The latest buzz on the honeybee and why we think the Harvard School of Public Health, their savior, is the bee’s knees

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author’s program note. This is a story about good science and good luck. It’s a tale that shows how one single miscalculation can produce near cataclysmic results…  and why we must fund and support disinterested researchers and hark unto what they say.

Mr. Kupper.

Sixty years ago and more, my young parents and I (still their only child) lived in Maywood, Illinois. I was cute and curious in the ways young children are and had the run of the neighborhood. That included our next door neighbor Mr. Kupper, a man who was exceptionally kind, glad to have me visit, understanding how curiosity should be fostered, not stifled… especially curiosity about apis mellifera linnaeus, the common honeybee which was anything but.

The protective clothing in which he garbed us looked like the land version of divers from Jules Verne’s classic “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” (1870), a film released by Disney (1954) when I was 7. These days towns probably regulate where beehives can be placed and beekeepers probably wouldn’t invite a sprite like me (liability) but back then things were very different… and so I came to see and appreciate the vital importance of honeybees.

What I saw, what Mr. Kupper gently ensured that I should see, was a beneficial species at work, masters of an efficient system gently turned to the value of our species, performing their essential work in perfect harmony. Here there were lessons aplenty… and many reasons for thinking well of the honeybee… the honeybee which we came close to exterminating…

2006, bee colony collapse.

In 2006, just the other day, honeybees began abandoning their hives in record numbers, on a scale and scope never before seen in the history of the beekeeping industry. This phenomenon, immediately noticed, caused warning bells to go off worldwide. No wonder. Bees, after all, are absolutely essential in the creation and pollination of a large portion of the human food supply, including corn and soybeans. The essential chain goes like this: bees… pollination of essential crops… human food. Nothing could be more clear.

But in 2006 essential worker bees went on strike… left the hives, never to return, leaving behind the hive, their egg-laying queen, larvae, and a few attendants. This was catastrophe indeed. What was going on? The question was vital, urgent, immediately in need of an answer, and as the consequences began to be noted in the businesses that rely on bees, scientists went to work studying the problem, gathering data, advancing theories to cover the facts and suggest solutions. It’s what scientists and researchers do… and  why we have such need of them. Budget cutters take note.

Over time a series of hypotheses was advanced. These included honeybee stress at the laborious business of periodic colony removal; stress that weakens their immune system; possible parasites; pesticides, and some kind of pathogen, like virus, bacteria or fungus. Not one of these hypotheses could be dismissed out of hand; all must be considered. And so the strenuous, meticulous work of specialists began… slow, painstaking, exact.

Fingering the culprit — imidacloprid.

Imidacloprid is a systemic insecticide which acts as an insect neurotoxin and belongs to a class of chemicals called the neonicotinoids which act on the central nervous system of insects with much lower toxicity to mammals. The chemical works by interfering with the transmissions of stimuli in the insect nervous system. Specifically, it causes a blockage in the type of neuronal pathway (nicotinergic) that is abundant in insects and not in warm-blooded animals (making the chemical selectively toxic to insects and not warm-blooded animals.)

Unfortunately affected insects also included apis mellifera linnaeus.   For this intelligence we must be grateful to a study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health released April 4, 2012.

The missing  link.

Researchers said they found convincing evidence of the link between the pesticide known as imidacloprid and massive honeybee disturbance, dislocation, and death. As Alex Lu, associate professor of environmental exposure biology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said: “It apparently doesn’t take much of the pesticide to affect the bees. Our experiment included pesticide amounts below what is normally present in the environment.”

Yet, says Lu and his colleagues, it was fatal to bees… and to our food supply. QED: this pesticide must no longer be used by soil injection, tree injection, application to the skin, broadcast foliar, ground application as a granular or liquid formulation, or as a pesticide-coated seed treatment. That’s obvious to all, right? Sadly, nothing in human history is this simple or uncomplicated, especially given the importance of the main producer of this pesticide, the giant Bayer CropScience (part of Bayer AG) and the profits they are making… and expected.

Thus did Bayer react to the study and its results:

Item: the study sample was too small.

Item: the study was flawed.

Item: Imidacloprid is “very effective, much safer than the products it replaced.”

And as if this were not enough, David Fisher, director of environmental toxicology and risk assessment at Bayer CropScience, expostulated with a final “that’s all there is to say” comment of great petulance: “All they have shown is if you feed massive amounts of a toxic insecticide to bees that you can cause mortality.” So there!

The matter, of course, has been referred to the US Environmental Protection Agency. If, as expected, the research findings bear the scrutiny they will get (as well, of course, as the stream of self-serving comments from Bayer), all will be well — this time. But only for this time, where the honeybees and us were saved… just.

That is why we must remain eternally vigilant, never forgetting that all of us are beholden to this creature… and many other creatures similarly threatened all over this small world of ours.

But for now, there is jubilation in every hive which buzz again with contentment and earnest endeavor. The bees therefore request you sing along with them. They like Tom Petty’s 1994 tune “Honey Bees.” You can find it in any search engine.” Imagine its melody spun by a million rhythmic wings. “Don’t be afraid, not gonna hurt you/ I wouldn’t hurt my little honey bee”. At least for now…

On dandelions. Their splendor in the grass.

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. I had been up all night working on an article on global warming. The subject, serious, is draining, demanding, necessarily thought provoking, disturbing. As the sun began to rise, showing its intentions by the first light of a brand-new day, I wrote the last word… and went immediately into the Cambridge Common for air, for light, to be freed from the sobering realities of my midnight researches.
At this early hour, where the vestiges of night still prevailed, as if unwilling to leave, there was no one present… and this distressed me, for I was in need of a smile, a word or two of greeting, and (were I fortunate) a friend. For my night’s work had been long and distressful, spent considering the vulnerabilities of Earth and the growing likelihood that our species, having had our way with this planet, was unwilling, perhaps unable, to do what is necessary to save our only, our collective home. Yes, I needed a friend… and solace.
Then there it was… a sight I had seen for every one of my 65 years…  and which was there for me now in the full vibrancy of its joyous yellow. The dandelion. And as if it knew my need, it took me back at once to the springtime of my life when my thoughts were not cosmic or burdensome… but soaring, unfettered, generous, happy. All this one single dandelion, radiant in the mud, delivered to me,  glad to be of service. And I smiled, gloom lightened by the dandelion’s undoubted splendor in the grass, gracious gift to me so many times before; gracious gift to me again now bidding me face the world and its daunting troubles with more cheer… and even hope…
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, more sensitive than they might like to show, knew the friendship and power of the dandelion. In 1967 their Rolling Stones sang this:
“Dandelion don’t tell no lies Dandelion will make you wise Tell me if she laughs or cries Blow away dandelion.”
You’ll find this song in any search engine. Go now and listen carefully, to both the version by the Rolling Stones and the unexpected beauty of the one played by the London Symphony Orchestra. And understand this: a plant that can inspire such sentiments can surely be no weed but must be instead a thing of joy and beneficence.
Facts about the dandelion.
Taraxacum is a large genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae. They are native to Eurasia and North Africa, and two species, T. officinale and T. erythrospermum are found as weeds worldwide.
The common name dandelion comes from the French, dent-de-lion, meaning lion’s tooth. Like other members of the Asteraceae family, they have very small flowers collected together into a composite flower head. Each single flower is called a floret. Many Taraxacum species produce seeds asexually by apomixis, where the seeds are produced without pollination, resulting in offspring that are genetically identical to the parent plant.
These are the facts and as such are important… but no where near as important as what follows, for the dandelion, remembering me from a lifetime of visits with its ancestors, was candid about its situation and how little the people passing by know of it… and its myriad services to our kind. I listened in the pristine dawn to what he told me… for he needed to tell and I needed to hear…
Poets and dandelions.
Most of the many poets who have written about dandelions are women…. and whilst they undoubtedly mean well… they have grossly misunderstand the dandelion. And here he offered one cogent example after another, starting with these words from Helen Barron Bostwick’s no doubt unintentionally condescending poem “Little dandelion”, irritating the dandelion right from its title and irritating it throughout with its ill-considered aggravating descriptions: “Bright little Dandelion… Wise little Dandelion… True little dandelion” and many similar misunderstandings and provocations.
Dandelions, he told me, are resolute, bold, tenacious, determined pathfinders. How else had they covered the known world in an imperium greater than all the captains general of human history combined?
But there was more, much more to come as the eloquent dandelion warmed to his subject…
In her poem “To a Dandelion” Helen  Gray  Cone wrote of the “Humble Dandelion” while an equally uncomprehending Hilda Conkling said “Little soldier with the golden helmet.” As he rattled off the evidence so long accumulated and earnestly considered, his dew touched leaves quivered, for this dandelion spoke for all his aggrieved species. But here I, who had needed comfort just a moment ago, was able to give it, the truest measure of empathy and satisfaction.
I did not merely regard but fully perceived this agitated friend. So I whispered these words, to be carried and delivered by the lightest of breezes… “There is more knowledge of you than you may know, more reasons to be of the good cheer you have shared with me than you may have ever known or considered.” And  here I recited the always insightful and soothing words of a man who had, like me, truly perceived more in the dandelion than their littleness… This man was the Great Republic’s great poet Walt Whitman. These were his simple, evocative words from his masterpiece “Leaves of Grass”  (1855):
“Simple and fresh and fair from winter’s close emerging/ As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been/ Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass — innocent, golden, calm as the dawn/ the spring’s first dandelion shows its trustful face.”
“I remember… yes, I remember.” And  tears of remembrance mixed with the dew.. for these generous sentiments, celestial, obliterated an ocean of misstatements and misunderstandings, a single word of generosity and genius providing an infinity of bliss.
And so we understood each other, this bright yellow dandelion accoutered in radiance and I. We had both found a friend and been refreshed, each giving the other what he most needed then, all that was necessary to trek our laborious path. Thus we parted, happy with our chance encounter, our lives enhanced, our burden bearable again:
“Little girls and boys come out to play/ Bring your dandelions to blow away/ Dandelion don’t tell no lies/ Dandelion will make you wise.” And no one knows it better than I…
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Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.’ Is this the requiem for the great African elephant? A proposal to save them.

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. The terrible news is just in from Johannesburg, and it could hardly be worse. The fate of one of the world’s most majestic creatures is being determined now… now at this very minute… and the forces charged with the task of protecting the last of the once-great herd located in Cameroon are losing….
It is a vision of hell, the ill-prepared and lackadaisical soldiers of Cameroon out gunned, out classed, out maneuvered by marauding horsemen, poachers believed to have originated in Sudan. Fast-riding, determined they have forged a sickening scene of the Apocalypse…
The soldiers fall back and back again, as the fiendish purveyors of death advance, the more determined as the number of elephants falls, the very closeness of their extinction driving their nemeses to greater risk and purpose. The elephants maddened by the blood and carcasses of their fallen comrades rend the air with their terrible cries of pain and fear. They know what is happening and shriek against the failing of the light.
Yet still the fearful highwaymen advance…  determined on their dreadful work, shaming we so-called civilized men who prate, consider, and endlessly discuss this pressing matter but do so little so late to avert the monumental tragedy occurring now, this very day, in the land called Cameroon.
For the incidental music to this fateful story of greed, mayhem, and looming catastrophe I have selected the music of 19th century Italian master Amilcare Ponchielli (1834-1886) specifically his “Dance of the Hours.” First performed in 1876, it was revised in 1880. The dance is intended to symbolize the eternal struggle between the forces of light and darkness.
Of all the lyric melodies of this prolific maestro, this is his most well known composition, virtually every note instantly recognizable. It was popular from the moment it was released as part of the opera “La Gioconda”. But became immortal in 1940 when Walt Disney included it in the animated film masterpiece “Fantasia.” Whilst the ballet was fully rendered there, its place in the original opera was not. There the ballet appears at the end of the third act, where the character Alvise, who heads the Inquisition, receives his guests in a large and elegant ballroom adjoining the death chamber.
There could hardly be a more apt image for what is happening to real elephants this very day… for while we amuse ourselves, they die, their putrid, stinking remains a charnel house of horror and disgust… far from the dancing elephants in pink slippers portrayed through the animation of Disney. Go now to any search engine and listen to Ponchielli and his sounds of the passing hours, the last hours on Earth of a creature we say we revere and cherish… but have so completely and irrevocably failed.
The Facts.
March 15, 2012 World Wildlife Fund, the world’s largest conservation organization, released the latest and most alarming statement in a long chain of such statements concerning the situation regarding the fast dwindling population of African elephants. The statement was issued by Natasha Kofoworola Quist, WWF’s Central African Regional Programme Office Representative. Its important contents are of the most sobering kind.
Approximately two weeks ago in response to escalating, emboldened poacher activity, the Cameroon government authorized a military intervention at the site of the slaughter of hundreds of unprotected elephants. Despite this intervention, in which at least one soldier has already died, poaching continues unabated in Bouba N’Djida National Park.
Predictably in this unmitigated fiasco, these forces were unprepared for their work, came too late, and were the very model of ineptitude. WWF estimates that fully one half the herd was butchered before their “deliverers” arrived… with the holocaust only worsening upon their arrival.
So apprised, WWF approached his excellency of Cameroon, president Paul Biya with undeniable facts, data, photos… and a plea for concerted action, concrete assurances that he would take the necessary steps to avert a great calamity, an indelible stain on him, his administration and his ineffectual promises, akin to the emperor Nero fiddling whilst Rome burned.
But if this missive, this delegation, this clear rendering of what is happening and what must be done at once is like the missives, delegations, and clear renderings gone before, why then this once mighty and flourishing herd is as good as dead and gone forever.
Still WWF has performed, in its latest exhortation to Biya, what it is positioned to do, strenuously urging protection of the elephants, the capture and detention of those violating Cameroon’s territorial integrity with deadly weapons, and the imposition of the most severe sentences against them for the death of elephants and the ruthless harvest of their ivory. No doubt his excellency will take it all under advisement as he and his predecessors have all done before…
… and so the elephants will be exterminated, shot by point-blank shot, and even faster now that their certain end is nigh.
Immediate, aggressive, international pressure.
What do we need then? What we have needed from the beginning. For all its good work, WWF can only advise… and this is not enough. The great nations of this planet must intervene and at once, make plain their adamant opposition to the status quo, and cut the deal that must be cut with the current authorities in Yaounde. They who care so little about elephants and their future will care more, and promptly, if we make it worth their while.
Thus, my modest proposal. Send U.S. Ambassador to Cameroon Robert Jackson to see President Biya along with his fellow ambassadors from England, France, Germany et al. Flesh out the contours of the deal, the deal that will save Biya’s face — and the elephants. Then send Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to sign it and take the necessary photos, whilst privately admonishing Biya that this time, at long last, we civilized folk mean business. Clinton can do this; she’s an experienced politician, a practised deal maker and here she can make the necessary difference.
Now it’s your turn.
The African elephant is near the irreversible tipping point, that crucial moment when it will be too late to save them. What is happening now in Cameroon has considerably advanced this lamentable outcome. Every entity, governmental, political, charitable, which might have helped has, for whatever reason, failed, thereby hastening the end of the greatest of animals.
Now, therefore, it falls to us, the people of this Planet, to take action. Send a letter to Secretary Clinton, send this article. Write simply and powerfully: “You know what to do. Do it!” And do it now, for every second  is precious if we are to save the life of this great creature now passing into eternity. For if you do not, there will come the day, and far too soon, when only Disney’s dancing elephants in pink slippers will remain, to the abiding shame and regret of our ruthless, careless species which is entirely responsible for this result and the terrible void impending.