colony, have a period with absence of brood and the colony can recover.
During colony management the brood nest is often torn by the beekeeper
and frames are interchanged. This management also causes stress to the
colony. Furthermore, in most regions wrong races of the European
honeybee are kept. Due to extensive queen breeding the bees are selected
for maximum honey production, gentleness, no propolis accumulation, and
a strong swarm sluggishness. As a result, thousands of queens are
daughters of the same mother, the gene pool depletes, and diseases might
spread easily. In addition, propagation of diseases is boosted by
national and international bee transports and package bees.
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