Vanishing Bees : Science, Politics, and Honeybee Health [1 ed.] 9780813574615, 9780813574592

Citation preview

Vanishing Bees

Nature, Society, and Culture Scott Frickel, Series Editor A sophisticated and wide-­ranging sociological literature analyzing nature-­society-­culture interactions has blossomed in recent decades. This book series provides a platform for showcasing the best of that scholarship: carefully crafted empirical studies of socio-­environmental change and the effects such change has on ecosystems, social institutions, historical processes, and cultural practices. The series aims for topical and theoretical breadth. Anchored in sociological analyses of the environment, Nature, Society, and Culture is home to studies employing a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives and investigating the pressing socio-­environmental questions of our time—­ from environmental inequality and risk, to the science and politics of climate change and serial disaster, to the environmental causes and consequences of urbanization and war-­making, and beyond. Available titles in the Nature, Society, and Culture series: Diane C. Bates, Superstorm Sandy: The Inevitable Destruction and Reconstruction of the Jersey Shore Cody Ferguson, This Is Our Land: Grassroots Environmentalism in the Late Twentieth Century Stefano B. Longo, Rebecca Clausen, and Brett Clark, The Tragedy of the Commodity: Oceans, Fisheries, and Aquaculture Stephanie A. Malin, The Price of Nuclear Power: Uranium Communities and Environmental Justice Diane Sicotte, From Workshop to Waste Magnet: Environmental Inequality in the Philadelphia Region Sainath Suryanarayanan and Daniel Lee Kleinman, Vanishing Bees: Science, Politics, and Honeybee Health

Vanishing Bees Science, Politics, and Honeybee Health

S a i n at h S u r ya n a r aya n a n and Daniel Lee Kleinman

R u tg e r s U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Suryanarayanan, Sainath, author. | Kleinman, Daniel Lee, author. Title: Vanishing bees : science, politics, and honeybee health / Sainath Suryanarayanan and Daniel Lee Kleinman. Other titles: Science, politics, and honeybee health | Nature, society, and culture. Description: New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rutgers University Press, [2016] | Series: Nature, society, and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016008280| ISBN 9780813574592 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813574585 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813574608 (e-­book (epub)) | ISBN 9780813574615 (e-­book (web pdf)) Subjects: LCSH: Colony collapse disorder of honeybees—­United States. | Die-­off (Zoology)—­United States. | Insecticides industry—­United States. Classification: LCC SF538.5.C65 S87 2016 | DDC 638/.1—­dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016008280 A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2017 by Sainath Suryanarayanan and Daniel Lee Kleinman All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. Visit our website: http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu Manufactured in the United States of America

For Kasia, Mundo, Felix, and all those others who are moved by the bees —­Sainath Suryanarayanan For the next generation—­Flora, Chris, Aiden, Chloe, Dylan, Kaela, Jenna, Josh, and Julian —­Daniel Lee Kleinman

Contents Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1

Knowing with Their Eyes? Beekeepers’ Understandings of CCD

15

Keeping the Research Disciplined: Entomological Understandings of the Controversy over Insecticides

34

Bees under the Treadmill of Agriculture: Growers’ Responses to Bee Decline

52

The Bottom Line for Bayer: Agrochemical Companies and “Bee Care”

72

Regulating Knowledge: The EPA and Pesticide Standards

91

2 3 4 5

Coda: Toward Just Research and Policy on Bee Health

111

Notes 129 Reference List 137 Index 157

vii

Acknowledgments This project began roughly seven years ago, and in that time we have accumulated a slew of debts. To begin with, we are especially grateful for the willingness of the large number of scientists, beekeepers, growers, agrochemical company representatives, and government officials who assented to doing interviews with us. Without their help, there would be no book. Moving from data collection to idea formulation, as our project evolved, we have had the opportunity to present our work before a number of audiences. One or both of us gave talks at the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology, the Department of Entomology, the Center for the Humanities, the Arboretum, and the Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies all at the University of Wisconsin–­Madison. Beyond our own campus, we presented our work at the Gordon Conference on Science and Technology Policy, Kyung Hee University (Seoul, Korea), the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (Munich, Germany), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Society for the Social Studies of Science, the University of Notre Dame, the Winter Convention of the Wisconsin Dane County Beekeepers Association, the Entomological Society of America, the Association of American Geographers, and the Center for Twenty-­first Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin–­Milwaukee. Our ideas are sharper as a result of all of the opportunities we have had to present them, and we are happy to be able to thank those many people who provided us feedback at these many venues. Beyond responding to our presentations, a number of people have read drafts of parts of this book or related work. We are extremely grateful for the detailed feedback and thoughtful engagement we have received from Katarzyna Beilin, Susan Bernstein, Scott Frickel, David Hess, Kelly Moore, Marla Spivak, and various members of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (Munich, Germany). We benefitted too from comments we received from the reviewers of this manuscript, most especially Elizabeth Popp Berman, who prompted us to rethink the structure of our manuscript in crucial ways. Finally, we have been lucky to have had the research and editorial assistance of Flora Berklein, Mark ix

x

Acknowledgments

Evans, Gbemisola Famule, Beata Farrey, Kirsten King, Krysta Koralesky, Noah Pearce, and Heather Swan at crucial stages of the project. All research requires financial support in some form. We have had the good fortune to receive funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (Award numbers 0924346 and 1257175). Daniel Kleinman was provided with financial backing by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-­2010-­330-­B00169 and NRF-­2013S1A3A2053087) and Sainath Suryanarayanan received crucial support as a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich, Germany. Of course, the views expressed in this book are our own and do not necessarily reflect the positions of our financial supporters.

Vanishing Bees

Introduc tion

David Hackenberg is a veteran commercial beekeeper who has been trucking his beehives and offering their services as pollinators to growers of a wide variety of crops across the United States since the 1960s. In the spring of 2005, thousands of Hackenberg’s healthy beehives “collapsed” mysteriously while his honeybees pollinated blueberries in the state of Maine. Bees abandoned their beehives and didn’t return. He’d never seen anything like this (Hackenberg 2010). By the fall of 2006, as the mysterious collapses persisted and intensified, it became clear to Hackenberg that his experience was not unique. All around the United States, beekeepers—­commercial and recreational—­were also seeing their beehives collapse. As the chill of the winter of 2006 began to dissipate, news emerged that a number of U.S. beekeeping operations had lost between 30  percent and 90  percent of their beehives, significantly higher than typical losses of around 15 percent associated with factors such as parasitic mites, diseases, pesticides, and poor nutrition. Bee researchers called it “colony collapse disorder” or CCD (Barrionuevo 2007; vanEngelsdorp et al. 2009). A decade since U.S. beekeepers first saw CCD, beehive losses remain troublingly high (vanEngelsdorp et al. 2011; Steinhauer et al. 2014). Threatening the very sustainability of agricultural and ecological systems in the United States and elsewhere, which have come to heavily rely on honeybees for pollination, accelerated honeybee deaths are increasingly accepted as a “new normal” among beekeepers, growers, scientists, and others. The value of the increased agricultural yield and quality achieved in the United States through pollination by honeybees alone was $14.6 billion in 2000 (Morse and Calderone 2000). Farmers rent an estimated 2  million 1

2

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

honeybee colonies each year to service over fifty different crops. The quality and/or quantity of crops dependent on honeybee-­mediated pollination amount to about a third of what we eat and include almonds, apples, blueberries, cranberries, cherries, asparagus, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, celery, cucumbers, onions, pumpkins, squash, sunflowers, and soybeans (Delaplane and Mayer 2000). The commercial viability of all of these crops is threatened by the possible loss of honeybee pollination. CCD-­affected beehives (or colonies) collapse after the sudden loss of their adult population. The bees “boil out” of the collapsing hives in droves, leaving behind their queen, her immature offspring (or brood) and frames full of luscious golden honey and pollen (Hackenberg 2010). None of the absconding bees are found dead near their hives. More perplexing to beekeepers and researchers, the abandoned stores of honey, which would normally be “robbed” by neighboring honeybees or other organisms, remain untouched. University and federal bee researchers report several striking anatomical abnormalities and an unusual number of simultaneous viral and fungal infections in the young bees that remain in the CCD-­affected beehives. Despite these observations, most agree that these are secondary factors that do not entirely explain why beehives become susceptible in the first place (vanEngelsdorp et al. 2009). While bee scientists believe that in the case of CCD, “Multiplicity rules” (Delaplane 2009, 1057), the complex of factors responsible for CCD and how they interact to produce the phenomenon remain uncertain, and the identities of the most involved factors remain mired in controversy (USDA 2013). Some of the most researched causal factors are honeybee pathogens, parasites, beekeeper-­ applied in-­ hive chemicals, agricultural pesticides, and poor-­quality nutrition in monocrop settings (USDA 2013). But many researchers and beekeepers agree that none among them is likely sufficient as the sole cause of CCD (Delaplane 2009; USDA 2013). Bee researchers are exploring how these factors might combine and interact to provoke the losses. But researchers and beekeepers, not to mention government regulators and agrochemical companies, have different vantage points from which they come to understand the phenomenon, and struggles are ongoing about what CCD is and what should be done about it. Walk into a university bee research lab, and you will hear discussions about experimental controls and difficulties in establishing precise

Introduction

3

measurements. Traverse the acres of cotton fields in Texas with Clint Walker, a veteran migratory commercial beekeeper, and the conversation is quite different. As he scans the landscape, he notes areas that were earlier sprayed with new varieties of “systemic”1 insecticides. He hypothesizes about the ways in which monoculture crops thought to restrict bee nutrition might interact with imidacloprid, one of the newer insecticides used to control insects such as aphids that threaten many crops, to cause beehives to collapse several months after exposure. No laboratory for Walker—­he doesn’t establish controls or focus on measurement problems or efforts to parse individual causal agents. Instead, years of careful observation lead him to surmise that CCD is the product of cocktails of chemicals, pathogens and nutritional factors interacting over time. The effects of insecticides like imidacloprid, he suspects, are “sublethal.” They don’t kill bees on contact, and a direct laboratory test that seeks to ascertain the level at which this insecticide kills bees will miss any long-­term weakening of bee immune systems that could result from ongoing low-­level exposure of bees to the insecticide (Walker 2010). These differences in culture and knowledge acquisition method between those in the university lab and Walker are just the edge of the controversy over the role played by pesticides in CCD. Tom Moriarty and David Fischer have opinions too, and they each represent powerful institutions in this struggle. Moriarty is chair of the Pollinator Protection Team in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs. He supports the position that government regulation of insecticides must be based on “sound science” of the variety done in the university bee lab. Bayer Crop Science’s chief ecotoxicologist David Fischer would certainly agree, and his company could not settle for anything less. The company has an extensive research infrastructure but also an equally well-­developed lobbying arm, and they use these two entities to define what counts as legitimate knowledge in the CCD controversy over the newer systemic insecticides they manufacture and to specify the rules about how the knowledge is made. Each of these people represents a distinct knowledge culture. They have divergent ideas about what knowledge is, how it is acquired, and what is ultimately done with it. Moreover, they have different abilities to define the terms of debate and to shape policy on CCD. In the pages that follow, we tell the story of CCD and accelerated honeybee losses through the eyes and

4

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

cultures of these and other stakeholders in the CCD controversy over new kinds of insecticides. Drawing on interviews with key players in the CCD controversy, ethnographic data collected in research settings, bee yards, farmers’ fields, and public meetings as well as documents uncovered in several archives over five years, we explore how the distinctive knowledge-­ making cultures to which these people belong and the interactions between them shape the current debate over CCD and broader trends of honeybee decline. We consider how the divergent orientations of these diverse groups and historically established patterns of power in their relationships simultaneously produce knowledge and ignorance about CCD and honeybee health. These are crucially important issues for beekeepers whose livelihoods are at stake, and they are also important for pollinator-­reliant growers, policymakers, agrochemical companies, and academic scientists. But equally, with so much of the food we eat threatened, CCD and increasing honeybee losses are an important issue for consumers—­eaters of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and honey.

Methods and Concepts We have tried to make this book readable by those not deeply enmeshed in the scholarly debates to which our work might contribute, and at the same time we would like it to be of interest to scholars who work at the intersection of the social studies of science and environmental studies. In seeking to balance these two objectives, this is not a concept-­heavy book. Instead, we embed our orientation in the narrative structure of our work. This said, for those interested in the literatures that motivate and inspire us and to whom we seek to speak (see Kleinman and Suryanarayanan 2013; Suryanarayanan and Kleinman 2013), we provide a bit of framing in the paragraphs that follow. Most centrally, our study sits at the intersection of the sociology of ignorance and the social studies of expertise. We begin with ignorance. We use this term as it is increasingly utilized by scholars, not as it is used in common parlance. We do not mean incomprehension or innocence. Instead, we understand ignorance as lack of knowledge. Ignorance is the flipside of knowledge. For everything we know, there is something we do not know

Introduction

5

(Harding 2000; Gross 2010). Importantly, one’s knowledge of any phenomenon is affected by how and where one looks (Haraway 1991). Of course, this is true in a literal sense. If we were in a room facing one wall and we describe that room, we would do so in a particular way, and we would inevitably not mention the walls outside of our range of vision. It is also true in scientific research. A particular phenomenon might be studied at, for example, an ecological or environmental level or a molecular level. We would learn different things focusing in these divergent ways. In general, by looking in certain ways, one leaves unexamined other ways of understanding. It is impossible to see everything in every fashion all at one time. Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a scholarly literature on ignorance and have introduced such concepts as “undone science” (Hess 2007; Frickel et al. 2010), “knowledge gaps” (Frickel and Vincent 2007), and “scientific cultures of nonknowledge” (Böschen et al. 2010). Undone science refers to the kinds of research that get systematically ignored, left unfunded or incomplete, but is recognized by some people as being worthy of serious consideration. Knowledge gaps are understood as “organizationally circumscribed domains of unrealized knowledge” (Frickel and Vincent 2011, 12). Böschen et al. (2010) argue that scientific disciplinary fields are characterized by differing approaches to knowledge making and have differing orientations to control and complexity, which in turn lead actors to treat what is not known in different ways. We build on the insights of this scholarship. Our focus is not on deliberate efforts to generate uncertainty or manufacture doubt (see Proctor 1995; Oreskes and Conway 2011). Instead, our attention focuses on the ways in which the social dynamics of the institutions of academic science affect the production of ignorance, and how these intersect with particular practices of knowledge production in specific government and corporate organizations. We explore how the historically established norms and practices of different stakeholders in the case we study affect the social production of knowledge and ignorance. We are particularly interested in the ways in which methods of data collection, approaches to testing, structures of experimental design, and standards of evidence affect what counts as knowledge and what does not. In the pages that follow, we show that the rise to prominence of some orientations to knowledge and the marginalization of others does not

6

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

necessarily reflect the inherent superiority of those accepted among researchers and others, but instead reflects historical struggles and debates that lead the virtues of some approaches to knowledge production to be widely taken for granted and others to be viewed as problematic. The result of such processes of institutionalization can lead some knowledge that might have been produced never to be created or for the knowledge generated using such sidelined forms to be ignored. In either case, the upshot is ignorance. Our work is also inspired by scholarship on expertise (e.g., Collins and Evans 2002, 2007; Epstein 1996; Wynne 1992, 1996, 2003). Here, we are interested in why some actors are viewed as legitimate experts—­knowledge producers—­and others are not. Our work shows that historically established scientific cultures define what knowledge acquisition methods, data, and analysis count as legitimate (Wynne 2003) and how this shapes our understanding of who should count as an expert. We build on the work of Brian Wynne and consider the factors that allow actors possessing certain kinds of expertise to have their knowledge viewed as legitimate while the knowledge claims of other stakeholders are ignored. In the pages that follow, we show that credibility and influence in disputes over knowledge about honeybees and colony collapse disorder are shaped by the historically established social organization of knowledge production. Certain ways of making knowledge gain credibility over time and become institutionalized. Actors who draw on them begin with a kind of credibility that those who would challenge them lack. We show further that how actors approach the framing, methods, data, and analyses of issues is influenced by their stakes and interests as defined by the historically shaped institutions in which they practice.2 Importantly, our argument is not that specific individuals or groups self-­consciously or strategically manipulate knowledge practices to suit their own ends (see Oreskes and Conway 2011). While that may occur, our focus is on less intentional behavior and more on structural factors, such as cultural norms and practical constraints, which shape the approaches to knowledge making that are adopted by various actors. In this context, our work is consistent with the so-­called new political sociology of science (Frickel and Moore 2006). We view the historically established social organization of knowledge production as a crucial mechanism in

Introduction

7

defining what counts as legitimate knowledge and who can produce this knowledge. Before we turn to summaries of the chapters that follow, we offer a comment about our data collection approach and wording style. We began our study by extensive reading in the secondary historical literature on entomology and toxicology, honeybee biology, beekeeping, agricultural and environmental regulation, and the pesticide industry. Next, we collected and read the vast array of published documents produced by stakeholders in the controversy over CCD. In addition, we completed forty semi-­structured interviews with key players in the debate over CCD. A national conference of entomologists in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 2009 and two national beekeeper conferences, which were held in 2010 in Orlando, Florida, and in 2011 in Galveston, Texas, served as key sites for our interviews and participant observation, where we could listen and talk to beekeepers as well as to academic, industry, and government scientists and to government officials. In addition, between 2009 and 2011, we gathered ethnographic data at an academic facility doing peer-­reviewed bee research and extension work with beekeepers. Finally, with regard to terms that have a variety of usages, we have tended toward the less technical form. For example, we use the more colloquial “honeybee,” and use the two-­word version “honey bee” only while quoting entomologists.

Chapter Outline Knowing with Their Eyes?

Beekeepers are not a monolithic group. There are hobbyists, a growing group some of whom see themselves as environmental stewards, making sure our landscape is adequately pollinated. There are those who make their living keeping bees, some providing pollinator services, others selling honey. Among commercial beekeepers, there are those with relatively few beehives and those with many thousand. And commercial beekeepers don’t speak with one voice when it comes to CCD, and their perspectives are not necessarily perfectly aligned with the size of their operations.

8

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

In this chapter, we show three important ways in which CCD is understood by various commercial beekeepers. We begin by discussing the approach taken by several commercial beekeepers with years of experience in the pollination business, who argue that a newer set of systemic insecticides is mainly responsible for CCD. In giving voice to their approach and claims, we depict how some beekeepers develop knowledge of CCD based on their experiences of the actual field conditions in which honeybees are managed for commercial pollination. Next, we examine a second group of beekeepers, so-­called scientific beekeepers. According to influential practitioners such as Randy Oliver, the uncontrolled and imprecise ways in which the first group of beekeepers follows their honeybees produces information that is at best anecdotal and inconclusive. We distinguish how these “scientific beekeepers” approach CCD and how their experiences have led them to suggest that parasite-­pathogen interactions are primarily responsible. From this group, we turn our attention to the understandings of a third group of beekeepers, who claim that CCD is practically nonexistent and is in fact “piss poor beekeeping.” We look at contentious debates between these sets of beekeepers and how their distinctive, and sometimes overlapping, approaches to science, politics, and beekeeping affect their orientations to the controversy over CCD. We also consider how widely accepted notions of science as being value-­free and politically neutral have affected the standing of various groups of beekeepers in the CCD debate. This story is about beekeepers’ varieties of knowledge and ignorance, and their relationships to the positions various beekeepers take on the kinds of policy essential to resolving phenomena of heightened bee losses such as CCD. Keeping the Research Disciplined

Academic disciplines shape the way researchers who participate in them do their work. Historically, established norms define appropriate research methods, standards of evidence, and grounds for conclusions. In this chapter, we explore the culture of academic entomology in the United States and how that world shapes what scientists know and do not know about the role played by neonicotinoids in CCD.

Introduction

9

Entomologists typically seek to isolate the toxic effects of the individual chemical(s) of interest, reducing environmental variability through experimental and/or statistical techniques. The researchers in this chapter tell us that a beekeeper’s careful description of the changes she sees in her beehives and in the environment where she does her work isn’t science. Entomologists aim for the controlled manipulation of field or laboratory contexts in an effort to generate systematically reproducible results. In the case of honeybees, experimental field studies on bees typically impose conditions where one set of colonies receives no pesticide (untreated) while other sets receive known doses, with other variables of interest ideally controlled—­kept at equivalent or known levels. Entomologists using this toxicological approach have not found that colonies chronically exposed to low levels of insecticides are harmed. But several beekeepers and other interested parties have challenged the approach to knowledge making accepted among entomologists. It’s too narrow. It’s not realistic. It’s not what beekeepers see. In this chapter, we explore this dispute and consider its implications. We suggest that forms of knowledge and ignorance about honey bee toxicology are a result of methodological choices that do not necessarily reflect the ground realities of commercial pollination or the social lives of honeybees. We show too that entomological ignorance reflects approaches to measurement that are part of the particular history of entomology in the United States and are choices as well. We suggest that there is nothing inherently superior about the orientation these scientists accept. Again, through the stories of practicing entomologists, we show the centrality of the career structure of academia in shaping what these scientists know and what they don’t about putative links between insecticides and CCD. The pressures of securing peer-­reviewed publications, grant funding, faculty appointments, and lifetime job security orient academic scientists toward approaches that facilitate the production of conclusive—­if limited—­knowledge, according to established standards. The high career stakes involved in producing definitive knowledge means that university entomologists tend to make methodological choices that are more likely to show measurable “positive” effects from apparently isolatable causes. In field situations, experiments that consider single toxins at higher dose levels are more likely to show measurable effects than a complex cocktail of

10

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

interacting sublethal factors. Conversely, serious consideration of low doses of toxins in interactions with multiple other factors entails a higher risk of failure because there is a higher probability of getting inconclusive results, which are unlikely to be publishable in high-­prestige scientific journals. As a result, as we detail in this chapter, there is relatively little incentive for university entomologists to consider complex real-­world issues such as the cumulative effects of toxic synergies that involve low doses of neonicotinoids, the way beekeepers might. Bees under the Treadmill of Agriculture

We begin this chapter providing some historical context. Growers are increasingly dependent on managed honeybees in order to pollinate their fruit and vegetable crops. With the post-­World War  II transformation of U.S. agriculture and the increasing dominance of genetically narrow crops on the U.S. “farmscape” has come the uneven disappearance of endemic “native” pollinator species. In this environment, commercial beekeepers travel from one farm to another, renting out their beehives during specific seasonal periods in the locales where growers’ crops are in bloom. The beekeeping practice of placing beehives at or near crop acreages for pollination exposes honeybees to grower practices, such as the use of insecticides to kill perceived insect pests. By providing this historical background, we highlight the difference between the current controversy over newer systemic pesticides and earlier die-­offs, and we set the stage for a discussion of the relationship between structural location of growers and their alliances, knowledge, and position in the CCD debate. We show that growers, both pollinator-­dependent and independent, are typically aligned with agrochemical industry in their views on knowledge about CCD and in being more willing to address the problem of honeybee health by altering forage environments than by reducing pesticide pressure. Of course, growers as a group are not much more monolithic than beekeepers, and in this chapter, we also look at the emerging alliance between groups of sustainable growers and beekeepers. Here, growers take seriously beekeeper understandings of the leading role of systemic insecticides in contributing to CCD and collaborate with beekeepers to catalyze

Introduction

11

meaningful shifts toward truly sustainable and pollinator-­friendly cropping practices. The Bottom Line for Bayer

Some remember DDT for its role in the second half of World War II in substantially reducing the number of malaria and typhus cases among American troops. Others recall the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Carson’s concern about the widespread and indiscriminate agricultural use of DDT after the war. Either way, few would disagree that in the postwar period, DDT became a bright star in the chemical control of agricultural pests. Chemical developments stemming from the war decisively altered U.S. agriculture. Some twenty-­five new pesticides were introduced in the first half dozen or so years after the war, and today we live in a world of deeply chemically dependent agriculture. Global sales of agricultural pesticides were in excess of $32 billion in 2004. CCD has put agricultural chemicals in the spotlight, for although there is no conclusive evidence of the impact of new systemic insecticides on honeybees, many suspect, not least commercial beekeepers, a role for these chemicals. Bayer CropScience and the company’s neonicotinoids have drawn particular attention. In this chapter, we explore the role of Bayer CropScience in shaping knowledge and ignorance in the debate over the place of systemic insecticides in causing CCD. The world’s second-­largest manufacturer of agrochemicals (behind Switzerland’s Syngenta) and seventh-­largest seed company, Bayer controls some 17 percent of the agrochemical market. Imidacloprid and clothianidin may be the most widely used insecticides worldwide and are among the company’s largest sellers. Its size and market prominence notwithstanding, this is not a case of a large corporation manipulating data or misleading regulators or the public (see Oreskes and Conway 2011). This isn’t headline-­ grabbing conspiratorial stuff. Instead, the company supports and bases its interpretations on the evidential standards used by toxicologists, entomologists, and the Environmental Protection Agency. This, however, is enough—­ for Bayer CropScience has an interest in perpetuating uncertainty about its best-­selling insecticides. As long as uncertainty remains, the company’s suite of systemic agrochemicals can remain on the U.S. market. In this context,

12

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

we describe Bayer’s toxicological research on honeybees and their influence in shaping academic standards and practices, thereby shifting the terrain of accepted knowledge and ignorance regarding putative links between neonicotinoids and honeybee health. Regulating Knowledge

In this chapter, we trace the history of “sound science” standards in U.S. federal environmental regulations. We tell the story of federal pesticide regulations by traveling through mid-­twentieth century Congressional hearings and looking at the ways in which participants on the political left and right argued for understanding regulation and regulatory science as a narrowly technical, value-­free practice. While, for example, British regulators allow a place for qualitative evidence and “subjective judgments,” U.S. regulators have a long-­standing commitment to formal analytic and quantitative methods. Deep commitments to such a view of regulatory science ground what the Environmental Protection Agency today calls “good laboratory practice,” and we show that good laboratory practice is not, contrary to widely held assumptions, a neutral set of guidelines. Instead, these standards serve to systematically exclude the knowledge that beekeepers gleaned from their daily experiences with their beehives about what might be causing CCD. Through renderings of public meetings attended by EPA officials and prominent commercial beekeepers and interviews with these people, we show the ways in which good laboratory practice legitimizes an arena of knowledge and ignorance about putative links between pesticides and honeybee losses, and we consider the implications of this for the state of regulation and the livelihoods of commercial beekeepers. While we approach each stakeholder group a chapter at a time, the story of CCD and the underlying lessons it provides about the politics of knowledge and ignorance can only be understood by thinking about these stakeholders (and our chapters about them) in relation to one another. If we accept that CCD is a “complex” phenomenon (which few of the stakeholders involved in the controversy would deny), then to truly understand it demands fully grappling with the multiple social and ecological worlds in which managed honeybees are enmeshed. But the distinct histories, cultures, norms, practices, and interests of each group of stakeholders from

Introduction

13

beekeepers and entomologists to growers, Bayer, and the Environmental Protection Agency constitute barriers to understanding CCD in all its complexity. Scientists and beekeepers have each engaged in systematic investigation, producing knowledge about CCD, but each has done so through lenses that the other cannot fully accept. Accepting the historically established standards of their field, most entomologists demand experimental control and statistical certainty. Reflecting the norms of their profession and career structure, these scientists are focused on isolating individual factors and prefer false negative to false positive results. By contrast, the livelihood concerns of beekeepers prompt them to prefer false positive results that could, for example, lead the government to inappropriately remove certain insecticides from the market. Many beekeepers’ views about the sublethal effects of these insecticides and their interaction with other environmental conditions are shaped by careful field observations. Their study may be systematic, but it lacks the precise controls entomologists demand, and while not all scientists reject the position of these beekeepers out of hand, they have little incentive to develop experimental designs that capture the complexity in ways that the beekeepers perceive. Such designs would almost inevitably lack the precision and control that are central to professional entomology, and thus the results from such experiments would likely be imprecise from the perspective of entomologists and so not be recognized as legitimate knowledge. If the entomologists who study CCD have little inclination or capacity to fully test the hypotheses embodied in the beekeepers’ claims about CCD, it is equally true that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is not positioned to encourage such investigation. On the one hand, U.S. agrochemical regulation has historically focused on killing insects, not maintaining their health, and, on the other hand, the history of the EPA leads it to base policy on the kind of scientific certainty entomologists seek. Ironically, however, to empirically capture the complexity some beekeepers believe is at play here would mean accepting less than definitive evidence. The lack of incentive for entomologists to study CCD in its full complexity and the government’s unwillingness to regulate in the face of uncertainty is reinforced by Bayer, a major producer of systemic insecticides. Why would the company remove its product from the market in the absence of definitive evidence that it causes harm? Similarly, while growers depend on beekeepers, their

14

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

worries about their crops and their livelihoods make it unlikely they would reduce their use of systemic insecticides without definitive evidence that it is hurting honeybees. In sum, the nature of the knowledge (and ignorance) produced in the case of CCD reflects the accumulation and interaction of the histories, cultures, norms, interests, and practices of the various actors involved. This configuration results in the widespread legitimacy of certain knowledge claims (those advanced by entomologists) and our ignorance about the plausibility of other claims (those made by some beekeepers), which, given the established norms and practices followed by the scientists and regulators involved, have not been fully explored. This is no government or corporate cover-­up but a state of affairs biased against the systematic exploration of complexity in the face of uncertainty. Toward Just Research and Policy on Bee Health

In our coda, we summarize our argument about how established evidential norms and institutionalized research methods shape what we know and do not know about CCD. We suggest that without moving beyond established norms and methods, continued research is unlikely to allow us to circumvent the existing impasse. We argue for the need for a more complexity-­ oriented approach to understanding and resolving honeybee declines, and we discuss our preliminary efforts in this direction.

1 • Knowing with Their Eyes? Beekeepers’ Understandings of CCD

It was another one of those gloriously hot summer days in August 2010 at the land grant university’s experimental bee yard. Research personnel from the university bee research facility were gathered for “data collection” from thirty-­six beehives, which were part of a field experiment to investigate the links between agricultural pesticides and CCD. It was an unusual day at the lab, because two veteran commercial beekeepers had driven in to help the bee research group with its work. As the scientists and beekeepers sat around opened beehives, with bees flying all around, and the bee smoker’s sweetly pungent smoke drifted into the eyes and nostrils behind bee veils of everyone there, the research personnel called out various counts, such as the number of comb cells containing immature bees (or brood) and nectar and pollen stored by foraging honeybees inside each beehive. Hand recording the shouted information, one beekeeper quipped that these scientific counts and evaluations were “pretty subjective.” In his opinion, most of the experimental beehives, both untreated and treated (with pesticides), had “poor brood patterns”; just because a beehive had a laying queen and large amounts of brood, honey, and pollen did not necessarily mean that it was healthy. After scrutinizing several experimental beehives, the other beekeeper asked whether the hives had experienced “a period of intense food shortage a few weeks ago.” He explained that he asked this question because he noticed the absence of “middle-­aged brood” in the hives, and this suggested to him that these hives had a “break” in their

15

16

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

brood-­rearing cycle, where the bees used up the comb space to gather nutritional resources rather than raise brood. One of the scientists confirmed that the beehives had, indeed, undergone starvation a few weeks ago due to an abrupt shift in the experimental feeding protocols. The way in which the beekeeper was able to piece together an accurate picture of the past history of these experimental beehives just by looking at the distribution of brood left a lasting impression on some of the researchers. Earlier in July of the same summer, a major state-­level association of beekeepers held its annual convention at the Holiday Inn of a small town. For its keynote address, the beekeepers invited Randy Oliver, a beekeeper from California, increasingly influential among his beekeeping colleagues. Oliver was introduced to the audience as someone whom “all” beekeepers wanted to talk to. His immense popularity stems from his extensive writings found in, among other places, the American Bee Journal, the premier trade magazine of U.S. beekeepers. As one beekeeper attending the conference said, his readers like the ways he “pulls together a lot of [scientific] information” and gives “a beekeeper’s view.” As Oliver explained in his presentation, his view of bee health issues is based centrally upon a “good, clean set of data” generated from controlled scientific trials of the sort that he was conducting in his own bee yards and that were occurring at the university bee research facility and elsewhere. These two vignettes illustrate not only that beekeepers have intimate knowledge of their bees but also that different beekeepers develop their knowledge of CCD in ways that are different from one another but not necessarily mutually exclusive. It was commercial migratory beekeepers such as David Hackenberg who were the first to observe and describe what scientists later called CCD. Bee scientists are not alone in their search for the causes of CCD and the more general problem of substantial increases in bee losses; commercial beekeepers are also trying to understand the malady. In this chapter, we delve into three prominent ways in which various commercial beekeepers approach and understand phenomena of accelerated honeybee deaths such as CCD. First, we introduce several commercial beekeepers with years of experience in the business of crop pollination who are convinced that a newer generation of systemic insecticides is primarily responsible for CCD. Through their voices, we show how some beekeepers construct their knowledge of CCD based on the actual field conditions



Knowing with Their Eyes?

17

that commercially managed honeybees encounter. From the perspective of a second group—­influential “scientific beekeepers,” such as Randy Oliver—­the imprecision of the methods of those beekeepers who monitor the real-­time conditions among their beehives leads to knowledge that is at best inconclusive. We discuss how these scientific beekeepers study CCD and how their work has led them to conclude that CCD is the result of parasite-­pathogen interactions. We go on to examine the knowledge claims of another set of commercial beekeepers, who contend that CCD does not exist, but is simply a case of “piss poor beekeeping.” We analyze fractious debates about CCD and broader trends of honeybee deaths between these beekeepers, and how the divergent, but sometimes overlapping, notions of science, politics, and beekeeping to which these groups adhere affect how they position themselves in the controversy over the causes of CCD. We also explore how the social common sense about science has affected the stature of beekeepers in the CCD debate. This is a story about what beekeepers know (and don’t), how they know it, and about the relationship between their knowledge and their positions on the kinds of government policy necessary to stem the heightened levels of honeybee deaths.

It’s the Newer Systemics . . . Several commercial beekeepers, many with multiple decades of experience in migratory beekeeping for pollination, have noted a correlation between the occurrence of CCD in their hives and the proximity of these hives to crops treated with a relatively new class of systemic insecticides called neonicotinyl insectides (or neonicotinoids) such as imidacloprid and clothianidin. Take the case of Clint Walker III, a third-­generation commercial beekeeper from Rodgers, Texas. Walker’s beekeeping firm, Walker Honey Company, is a family-­run outfit that was started by his grandfather in 1930. After starting in honey production and queen breeding, in around 1940 the fledgling beekeeping operation entered into the business of crop pollination. Clint Walker grew up learning the ins and outs of honey production, queen breeding, and migratory crop pollination. During that time, he came to accept “two basic philosophies” he was introduced to by his

18

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

beekeeper-­father G.  C. Walker (Sollenberger 2004): first, “don’t get too far from the bee tree.” In other words, when trying something new, Walker believes in always asking oneself whether “the bees like it” and in relation to what “the bees [would] be doing in the tree” (Sollenberger 2004, 189). Second, “don’t think you have ever arrived” and become rigid in thinking that one has all the answers about their beekeeping operation (quoted in Sollenberger 2004, 189). In the summer of 2006, Walker trucked approximately a thousand of his beehives to the cotton fields of west Texas, about 200 miles from his home in central Texas.1 He kept another thousand beehives in central Texas among wildflowers, where there was apparently no exposure to agricultural practices. In the fall, after roughly two and a half months in the cotton, Walker brought those bees back to central Texas and mixed them with the rest of his beehives among the wildflowers. At the time, Walker thought the “west Texas bees were better than the central Texas bees.” They were healthier, more vital. In November, a few months later, Walker inspected his hives once again in order to assess which among them would be of sufficient grade to take to California for the February almond pollination season. Walker’s grading reflected evaluation criteria specified by different state departments of agriculture, developed in conjunction with extension scientists at U.S. land grant universities, to ensure that beekeepers and growers meet “mandatory colony-­strength regulations for hives involved in commercial pollination of agricultural crops” (Burgett et al. 1993, 7). Assessment criteria include the approximate number of hive frames covered with adult bees (an estimate of the total number of honeybees in each beehive), the square inches of beehive comb covered with brood (an estimate of the number of immature offspring), and the presence/absence of disease and of an egg-­laying queen (Burgett et al. 1993). Following a comparable system of evaluation, 90 percent of Walker’s west Texas bees—­the ones that had been pollinating cotton—­made the grade, compared to only 70 percent of the central Texas bees—­the bees that had stayed put among the wildflowers; the west Texas bees were still stronger. In January 2007, as Walker began grading his beehives one last time before preparing them for the trip to California, he found that 68 percent of the beehives that had been kept among the wildflowers in central Texas were healthy, but the west Texas bees, the bees that had pollinated the cotton crop, “were gone,” “just gone.” “They



Knowing with Their Eyes?

19

were classic CCD,” according to Walker, with “big, nice slabs of brood, twenty bees and a queen.” The sudden disappearance of adult bees from beehives with ample stores of brood, honey and pollen, a queen, and some newly emerging bees, were signatures of what scientists were calling CCD. It is fairly normal for beekeepers to lose some bees each year, and many factors might explain Walker’s initial assessment that more of the bees he shipped back and forth to pollinate cotton were healthy enough to head to California than the bees that had stayed put. But the later massive disappearance of the cotton-­pollinating bees was shocking. In close to seven decades of migratory crop pollination, the Walkers’ operation had “never had a disappearing event that was even remotely close to” the one that his operation suffered in 2006–­07. Walker and his fellow beekeepers “spent sleepless nights and hours, days, months and years processing” and deliberating over what may have caused the huge die-­off. It seemed unlikely that the deaths of these bees could be explained by the transit from central to west Texas and back, since Walker’s company had been “hauling bees trans-­state for seventy-­two years” without any adverse health effects for the bees, and, according to Walker, this was “just 200 miles—­almost zero stress.” Nutritional deficiency also didn’t make sense for Walker. Even though drought had limited the variety of pollen to which the bees among the cotton had access, plenty of cotton nectar and pollen was available to them, and they came out of the cotton with “strong brooding,” that is, with seemingly healthy young bees. By December, the beehives that had been working the cotton had “slabs of good, fall pollen” and plenty of honey. “If it had been poor nutrition, you’d expect them to come out with low brooding,” Walker said. The beehives had “no mite loads” either. That is, there was no evidence that parasitic mites could have explained the die-­off. Moreover, according to Walker, they had had “zero exposure” to honeybees from other beekeeping operations. This reduced the likelihood of transmission of some parasite or pathogen from other beekeepers’ honeybees. But one thing did make this season distinct: upon talking with local farm-­equipment sellers and an area toxicologist, Walker discovered that the cotton in the fields where his bees had been pollinating had been treated with imidacloprid, apparently because the drought that year had led to an outbreak of aphids, a pest that threatens the cotton. Walker never went back to the west Texas cotton, and to this day he avoids crops

20

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

treated with imidacloprid as much as possible; he notes that ever since, he has not seen CCD in his operation. It is worth looking closely at the actual practices that led Walker and other beekeepers to their conclusions about CCD. The knowledge production processes of commercial beekeepers like Walker are distinctive.2 For one thing, Walker and other commercial beekeepers performed their studies of CCD in situ. In other words, they gained their understanding of CCD not in laboratory settings but in the actual fields and bee yards where the phenomenon unfolded. Secondly, their measures of beehive health are clear, conscious, and deliberately articulated, but they are not the formal, narrowly quantitative variety that scientists use. They treat beehives as integrated wholes. They are informal. “Strong brooding,” a commonly used beekeeper measure of hive health, for example, is based on visual assessments of the overall pattern of brood distributed across a hive comb. When brooding is strong, beekeepers see on a brood comb a uniform pattern of rows of cells containing evenly aged brood (in similar stages of development), in the form of sealed cells (indicating brood in the pupa stage) or unsealed cells with eggs. By contrast, a weak overall pattern on a brood comb would feature a patchwork of sealed and unsealed cells with unevenly aged brood (in widely divergent stages of development). Brood pattern also enables inferences about the queen’s health and the nutritional status of a hive. When brooding is strong, beekeepers surmise that the queen is healthy and the beehive has adequate levels of nutrition. Another informal measure of hive strength and health is the number of frames that are covered completely by adult bees. A large number suggests a strong and active beehive with high pollination potential. Indeed, pollination contracts often specify the minimum number of frames per hive that third-­party inspectors and growers would like to see covered with adults. These informal measures such as brood pattern and the number of frames covered with bees provide commercial beekeepers with useful information about multidimensional aspects of a hive. By contrast, scientists typically rely on more narrowly construed formal measures, such as statistical counts of individual cells containing brood treated as isolated units. Beekeeper knowledge such as Walker’s is developed in the field day-­by-­day. The approach to understanding that beekeepers like Walker take—­attention to small changes in patterns within and across hives—­is conducive to the highly dynamic, local, variable, and complex aspects of their operations.



Knowing with Their Eyes?

21

The approaches taken by commercial beekeepers oriented like Walker are shaped by their daily experiences, professional lives, and stakes and interests. Beekeepers seek their bees’ long-­term health, since it is the quality of the work their bees do that will determine the profits they make in the pollination market. Contemporary pollination contracts include specifications such as the number, location, strength, and health of the beekeeper’s hives, the kinds of pesticides that the grower can and cannot apply while beehives are in the crop setting, and arrangements for the pollination rental fees (Burgett et al. 2010; Spivak and Mader 2010). A grower’s dissatisfaction with the pollination performance of rented beehives could mean a significant reduction in the fee for the beekeeper and the possibility that the farmer will not renew his or her pollination contract with the beekeeper. On the other hand, beekeepers’ perception that damage to the health of their bees results from crop-­related sources could lead beekeepers to decide not to renew contracts with farms, or in more extreme cases to sue farmers for compensation. At the same time, some commercial beekeepers feel, as one noted during a public panel discussion on honeybees and pesticides, that they need to be careful about how much to criticize grower practices. As this beekeeper said, “if you complain too loudly” about perceived damages from growers’ practices, farmers may decide not to renew beekeeper pollination contracts.3 In all, beekeepers face a wide array of contradictory pressures. Commercial beekeepers’ practices of beehive manipulation, such as treating a beehive with nutritional supplements to stimulate brood growth at a time that would be considered unseasonal in a beehive’s lifecycle, reflect growers’ short-­term interests in having beehives with sufficient strength to carry out maximal pollination in the relatively short duration of crop bloom. At the same time, commercial beekeepers also have a stake in the longer-­term health of their hives, which they use for subsequent pollination operations. This is because sick bees make for poor pollinators (Spivak and Mader 2010). As a result, beekeepers also have a strong interest in developing practices that gauge and enhance the longer-­term health of their beehives, without which immediate and subsequent pollination ventures are likely to fail. Beekeepers with these bottom-­ line concerns, however, grapple with hives that exist in real contexts where they interact with, and are affected by, environmental factors in complex ways. Given their interests, the tools available to them, and their day-­to-­day

22

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

realities, many beekeepers rely primarily, but not exclusively,4 on in-­the-­field approaches to understanding and managing the factors impinging upon beehive health. The relatively informal character of their knowledge acquisition processes allow them to arrive at only tentative, albeit “good enough,” conclusions. While their findings have unquestionably practical implications, from the perspective of the norms of professional scientists, they are not sufficiently precise or definitive. Despite the lack of exactitude, this approach is consistent with beekeepers’ economic stakes, and this is why, although there is certainly a measure of uncertainty in the findings of these beekeepers, they prefer to err on the side of caution, potentially accepting false positive results (type I errors) in the hopes of protecting their livelihoods. They would rather not have their bees exposed to a substance that might turn out to be harmless than to keep using chemicals that their own observations suggest may be harmful, in the long term, to their bees. Their approach, based on a mixture of observation-­rooted knowledge and a risk-­based calculation in the face of uncertainty, is precautionary and shaped by the priority they place on keeping beehives healthy. Importantly, this means that these commercial beekeepers will seriously consider the possible influence of multiple difficult-­to-­quantify environmental factors, not just those that are easily isolatable and thus measureable, in potentially causing CCD and other incidents of honeybee deaths. Even though several commercial beekeepers agree with the scientific consensus that CCD is a complex multifactorial phenomenon, beekeepers like Clint Walker point to the newer systemic insecticides as playing a central role amid a cocktail of secondary contributing factors. Their position on CCD is shaped by two noteworthy historical factors. First, beekeepers have experienced a century-­long history of tensions and perceived problems in their beekeeping operations due to growers’ use of insecticides (see Root and Root 1920; vanEngelsdorp and Meixner 2010). Walker points out that “we’ve been playing the chemical game for over eighty years. . . . [It’s] not our first rodeo, as we like to say in Texas.” More pertinently, perhaps, beekeepers’ suspicions about the place of the neonicotinoids in CCD have been fueled by reports of similar honeybee collapses at the turn of the twentieth century in France. “Mad bee disease,” as the honeybee colony collapses in France came to be known, garnered coverage in beekeeping trade magazines and sparked debates between beekeepers in online forums of the U.S. beekeeping industry. For example, in February 2001, the American Bee



Knowing with Their Eyes?

23

Journal announced, “French Beekeepers Demonstrate” (News Notes 2001, 85). Alongside a brief description of French beekeepers’ concerns about imidacloprid’s “disastrous effects on bees” was a photograph from the front cover of the November 2000 issue of L’Abeille de France et l’apiculteur,5 which showed a demonstration in front of the factory of imidacloprid’s manufacturer, Bayer, with people holding banners. There was a second photograph of a pile of burning hive boxes. Some commercial beekeepers even visited France to glean information that French beekeepers may have gathered from their experiences with mad bee disease and imidacloprid. One U.S. beekeeper, for example, learned from his French counterparts that imidacloprid’s dose-­effect relationship “was a plateau,” where its toxicity to bees was similarly high at low doses (under 5 ppb) and high doses (above 20 ppb), but low at intermediate doses (between 5 and 18 ppb). In that instance, the French government was led by beekeepers’ indignant demands and scientists’ suggestive scientific findings to temporarily suspend some of the same insecticides that beekeepers in the United States allege are prominently involved in CCD (Maxim and van der Sluijs 2007; Suryanarayanan and Kleinman 2014). Looking at their own experiences and following the lead of French beekeepers, several commercial beekeepers in the United States have called for the precautionary suspension of neonicotinoids. In 2008, seven commercial beekeepers, who had previously held leadership positions in the national-­ level beekeepers’ organizations and who shared the view that agrochemicals played an important contributory role in CCD, formed the National Honey Bee Advisory Board (NHBAB). They sought to organize a multipronged effort at both grassroots and policy levels to bring about changes in the way pesticides are used and regulated in the United States. Their mission was to have a more “balanced pesticide policy,” and their efforts highlighted their concerns about the effects of plant protection chemicals on their bees. Not surprisingly, the beekeepers underplayed the possibility that the chemicals that they themselves applied to beehives might contribute to CCD. The NHBAB’s effort to speak with “one voice” for the U.S. beekeeping industry has not been entirely successful. There has been substantial division among commercial beekeepers in the United States, and unified action has been undercut by the diversity of voices among them (Suryanarayanan and Kleinman 2014).

24

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

It’s More Virulent Pathogens and Parasites . . . Among those who disagree with NHBAB members and beekeepers mobilizing against newer systemic insecticides are a handful of self-­appointed “scientific beekeepers.” This group dismisses the NHBAB beekeepers’ calls for the suspension of the newer systemics in relation to CCD. Scientific beekeepers such as Peter Borst6 and Randy Oliver7 believe the evidence suggests that CCD is caused primarily by microbial pathogens, which are rendered more virulent in the presence of the parasitic mite Varroa destructor. While operating a “small-­scale” migratory beekeeping operation of about a thousand beehives in California, Randy Oliver is at the same time actively pursuing a career in honeybee research. With a master’s degree in fisheries biology, and regrets at not having gone on to have a career in academic biology, Oliver sees in his capacity to interpret and do scientific research a valuable “niche opportunity.” His widely read critiques of honeybee science have made him the “de facto extension guy” who translates the specialized and often-­obtuse language of academic research to “lay” (beekeeper) audiences (interview, 1/13/10). He has additionally published in beekeeping trade journals data from his own honeybee research trials. Oliver’s traditionally scientific orientation toward beekeeping along with the reputation that he has built among beekeepers has garnered attention beyond beekeeping circles, including from the chemical industry and the EPA. Indeed, Oliver performed a series of trials and gathered data to test the efficacy of a novel antiviral drug in rescuing honeybees from experimentally induced viral infections. He was funded in this endeavor by Beeologics, an international firm based in Florida—­now owned by the agrochemical giant Monsanto—­ that is “developing a line of RNAi-­based products to specifically address the long-­term well-­being of honey bees,” including those affected by CCD. Oliver contends that “CCD has always walked and quacked like a viral problem” (Oliver 2009a). To support his claim, he points not only to scientific investigations that support his position but also evokes his own “research trials,” where he infected bees in his “test yard” with a cocktail of some of the same viruses and fungi that scientific research suggests are implicated in CCD. In his keynote speech at the 2010 summer convention convened by a state beekeepers association, Oliver showed pictures of



Knowing with Their Eyes?

25

brood frames from beehives that had been inoculated with the microbial cocktail and emphasized their “spotty brood pattern” and the dearth of adult bees in these beehives. Oliver went on to observe that “it was stunning” to see how these beehives, inoculated with the viral cocktail, went through the same symptoms “in an eye blink” as hives believed to have CCD (field notes, 8/16/10). This was presumably solely due to the experimentally induced infection, as his test-­yard bees had received no mite-­killing pesticides and were apparently surrounded by organic farms, which reduced the likelihood of exposure to agricultural chemicals. According to Oliver, “It is clear that colony collapse can be initiated . . . simply by the introduction of one or more virulent strains of virus” (2010d, 871; our emphasis). As to what makes microbial pathogens suddenly “more virulent” causal agents, Oliver pointed the finger at the parasitic Varroa mite. According to Oliver, mite-­inflicted “wounds suppress immunity, stress bees, invite bacteria and vector viruses.” In other words, the buildup of parasitic mites provides the medium in which new and more virulent and harmful microbial strains can evolve. Further nutritional stresses imposed by increasing incidences of large-­scale, unfavorable weather events such as droughts, overly wet summers, and unusual frosts, along with “more expansive monoculture and herbicide use” according to Oliver, render beehives more vulnerable to mite-­mediated pathogen attacks than they would be under salubrious conditions (Oliver 2010c, 767). To the extent that chemical toxins may be involved in CCD, according to Oliver, it is the buildup in beehives of beekeeper-­applied miticides, possibly along with agricultural fungicides, that are more likely to contribute to CCD than the newer systemic insecticides. In support of his contentions, Oliver points to recent scientific surveys that have repeatedly found relatively high levels of miticidal chemicals, most frequently in commercial migratory beehives. For Oliver, newer systemic insecticides such as imidacloprid are akin to caffeine in humans in that they break down “really quickly” in bees.8 While Oliver maintains that he has yet to “exonerate” the neonicotinoids, he believes that as long as there is no conclusive evidence showing that addition of these insecticides to a beehive causes CCD-­like symptoms, there are no grounds for calling for the suspension of these insecticides. He asserts that “the bottom line” for arguing for any link between the neonicotinoids and CCD must be based on data that is generated from controlled

26

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

scientific field experiments. The more informal observational data gathered by NHBAB beekeepers will not suffice. For Oliver “this is not complicated science—­it is a very simple and straightforward test with a single variable” (2010b; our emphases). The views of scientific beekeepers like Randy Oliver are shaped by their acceptance of the singular virtues and efficacy of traditional scientific methods. They take good science to be independent of values and politics.9 Knowledge is gleaned by a straightforward reading of the data that nature provides. Scientific beekeepers hold that “science is the center” (for example, Borst 2011; our emphasis). Here, natural phenomena are seen to offer factual evidence, which is gathered, examined, and interpreted through logic in order to either support or falsify hypotheses. This (scientific) logic is made possible by a careful and systematic investigation involving repeatable and controlled trials that rigorously test explanatory hypotheses via some “objective” metric (Oliver 2009). Scientific beekeepers think about knowledge in ways that are consistent with widely accepted notions of what science is and how it operates. They demand a sharp cleavage between “the natural environment” and the social and political environment, and treat those who are trained as scientists as privileged observers and the mediators of natural phenomena to society. This leads them to dismiss the views of their fellow beekeepers who draw on experience and data gleaned in situ. They reject what might be called “the feeling for the organism” (Keller 1983) and often take the perspective that the final say must go to scientists. They devalue their own expertise, their own capacity for knowledge generation. Scientists who engage in controlled experiments, supposedly objective and separate from values and politics, are the experts here. Oliver and those who share his views dismiss the NHBAB beekeepers, who call for limitations on the use of neonicotinoids based on their own studies of CCD, as “laymen dictating to those who actually carefully analyze the research what to do” (Oliver 2012b; our emphasis). Scientific beekeepers claim, as one of their number noted, that they themselves “have no opinions on the role of neonics in widespread bee loss, but rather . . . reflect what is the general consensus among scientists” (Borst 2012). As we shall see in a subsequent chapter, this “general consensus” is based largely on the acceptance of a particular set of research norms and practices that have come to dominate scientific investigations of bees and pesticides, and these norms tend to focus on the



Knowing with Their Eyes?

27

direct, causal effects of individual factors through experimental approaches that emphasize precise control rather than recognition and acceptance of the formal limits of capturing the complexity found in nature. This approach has a preference for erring on the side of false negative results instead of false positive ones. It ends up ignoring more complex and highly plausible situations, where any single pesticide by itself may not cause harm but may do so through interactions and accumulations with other contextual factors across both space and time—­a scenario that NHBAB beekeepers and some scientists have postulated based on their systematic investigations (for example, Pettis et al. 2012; Hunt and Krupke 2013). That this “control-­ oriented” experimental approach (an approach that seeks to hold all factors but the hypothesized causal factor constant) underpins the general consensus among scientific beekeepers and scientists alike about neonicotinoids and honeybees does not reflect an inherently superior explanatory power. Instead, as we describe in later chapters, the stature of this orientation reflects a historical confluence of the stakes and interests of disciplinary entomologists and the norms of regulatory agencies, which the agrochemical industry draws on to their economic and political advantage. Scientific beekeepers, however, have taken for granted the superiority of this particular approach as the best available mediator of the real world effects of pesticides on honeybees. In projecting their understandings of CCD as objective and politically neutral, scientific beekeepers ironically end up, more often than not, conforming with and helping further the political and economic projects of powerful agrochemical industry actors, even though they may not be directly captured by agrochemical industry in a conventional political sense.

It’s Simply “Piss-­P oor Beekeeping” In October 2009, the NHBAB held a planning retreat. A central goal for the gathering was to develop a strategy for speaking with “one voice” as a community of commercial beekeepers. A key challenge to their goal, according to an official organization document,10 was to find a way to “deal with the beekeeper dissenters; especially those who are strongly independent and politically well-­connected” (our emphasis). NHBAB was concerned about

28

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

commercial beekeepers who did not think that CCD is real and those who were vehemently opposed to any suggestion that the newer systemic insecticides like imidacloprid might be contributing to compromising honeybee health. Michael is one of the so-­called dissenters, an impediment to NHBAB’s effort to present a united front.11 A commercial beekeeper who runs a large-­ scale pollination and honey producing operation, Michael has also been active in the almond industry-­funded “Project Apis m,” a California-­based collaboration between beekeepers and orchardists that funds “honey bee research on managed colonies”12 (discussed in chapter 3). In a set of tense e-mail exchanges over the potential role of pesticides in CCD that involved various commercial beekeepers and bee scientists,13 Michael asserted that beekeepers who are “crying at all the conventions” about CCD in their operations are in reality “PPBers”—­ piss-­ poor beekeepers (beekeeper-­ scientist exchanges 2009). And just who are PPBers? According to Michael, they are beekeepers who “refuse to change and adapt” their bee work to a “chemical environment” and instead “continue to fight growers, farmers and anyone else involved.” Michael’s own past struggles with pesticide kills, pesticide manufacturers, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have led him to conclude that “you will not change anything in the pesticide world no more than I could thirty-­three years ago” (beekeeper-­scientist exchanges 2009). Michael contends that present-­day systemic insecticides such as the seed treatments in corn have “had no [e]ffect on our bees at all.” In fact, according to Michael, by using an area comprising 70 percent corn (presumably a genetically modified variety whose seed is pretreated with neonicotinoid-­ fungicide mixture) and 30 percent alfalfa for honeybee foraging, he was able to bring his bees “to a higher level” for growers than ever before. Indeed, Michael views newer systemics such as seed-­treated corn to be “much safer . . . than planes flying all day dumping on Penncap, Furadan, or Parathion.” Michael asserts that he suffered “far more damage” from these non-­ systemic traditional insecticides. Contending that several other commercial beekeepers share his sentiments, Michael issued a thinly veiled warning that if the NHBAB’s beekeepers were to “blow the seed treated corn” in their battle with the “big boys,” then he and many more beekeepers would be compelled to “come out of hiding to fight and stop the message real quick!”



Knowing with Their Eyes?

29

Their fear apparently is that the removal of the newer systemic insecticides would lead to alternative pesticides that would have “far worse” effects on bees than the systemics (beekeeper-­scientist exchanges 2009). The only viable option for success in the business of beekeeping, from Michael’s perspective and in the view of many of his compatriots, is to change one’s own beekeeping practices, and it is the inability to do so that is the real reason that beekeepers are “going broke.” Michael does not deny that systemic insecticides can harm bees but contends that “contaminated corn pollen in hives may be a big problem for all the PPBers out there that do not know what it takes to beat it.” In other words, Michael suggests that corn pollen containing systemic insecticides poses a danger only to those beekeepers who do not know how to adapt to the “chemical environment.” This, continues Michael, is “a good thing” because “it happens in any business [that] the strong get stronger and the weak are sorted out [and] bees are no different!” In Michael’s view, it is not CCD but PPB that “is rampant in the US right now, and it will not change as most do not have the beekeeping skills anymore to be able to make the change.” The changes in beekeeping practices that Michael alludes to, in order to be able to prosper in a chemical environment, involve keeping bees alive with nutritional supplements and other “inputs” that Michael doesn’t like, in part due to their expense, but he accepts their use because “the alternative is far worse” (beekeeper-­scientist exchanges 2009). The PPB argument articulated by beekeepers such as Michael is not about what causes CCD and what government policy should be in the face of this phenomenon. Although these beekeepers recognize that the health of honeybees is affected by the environment in which the bees live, their arguments are not focused primarily on research or evidence. It is about how beekeepers must act independently in the economic and agricultural environment as it is. Michael articulates a kind of libertarian position, consistent with widely held views in the United States about individual initiative, hard work, and economic success. Not directly confronting the idea that those in agriculture, beekeeping, and the government need to understand and eliminate CCD, Michael takes an “anti-­statist” perspective that denigrates “crybaby beekeepers of today” who “go to the government and ask for a welfare check from the taxpayers.” Rather than organize collectively in order to change the increasingly “chemical world” in which bees

30

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

and beekeepers find themselves, Michael advocates a highly individualistic approach: “I was raised to be tough as hell so I sucked it up rebuilt with my own money and learned what changes I had to make so I could survive!” The increased rental prices for beehives in California in the wake of beekeepers suffering from CCD (which is PPB in Michael’s reading) leads Michael to laughingly assert that it is best not to “give any advice out that will help keep bees alive,” since “they (the so-­called PPBers) will keep me in business for years to come” (beekeeper-­scientist exchanges 2009). Again, one sees here the elements of a libertarian language in which the market and competition, not science or the government, will ultimately help solve beekeepers’ problems.

Conclusion U.S. beekeepers do not have a unified position on what counts as knowledge about honeybee health or how to produce that knowledge. They also have divergent perspectives on expertise and politics and the relationship between knowledge, expertise, and politics. The first group of beekeepers we introduced has confidence in their own capacity to understand CCD based on data they gather observing their own beehives, and their data filtered through their own livelihood stakes provide the foundation for their policy position on systemic insecticides and CCD. This group has engaged in systematic in situ field observations, and on the basis of their field data as well as suggestive laboratory and field studies by entomologists, they have concluded that the increasingly widespread use of newer kinds of systemic insecticides such as imidacloprid and clothianidin is likely a central contributor to CCD. These beekeepers recognize that their data collection methods lack the formality of the approaches used by scientists and that their findings are only suggestive. They understand that in seeking to capture crucial information about multiple, complex aspects of beehive health (as against the health of individual bees), they could be wrong. Still, given their livelihood stakes—­their commercial interests—­they have advocated taking systemic insecticides off the market until there is conclusive evidence that these insecticides are not killing their bees. They would prefer to arrive at false positive conclusions, that is, a precautionary orientation, where a



Knowing with Their Eyes?

31

substance that is safe might be incorrectly labeled as harmful as opposed to following a logic common in science and accepting results that could turn out to be falsely negative, leading to continued bee exposure to chemical cocktails of uncertain toxicity. Self-­proclaimed scientific beekeepers take a different position on how to produce knowledge about CCD, what counts as knowledge, and what causes CCD. They command enormous credibility largely due to their acknowledged capacity to relay the widely accepted findings of scientists and promote practices consistent with the norms of traditional science to beekeeper audiences. They believe that the approach taken by traditional scientists is the only appropriate way to understand CCD and that public policy concerning CCD should be based on conclusive data drawn from scientific studies, not on the in situ, suggestive data derived from the observations of beekeepers. They dismiss the assessments provided by NHBAB beekeepers and the approach those beekeepers have taken to data collection. This group of beekeepers contends that CCD is primarily the result of interactions between parasites and pathogens, with newer systemic insecticides playing a negligible role. Scientific beekeepers justify their perspectives by pointing to scientists’ arguments (for example, Cutler and Scott-­Dupree 2007; Blacquière et al. 2012; Carreck and Ratnieks 2014) that cite the lack of conclusive evidence from scores of field and semi-­field toxicological studies by academic and agrochemical industry scientists. In asserting the validity of the general scientific consensus as the best available knowledge about CCD and other accelerated phenomena of honeybee die-­offs, scientific beekeepers end up taking for granted a particular set of research norms and practices upon which this knowledge is based and whose dominance in honeybee science reflects not its inherent objectivity but a particular history (see chapter 2). A final group of commercial beekeepers do not even consider CCD to be real, but simply a case of “piss-­poor beekeeping.” Their knowledge, viewed through a lens of libertarian ideology, is based on observations of their own bees and how these bees fare in response adjustments to their beekeeping practices made in light of the existing economic and agricultural environment. Indeed, they too are engaged in everyday, practical experimentation. But their data lead them to dismiss commercial beekeepers who link the decline in honeybee health to the increasing prevalence of systemic

32

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

insecticides. The libertarians contend that individual initiative in the face of an inalterable market will ultimately sort out problems in bee health, weeding out those beekeepers who resist the changing chemical environment and letting flourish those who adapt and alter their practices in tune with apparently extrinsic changes. In terms of actual practice, though, that seeming adaptation includes the increased use of nutritional and chemical inputs to maintain beehives in the face of challenges posed by pesticides, parasites, pathogens, and poor nutrition. Interestingly, while they are in adamant disagreement with NHBAB beekeepers, in practice this group understands honeybee health as a reflection of a complex set of interactions.14 These different beekeepers’ knowledge claims and policy orientations must be understood in the context of widely accepted notions of science and politics and the boundary between them. What we can know, how we can know it, and who can acquire and assess knowledge are defined in this environment. Here, traditional entomological science is widely understood as the most effective—­the sharpest and most precise and accurate—­way to obtain knowledge about the natural world and as value-­free and separate from politics. Scientists, not beekeepers, are experts. Thus, for example, beekeepers do not systematically discuss why scientists, the U.S. government, and the agrochemical industry prefer findings that could lead to false negative conclusions over false positive conclusions. But there is nothing intrinsically superior about the preference for false negatives over false positives. Instead, as we discuss in the next chapter, this orientation reflects the very human history and structure of science. For the NHBAB and like-­minded beekeepers, politics enters the discussion not in terms of whether stakeholders prefer to err on the side of caution from a regulatory perspective, and thus base policy on inconclusive evidence, but on the more mundane matter of who controls the U.S. regulatory apparatus. They believe that the integrity of the relevant science and the regulatory process upon which it rests are compromised by science’s purveyors and practitioners in academia, industry, and government who are beholden to the agrochemical industry and its profit imperative. In the words of an NHBAB beekeeper, it is a case of the “fox guarding the chicken coop.” Science is seen as “politicized” and biased because it is performed and interpreted by regulators and scientists who have some allegiance to the agrochemical industry. The implication is that ideology and not objective



Knowing with Their Eyes?

33

“sound science” is driving the regulatory understanding of CCD in relation to neonicotinoids. Thus, the NHBAB’s beekeepers call for more science and less politics in the EPA’s regulation of pesticides. While the overtly conspiratorial valence of their attributions may hold true in some instances, our contention is that in the CCD controversy, the interests, cultures, practices, and histories of the array of involved stakeholders, not knowledge suppression or manipulation, shape what counts as knowledge, which claims are systematically explored (and which are not), and what knowledge constitutes the basis for policy. Pointing out that the norms and assumptions underlying research practices are social is neither to suggest that they are selected on an arbitrary basis nor that they are ungrounded fabrications. Instead, throughout this book, we seek to draw attention to the fact that which research agendas, practices, and interpretations become established and which don’t are not merely technical matters but are outcomes of social and historical struggles for legitimacy between contending groups. Knowledge, ignorance, and expertise are intrinsically social and political.

2 • Keeping the Research Disciplined Entomological Understandings of the Controversy over Insecticides

As spring approached, discussions at a university bee research facility about how to implement a field experiment to investigate the chronic effects of the systemic insecticide imidacloprid on honeybees intensified. From the outset, the researchers were locked into a protracted debate about the relevant amounts of imidacloprid to douse on beehives. Some of the investigators, along with the two commercial beekeepers who were involved in the study, emphasized the need to look at the effects of low doses of imidacloprid that were equivalent to levels found in the pollen and nectar of “seed-­treated” crops such as sunflowers and canola. Many beekeepers believe that chronic exposure to newer systemic insecticides at low levels can lead to phenomena of beehive deaths including CCD. The lead insect toxicologist involved in the discussions, however, while sympathetic to beekeepers’ claims, insisted that the study would be better if higher doses were used, representative of the range of applications of imidacloprid found across various landscapes. Citing field experiments that found no adverse effects on honeybees from continuous exposure to low doses of these chemicals, this scientist expressed concern that a lot of the public’s tax dollars in the form of research money and time would be wasted if the low dose

34



Keeping the Research Disciplined

35

were once again to produce no measurable effects. The researcher argued that higher doses would be more likely to yield the kind of clear and conclusive causal results that would be needed to shift U.S. regulatory policy on agrochemicals; such unambiguous results are also necessary for publication in peer-­reviewed scientific journals, an achievement the graduate student and postdoctoral researcher who were doing the primary legwork on the project were depending on for their professional advancement. While the research team eventually settled on a “compromise dose,” the debate provides a valuable window into the methodological norms, stakes, and interests that shape prevalent investigations of the links between pesticides and the decline of honeybee health. Toxicological laboratory and field experiments constitute key arenas of information and contention in the debate over the role played by newer systemic insecticides in instances of honeybee die-­offs exemplified by CCD. Environmental groups, beekeepers, and their scientific representatives draw upon suggestive evidence from several lab and field studies in order to justify their calls for curtailing the widespread use of imidacloprid and clothianidin (for example, Alaux et al. 2010; Vidau et al. 2011; Pettis et al. 2012; Palmer et al. 2013; Sandrock et al. 2014; Moffat et al. 2015). Leading scientists and regulatory officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acknowledge that such newer systemic insecticides are “acutely toxic” to honeybees “as is the case for many insecticides” (EPA 2012, 8). But for them, “the critical question” is whether these chemicals are “generally available in the environment at levels that can cause serious, imminent harm to bee populations” (EPA 2012, 8). They point to the lack of consistent definitive evidence from field toxicological experiments on beehives subjected to “field-­realistic” low doses to assert that newer systemic insecticides are not a primary factor in the bee declines. Writing in the prestigious journal Science, bee scientists Ratnieks and Carreck stated, “After ten years of research, it seems unlikely that imidacloprid was responsible for . . . bee deaths” (2010, 153; also see Carreck and Ratnieks 2014). And more recently, Blacquière and colleagues summed up these conclusions in a thorough review of the existing research in the journal Ecotoxicology by stating “many lethal and sublethal effects of neonicotinoid insecticides on bees have been described in laboratory studies, however, no effects were observed in field studies with field-­realistic dosages” (2012, 988; also see Godfray et al. 2014; Dively

36

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

et al. 2015; Retschnig et al. 2015). Similarly, the director of the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs dismissed an “emergency petition” by beekeepers and environmental groups to halt use of clothianidin (Anderson et al. 2012), concluding that “your request for suspension does not demonstrate a causal link between clothianidin and harm to bees sufficient to justify the suspension of these pesticides . . . The petition cites no data demonstrating population-­level effects from the use of clothianidin in real-­world situations” (Bradbury 2012; EPA 2012, 10–­11; our emphases).1 In this chapter, we examine the methodological norms and values that underpin the design of “real-­world” field experiments on newer systemic insecticides and beehives. We explore how the norms of appropriate research practices, standards of evidence, and grounds for conclusions are socially and historically established and thereby shape what scientists know and do not know about accelerated honeybee deaths and the broader declines in insect pollinator populations. We begin with an analysis of two illustrative field experiments to draw out the key qualities of the predominant experimental approach used by university, government, and industry scientists investigating the issue. We contend that the prevalent forms of toxicological “field” knowledge and, conversely, ignorance regarding honeybee health reflect “control-­oriented” methodological choices that do not necessarily mirror either nature or the on-­the-­ground realities of commercial pollination. We show that there is nothing inherently appropriate about these methodological approaches. We conclude the chapter by discussing the implications of these preferences for key stakeholders in the debate over insecticides and honeybee health and illustrate how the organization of control-­oriented field experiments at a prominent university bee research facility in the United States created unintended consequences for the experimented-­upon honeybees and the experimenting personnel, and in the process undermined the scientists’ ability to arrive at a real-­world understanding of the role played by newer systemic agrochemicals in honeybee health.

“Control-­Oriented” Field Studies Laboratory studies that exposed honeybees chronically to sublethal levels of “reduced-­risk” systemic insecticides have found deleterious effects on



Keeping the Research Disciplined

37

bee learning, behavior, and development (reviewed in Desneaux et al. 2007; Maini et al. 2010; Blacquière et al. 2012; van der Sluijs et al. 2013). Lab studies also suggest the toxicity of these insecticides to honeybees is enhanced as a result of synergistic interactions with other ambient synthetic chemicals—­ including grower-­applied fungicides (Iwasa et al. 2004)—­and commonly occurring honeybee pathogens (Alaux et al. 2010; Vidau et al. 2011; Pettis et al. 2012). These findings are consistent with those of the beekeepers we discussed in the previous chapter who do their own in situ research. However, because highly controlled laboratory experiments eschew consideration of other factors, such as the social organization of honeybees in whole beehives, any major role for these systemic agrochemicals in contributing to accelerated declines in honeybee health is considered by several university scientists, regulatory officials, and agro-­industry actors to be, like the field investigations of beekeepers, at best suggestive (for example, Edwards 2008; Johnson et al. 2010; Bayer 2010; Ratnieks and Carreck 2010; Cresswell 2011; Blacquière et al. 2012; Bradbury 2012; Cresswell et al. 2012; EPA 2012; Carreck and Ratnieks 2014; Dively et al. 2015). Regulators and university bee scientists in the United States have looked to field experiments (as against work done in laboratories) to provide more definitive causal evidence of a role for newer systemic insecticides in the decline of honeybees. In a review of pesticides and honeybee toxicity, leading university bee scientists Reed Johnson, Marion Ellis, and Maryanne Frazier wrote, laboratory-­based “acute toxicity tests on adult honeybees may be particularly ill-­suited for the testing of systemic pesticides because of the different route of exposure bees are likely to experience in field applications. Chronic feeding tests using whole colonies may provide a better way to quantify the effects of systemics” (2010, 3–­4; our emphasis).2 Such field-­based studies typically involve statistically based comparisons between a set of experimentally “treated” beehives, which are exposed to a range of insecticidal doses, and a set of “untreated” control beehives, while other (ambient) factors (for example, nutrition, temperature, location) are either kept equivalent or monitored to the extent feasible. Chronic feeding studies in the field, conducted by both academic and industry scientists, where honeybee colonies were exposed to low levels of the newer systemic insecticides have found very little evidence of harm, let alone an unambiguous link to CCD. The lack of clear, causal results from toxicological field

38

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

experiments has led several policymakers and researchers to assert that the newer systemic insecticides play little or no role in the ongoing decline of managed honeybees and other pollinators and justifies the continued use of systemic insecticides (Cutler and Scott-­Dupree 2007; Ratnieks and Carreck 2010; Blacquière et al. 2012; EPA 2012; Carreck and Ratnieks 2014; Dively et al. 2015; Retschnig et al. 2015). Among the investigations in this vein is work published in 2007 in the Journal of Economic Entomology, the premier outlet of professional entomologists in North America, by bee scientist Cynthia Scott-­Dupree’s group at the University of Guelph in Canada. Scott-­Dupree and her collaborators concluded “Exposure to Clothianidin Seed-­treated Canola Has No Long-­term Impact on Honey Bees” (Cutler and Scott-­Dupree 2007, 765). The field experiment was designed to expose beehives for three continuous weeks to newly planted plots of canola whose seeds had been treated with or without maximally permitted levels of the neonicotinoid clothianidin (brand name: Poncho). Following the three weeks of exposure, the beehives were moved to a distant yard where they were monitored for several more months. During the course of the study, Scott-­Dupree and her colleagues assessed various measures of hive health, including the amount of honey produced, the number of brood, and the longevity of the “worker” bees. They did not find any statistically significant differences between the beehives that were situated in the clothianidin-­treated and -­untreated plots of canola. A second study published in 2010 by Professor Galen Dively’s group at the University of Maryland involved a field experiment that was sponsored by the EPA to investigate the chronic toxicity of imidacloprid to beehives (also see Dively et al. 2015). These scientists exposed beehives to Admire Pro, a “drench” formulation with imidacloprid as its active ingredient,3 continuously over a period of nine weeks. The researchers administered the insecticide in pollen patties—­soy-­based pollen substitutes widely used as nutritional supplements in beekeeping operations—­spiked with increasingly high doses. At the lowest dose level considered to be “field-­realistic,” the scientists again saw little relative effect of the insecticide on beehive health, measured in terms of factors such as the number of adult bees, the sum of brood, the amount of food stored by bees in the beehives, and the rate at which beehives replaced lost queens with new ones.



Keeping the Research Disciplined

39

While these field studies did not produce data supporting beekeepers’ hypotheses, it is worth noting that a subsequent laboratory experiment did. In this case, Pettis and his colleagues took newly emerged (one day old) adult bees from the experimental beehives belonging to the Dively field study and infected them with Nosema, a common gut pathogen. After doing so, they found that the bees from the lowest field-­realistic dose group were significantly more vulnerable to infection than bees from untreated beehives (Pettis et al. 2012). While some might conclude that these findings suggest that Nosema weakened bees already exposed to imadicloprid (suggesting the complex pathways through which systemic insecticides contribute to accelerated honeybee losses), many stakeholders, including EPA regulators, agrochemical industry scientists, and “scientific” beekeepers, cast doubt on the “biological relevancy” of this laboratory result “to bee colonies under natural conditions” (EPA 2012, 12–­13; our emphasis). This was not a field experiment, and the original field study conducted by Dively and his colleagues did not find a correlation in beehives between the levels of Nosema and the imidacloprid dosage, “which would have been predicted by the lab study” (Pettis et al. 2012, 156; Dively et al. 2015; also see Retschnig et al. 2015). Field experiments are supposed to provide conditions that are more like those experienced by bees in farm fields. At the same time, field studies like Dively’s and Scott-­Dupree’s can be characterized as “control-­oriented” (Böschen et al. 2010). To gain purchase on the individual factors contributing to a particular outcome, this work inevitably underplays the complexity found in real-­world situations. This research is designed to isolate individual factors and the direct, causal roles they might be playing in honeybee health. It seeks experimental control of all potentially confounding environmental variables. But the focus on experimental control occurs at the cost of understanding the social and ecological complexity in which honeybees and beekeepers operate. For many, this is a problematic trade-­off, giving priority to precision over validity (Kirk and Kutchins 1992) and to simplicity over complexity. As a practical matter, such precise control is ultimately illusive in real-­ world environments. Out in the field where bees forage, things are messy. Complex interactions between multiple variables are the order of the day, and it is ultimately difficult to isolate individual factors and determine

40

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

their causal role. In Scott-­Dupree’s (2007) study, for example, the treated and control field plots were separated by a mere 300 meters. As a result, so-­ called untreated beehives, while not receiving pesticides from the experimenters, could have housed bees that foraged on the relatively nearby pesticide-­treated canola. Similarly, beehives in the treated plot could have had bees that foraged on the nearby untreated plot of canola. In other words, an observed lack of “long-­term impact on honey bees” from clothianidin may have been because all the study beehives in fact had access to both pesticide-­treated and -­untreated experimental plots. Indeed, the experimenters detected clothianidin at low levels in some of the beehives from both the treatment and the control groups (Cutler and Scott-­Dupree 2007). The reality is that honeybees don’t just stay on one plot but can travel distances of up to 6 kilometers to forage (Spivak 2010). In setting up the control plots so close to the treated ones, Scott-­Dupree and her group overlooked this reality and underappreciated the complexity of studying honeybees in the field. In the studies by Dively and his colleagues (2010; 2015), the researchers used all new hive equipment so as to minimize any variability between beehives due to pathogen/pesticide residues that can be present on older hive material. But as the lead honeybee scientist at a U.S. university bee research facility noted drily, commercially prepared new comb foundation, the template upon which honeybees build their wax comb, is already contaminated with fluvalinate, a miticide, often at levels of significant concern (Mullin et al. 2010). Dively and his collaborators also placed “pollen traps” over the front entrance of each bee hive in order to reduce the amount of nutritive plant pollen that returning forager bees brought into their beehives. Through this, the researchers sought to induce honeybees to ingest the experimentally provisioned protein-­rich diet and to reduce any variation due to differences in the nutritional resources that was available to each hive. However, in seeking precise controls, the researchers may have confounded their results. By restricting study colonies to a single source of artificial pollen substitute, scientists may have inadvertently contributed to an across-­the-­board depressive effect on colony health and this, in turn, could have affected how the colonies responded to insecticidal exposure. Our main argument here is that the manipulations that were carried out in field studies to control for specific environmental variables may in fact



Keeping the Research Disciplined

41

have led to the introduction of new and unanticipated complications that could have influenced the eventual results. We are not simply contending that the experimental controls in these studies were poorly designed, but that the focus on isolating the direct effects of an individual insecticide on honeybee colonies creates an experimental system where equally important indirect effects resulting from the cumulative interactions between the chemical and the experimentally controlled factors become obscured. Control-­oriented field experiments are ill-­suited to test real-­life scenarios where low levels of neonicotinoids by themselves may not cause accelerated losses of beehives but may interact with multiple other environmental variables. In focusing on only one or two chemicals, contemporary field study designs tend to exclude complex scenarios such as those proposed by beekeepers and laboratory studies, where honeybee die-­offs may be caused by the accumulated, intricate interactions of neonicotinoids and other factors over a longer term (but see Retschnig et al. 2015). Managed honeybees and other insect pollinators are exposed throughout their life cycle to a multitude of local environmental factors, including nutrition, pesticides, pathogens, and parasites, many of which are known to interact with the newer systemic insecticides. Indeed, a survey of beehives in North American beekeeping operations found them to contain on an average 121 different pesticides and the toxic products of their breakdown (Mullin et al. 2010). Such pesticide residue survey results of North American commercial apiaries have found beekeeper-­applied miticides much more often than grower-­applied systemic insecticides in beehives (Frazier et al. 2008; vanEngelsdorp et al. 2009; Mullin et al. 2010). That said, the entomologists who did these surveys point out that these results by no means constitute conclusive evidence that colonies did not experience damaging exposure to systemic chemicals (vanEngelsdorp et al. 2009). Nor do these surveys rule out the realistic possibility that systemic chemicals and their toxic breakdown products exist in colonies at levels below instrument detection limits, where they can still have effects on developing honeybees through interactions with other prevalent pesticides and pathogens (for example, Pettis et al. 2012; but see Retschnig et al. 2015). It is not that bee scientists and toxicologists are unaware of the shortcomings of control-­centric, reductive approaches to field research. However, they see adherence to a control-­oriented approach as a practical necessity.

42

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

Indeed, as Jeff Pettis, the USDA’s former lead bee scientist, has explained, eliminating “all other variables and focus[ing] on one thing [is] much easier to test for” than seeking to capture and measure complex interactions. As a result, Pettis believes that scientists “tend to ignore interaction” (EPA 2008b, 228). Scientists are caught in an ironic position. They promote field experiments as more realistic than laboratory investigations but reject laboratory experiments that are better able than research in the field to capture the complex interactions that one might find in crop settings. Indeed, even though bee scientists conceptualize the decline in honeybee health as a complex multifactorial phenomenon, their evidential practices for evaluating the real-­world links between pesticides and the ongoing die-­offs emphasize the direct, causal role of single factors; they follow the “control-­oriented” norms widely accepted in their field and much of twentieth-­century experimental biology. Seeking to reduce complexity in the interests of gaining control and precision has been a central feature of the history of entomology in the United States, and this orientation has produced a long-­term and systematic failure to understand—­it has produced systematic ignorance about—­ the multiple interacting variables that mediate the entanglements between pesticides and beehives.

The Historical Roots of the Control-­ Oriented Approach in Bee Research The primacy of “control-­oriented” toxicological field studies in scientific, regulatory, and industrial understandings of pesticides and honeybee health does not reflect their objective superiority but a particular social history in the context of U.S. agriculture and agricultural research (Suryanarayanan and Kleinman 2013). The rise to prominence of a control-­oriented approach to understanding the real-­world effects of pesticides on honeybee health among academic scientists and regulators can be traced to the unfolding of entomology as a science of insecticide development in the United States. Entomology developed as a scientific discipline in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. Agricultural scientists had



Keeping the Research Disciplined

43

already set the stage for the advancement of their perspectives in agricultural affairs through national policies such as the Hatch Act of 1887 (Marcus 1985), which established a research network of land-­grant universities, state agricultural experimental stations and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Entomologists sought to strengthen their tenuous professional positions by persuading farmers and others that prevailing agricultural problems were mainly due to insect pests and that entomologists were the best equipped to deliver the solutions (Palladino 1996; Sleigh 2007). Experimenting predominantly with assorted modes of chemical pest control, state entomologists demonstrated their success through a causal experimental approach that emphasized relatively rapid and easily quantifiable lethal effects of individual chemicals on target insects (for example, Lowe and Parrott 1902). In the process, USDA entomologists devised standards to compute the “effectiveness” of an insecticide, such as LD50, the dose at which 50 percent of a population of exposed insects is killed (Abbott 1925). Entomological studies of the life histories, biology, and behavior of insects in turn were geared toward identifying ways to enhance the lethal action of various insecticides on pest insects—­to find better chemical means to kill insects. In a typical study, extension entomologist Laurence E. Atkins (1951) at the University of California–­Riverside tested the effectiveness of various types and dosages of insecticides and the mechanized equipment used to spray them for “controlling” the larval stages of the “fruit tree leaf roller” moth on citrus trees. Atkins interpreted the effectiveness of insecticides and the spray equipment in terms of “percent mortality” of the moth larvae, one to seven days after spraying. Insecticides that paralyzed moth larvae but had less than 50 percent mortality were considered by Atkins to be “somewhat low in [relative] effectiveness” (1951, 85) at the applied dosages. By contrast, Atkins viewed chemicals such as DDT, which caused over 90 percent mortality, as “highly effective” and as providing “satisfactory control” (1951, 86). As beekeepers began to experience bee kills with greater frequency from farmers’ indiscriminate use of increasingly potent insecticides (Anderson and Atkins 1958; Horn 2005; vanEngelsdorp and Meixner 2010), they looked to state-­affiliated honeybee scientists for guidance. Early studies of insecticides and “nontarget” bees mirrored the predominant control-­oriented experimental approach taken by agricultural entomologists toward target

44

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

insects.4 Scientists at the USDA, various land-­grant universities, and state agricultural experimental stations assessed the links between pesticides and honeybee health by dousing bees in laboratory and field settings with predetermined amounts of the individual chemicals and measuring various indices of bee death relative to “control” (that is, untreated) bees (reviewed in Anderson and Atkins 1968). Researchers traced “dosage mortality” curves and calculated the LD50 to assess and rank the relative “acute” toxicity of different insecticidal chemicals to honeybees (for example, Weaver 1951). They also manipulated environmental parameters such as temperature, humidity, and light to document the conditions under which properties of pesticide toxicity changed. In field settings, researchers constrained miniature beehives to experimental plots using screened cages and subjected them to varying pesticide dosages, timings, and modes of delivery. They documented poison-­induced bee deaths, changes in hive brood numbers, and levels of pollen and nectar storage (Anderson and Atkins 1968). At the same time, bee scientists’ entomological approach to studying the effects of insecticides were shaped, and confounded, by the complicated social lives of their experimental subjects. Since honeybees live together in beehives, dousing individual chemicals on experimentally isolated individual bees and assaying relatively rapid and “acute” lethal effects could not account for more indirect, long-­term, and nonlethal adverse effects mediated by the social interactions between honeybees across a beehive’s life cycle; neither does this approach allow for a nuanced analysis of the interactions between the multiple chemicals, pathogens, and other local environmental factors that impinge upon a beehive. The reasons for the close parallel between the experimental approaches of early entomologists and honeybee scientists to the effects of pesticides can be traced to their overlapping intellectual fields and organizations in which they shared research norms and practices and also sought professional recognition. In addition to working in an institutional environment that stressed thinking of insects as pests and eliminating them, honeybee science in the United States developed as a branch of agriculture-­oriented economic entomology in which the research focus was on agricultural production. During the early twentieth century, the USDA instituted research in “bee culture” within its Bureau of Entomology (Henneberry 2008). There, scientists such as the renowned E.  F. Phillips helped to develop



Keeping the Research Disciplined

45

beekeeping practices aimed at increasing honey production and recognizing and treating honeybee diseases (for example, USDA 1907). In the very first volume of the Journal of Economic Entomology, Phillips served notice that “apiculture is a branch of economic entomology” (1908, 104), which at that time was rapidly developing as a control-­centric science of insecticides. A substantial overlap in the educational backgrounds of honeybee scientists and entomologists likely reinforced the intertwining of chemically oriented entomology and honeybee science. At the turn of the twentieth century, E. F. Phillips pointed to the lack of competent and comprehensive research as a main obstacle in the elevation of the status of beekeeping as an industry that would take its rightful place as a component of scientific agriculture. Phillips called on economic entomology to provide the means of overcoming this obstacle (1909, 115). Honeybee scientists obtained entomological training in university curricula that emphasized chemical rather than biological control and sounder preparation in chemistry (as well as physiology and toxicology) than in ecology (Palladino 1996, 34). The problem with this training, as Phillips acknowledged, is that “the nature of the [bee] work is quite unlike that of most of the work in economic entomology in that the object is to propagate rather than to destroy” (1909, 115). The focus of this entomological approach was to avoid killing bees exposed to chemicals, rather than finding ways to understand and enhance the social and ecological health of their settings. In the framework of economic entomology, little thought was given to eliminating chemicals from the mix of environmental factors to which bees were exposed. Instead, the goal came to be to reduce the deleterious effects of chemical exposure on bees by developing newer insecticides that were supposedly more specific with regard to the kinds of insects they killed, and by undertaking precautions that reduced the chances of honeybees encountering pesticides in their surroundings. In a widely cited 1968 article in the Annual Review of Entomology, Anderson and Atkins concluded that “modern pesticides . . . are less hazardous to honey bees” than earlier varieties and “although the newer pesticides are used in greater quantities over larger areas and over a greater variety of crops . . . they can usually be used with safety if the . . . facts [from studies] and precautions are taken into consideration” (231). In university extension periodicals such as California Agriculture and in honeybee trade magazines such as American Bee Journal, bee

46

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

scientists enumerated the “precautions” beekeepers and farmers should take to minimize pesticide-­induced damage to honeybees (Anderson and Atkins 1958; Anderson et al. 1968). Their guidelines included encouraging farmers to spray insecticides at diurnal and seasonal times when there were no bees foraging, and advising beekeepers to keep their beehives at least a mile away from areas with pesticide-­treated crops (for example, Atkins 1978). Through such recommendations, honeybee scientists sought to decrease the likelihood of spatio-­temporal encounters between managed honeybees and pesticides. They emphasized time and again that pesticides as well as pollinating honeybees are “essential and frequently needed to produce profitable crops,” and that ultimately the solution to minimize pesticide-­induced damage to bees lay in the “cooperation of farmer, apiculturist [beekeeper] and the pest control industry” (Anderson and Atkins 1958, 4). Bee scientists thus aimed to address beekeepers’ concerns without undermining their primary institutional allegiance to a system of chemically dependent agricultural research, where entomology had become closely tied to insecticide development. Indeed, bee scientists’ proposals ultimately relied on entomologists developing less hazardous pesticides, via the same control-­oriented research norms and practices that ignored the effects of pervasive interactions between multiple chemicals, pathogens, and other local environmental factors on beehives. The emergence of the environmental movement in the 1960s began to change the context in which scientists and others considered the deaths of beneficial insects. The concerns raised by figures like Rachel Carson about the damage caused by chemicals to humans, other animals, and the broader environment prompted the emergence of the academic fields of environmental toxicology and genetic toxicology (for example, Frickel 2004). These research domains were centrally occupied with understanding the real-­world effects and dynamics of various industrial chemicals on human and nonhuman populations. Research on honeybees and pesticides was no longer primarily the concern of extension scientists, who were oriented toward solving applied problems in agriculture and beekeeping. How pesticides affected honeybee health became a basic research problem of interest to audiences in scholarly peer-­reviewed journals such as Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, grant funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation, and university departments of entomology, environmental toxicology, and ancillary fields.



Keeping the Research Disciplined

47

Even though academic entomologists and toxicologists were interested in understanding the real-­world effects of pesticides on honeybee health rather than simply promoting practical methods to protect honeybees from pesticide exposure, their methods drew upon the control-­oriented experimental approach established by their predecessors. The academic contexts in which entomologists and environmental toxicologists proceeded to study honeybees and pesticides reinforced the existing control-­oriented experimental approach. Academic standards of conclusive evidence, such as the widespread practice of basing statistical significance on 95  percent certainty levels, came to be applied to field studies of honeybees. Seeking bright-­line findings and preferring false negative over false positive conclusions means that experimental field studies are likely to conclude that there are “no differences” between treated and untreated beehives, when in fact there might be. Almost inevitably, this orientation inclines researchers to develop experimental designs that seek to capture unambiguous connections, and complex interactions and low-­level effects are underemphasized. As a result, potentially valuable but less than definitive findings are likely to be overlooked. As a result of these social and historical factors, a control-­oriented experimental paradigm has come to dominate contemporary academic field investigations and the ensuing understandings of the links between newer systemic insecticides and the large-­scale decline of honeybees. Consequently, the credibility and validity of claims and counter-­claims in the CCD debate over insecticides have come to hinge upon a narrow range of knowledge practices that make it extremely difficult to assess whether systemic insecticides are an important part of the mix of factors causing the honeybee decline. Dominant approaches foreclose a serious appraisal of the interactive and cumulative influences exerted by multiple anthropogenic and non-­anthropogenic factors. At the same time, this orientation enables prominent academic scientists (for example, Carreck and Ratnieks 2010), regulatory officials (EPA), the agrochemical industry (Bayer 2008), and “scientific” beekeepers (for example, Oliver 2011) to reject alternative approaches to investigating honeybee decline as “yet to be validated,” “anecdotal,” and “not scientific.” The prevalence of a control-­oriented experimental approach to pesticides also reinforces a perspective about beekeepers that was not uncommon

48

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

among the academic bee scientists we interviewed. They contend that CCD and broader declines in honeybee health have more to do with poor beekeeping practices, such as beekeepers’ apparent misuse of legally approved and illegal mite-­killing chemicals, than with the interaction of honeybee exposure to systemic insecticides and a host of environmental factors and beekeeping and farming practices. Pointing to recent pesticide residue surveys of North American commercial beehives, one land-­grant university bee scientist asserted that beekeepers need to stop “whining” about imidacloprid and instead change their own behavior and reduce miticide treatments. A graduate student at the university bee research facility where we did ethnographic research spoke of the multifarious miticidal “concoctions” that beekeepers “brew,” from cooking oil and a host of “unregistered” chemicals. She expressed disbelief at the seemingly careless and nonchalant ways in which beekeepers use these dangerous chemicals on bees. In a dismissive appraisal of such practices, a bee scientist responsible for inspecting beekeeping operations in one U.S. state asserted that quite a few beekeepers are just “plain stupid.” Based on our socio-­historical research, it would not at all be an exaggeration to suggest that the rise and institutionalization of a control-­oriented experimental paradigm in the scientific understanding of links between agrochemicals and honeybees has facilitated the marginalization of beekeepers and their practices and understandings in the CCD debate.

Practical Barriers to Control-­Oriented Research At the land-­grant university where one of us was a participant observer, the scientists’ research goal was to isolate the effects of systemic agrochemicals on honeybees. In previous sections, we have shown how a control orientation in recent bee-­related research and, in fact, the history of this kind of work has led to researchers’ unwillingness or inability to understand the complex interactions that constitute the social and biological systems in which honeybee health has become threatened. While control-­oriented research limits understanding of social and ecological complexity in which honeybees and other insect pollinators are experiencing die-­offs—­and in this sense leads to ignorance—­it is also difficult to carry out successfully.



Keeping the Research Disciplined

49

Practical, everyday realities make it a challenge to effectively and appropriately isolate variables. This was the case at the university bee research setting during the summer of 2010. The researchers established thirty-­six beehives in a circumscribed grass yard adjoining the university campus’s agricultural research plots. They fed the beehives over a period of nine consecutive weeks with a diet of soy-­based pollen patties and cane-­sugar syrup that they had contaminated with low (field-­realistic) to high levels of newer systemic agrochemicals. Drawing upon the experimental approach used by Dively and his colleagues (2010; 2015), the group affixed pollen traps on the front entrances of the study beehives in order to drastically cut down the amount of incoming pollen and induce the bees to feed on the spiked pollen patties. Through such control-­oriented manipulations, the scientists sought to isolate the effects of the chronic toxicity of these chemicals on various measures of colony-­level and individual-­(bee)-­level health, including pathogen levels, amount of stored nectar, area of comb with brood, brood development, and worker longevity. By midway through the field season, it became troublingly apparent from the emerging data on measures of hive health that the “untreated” (control) beehives were faring much less well than expected. The status of the control beehives rendered it impossible to draw any conclusive interpretations about the effects of agrochemical treatment (relative to the untreated set) on honeybee health. Indeed, most of the study beehives, regardless of their treatment, looked “sickly” to inspecting bee scientists. The lead bee scientist couldn’t believe how low the stores of honey were in the untreated beehives. And in the eyes of a veteran commercial beekeeper who had participated in some hive inspections, the experimental beehives had poor brood patterns compared to his commercial beehives. In various meetings and conversations, the researchers wondered why the untreated beehives were doing so badly. How healthy were the bees that they had obtained from collaborating commercial beekeepers to initiate the beehives? Could forcing the beehives to rely on pollen patties as their sole source of protein have negatively affected the health of all the beehives? Did the experimenters disturb the normal functioning of the beehives by opening them up too many times for hive inspections and manipulations? It was hard to pinpoint any one factor precisely because of the complex mix of issues that were in play.

50

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

Of particular concern to some of the researchers was a different control-­ oriented field experiment that was going on in parallel, less than a kilometer away. There, on a one-­acre plot, the researchers were growing canola and melon plants that they had treated with imidacloprid at varying levels, including at extremely high levels multiple times more than the manufacturer’s recommendation. When the canola and melon plants bloomed, the researchers placed on particular sections of the plot miniaturized beehives that were confined to screened field cages. Through these manipulations, they sought to assess how much imidacloprid was being brought into beehives by bees foraging on the imidacloprid-­laden pollen and nectar and to ascertain the short-­term effects of imidacloprid exposure on the bees’ survival and foraging behavior, brood health, and the queen’s reproductive health. Additionally, through multiple treatments of imidacloprid and multiple plantings across the season on the same plot, the researchers wanted to study imidacloprid accumulation in plants and soils and its effects on the bees in the confined cages. But the close physical proximity of this study with the study on chronic toxicity meant that bees from the untreated and treated beehives could easily have been foraging on imidacloprid-­laden canola and melon flowers—­and the continual exposure of all thirty-­six beehives to imidacloprid-­laden canola and melon nectar may have contributed to their becoming sickly. Here we see how the practical realities of experimental field studies make the kinds of instrumental controls scientists seek difficult to maintain. Among the hundreds of synthetic chemicals, pathogens, and other endemic factors that a beehive could encounter, the researchers hoped to experimentally isolate the effects of one insecticide. Using pollen traps, field cages, poisoned artificial diets, and poisoned plants, the researchers sought to design experiments along the lines of a control-­oriented experimental tradition whose historical trajectory we traced to the very inception of entomology as a science of insecticide development. Of course, total control was not possible, and the researchers tried to control as best as they could in order to find conclusive causal evidence of the role played by newer systemic chemicals in the decline of honeybees. Their honeybees, however, undermined their efforts at complete control, flying across the ultimately porous boundaries of the nearby agricultural plots, including the pesticide-­ laden blossoms of canola and melon plants. And in the process of imposing



Keeping the Research Disciplined

51

control, the researchers produced new layers of uncertainty, which emerged in the inexplicable form of weakened “control” beehives.

Conclusion The flip side of knowledge is ignorance (Harding 2000; Gross 2010); when we shine the light in one place, there is darkness in another. Knowledge and its twin—­ignorance—­are shaped by the norms and values that underpin experimental design, and these norms and values in turn reflect particular histories. Once institutionalized, a system of knowledge production becomes a modus operandi in a field. Researchers tend to take its virtues for granted. In this chapter, we have pointed to the methodological values and practices that undergird field toxicological experiments of newer systemic insecticides and beehives. We have considered the historical processes through which the norms of appropriate research practices, standards of evidence, and grounds for conclusions were established, and we highlighted how these norms and practices shape what kinds of experiments scientists can do and thus what they know and do not know—­their ignorance—­about CCD and the broader trends of decline in honeybee and other insect pollinator populations. We contend that the prevalent form of toxicological field knowledge and, conversely, ignorance regarding honeybee health reflect “control-­oriented” methodological choices that do not necessarily mirror either nature or the on-­the-­ground realities of commercial pollination. The practical realities of field research make the kinds of control scientists seek in the interest of producing clean results if not unlikely to achieve, then nearly so (but see Henry et al. 2015).5 What is more, the norms that guide scientists’ research practices limit their capacity to model and understand the complex set of interactions some beekeepers and scientists alike believe adversely affect honeybee health. In the end, we believe that the many challenges to control-­oriented research on the relationship between the newer systemic insecticides and honeybees should lead us to question the capacity of this kind of research to generate valid real-­world understandings of why honeybees are dying off at accelerated rates and search for other experimental approaches that shift the balance between control and complexity (Suryanarayanan 2013).

3 • Bees under the Treadmill of Agriculture Growers’ Responses to Bee Decline

Among the main stops made by migratory beekeepers on their annual pollination route of Southeastern states are the citrus groves of Florida, where thousands of managed beehives help pollinate multiple varieties of citrus trees and in the process make delicious citrus honey (Sanford 2003; Burgett et al. 2010). During the past several years, however, beekeepers’ hives in the shadow of southern Florida’s orange groves have been decimated. Dave Mendes, former president of the American Beekeeping Federation and a commercial beekeeper for more than thirty-­five years, observed that late in the season his hives located in southern Florida’s citrus groves were ending up with much higher levels of Varroa, a parasitic mite, and Nosema, a fungal pathogen, than those kept in northern Florida’s pine woods, despite the fact that both sets of beehives had been managed in exactly the same way (Mendes 2011). Mendes concluded that there was “something more than hive management that . . . [was] influencing pathogen loads.” He wondered about the “constant pesticide pressure” (2011) created by citrus growers, who have struggled against a “seemingly incurable” bacterial disease called citrus greening since 2005 (Alvarez 2013). Citrus greening has devastated Florida’s citrus industry—­the world’s second largest producer of orange juice and a significant source of jobs and revenue for the state. The disease is spread rapidly by the Asian citrus

52



Bees under the Treadmill

53

psyllid, an insect traversing the world’s citrus groves on the wings of globalization. Growers desperate to control the spread of the psyllid have turned to insecticidal products recommended to them by University of Florida extension entomologists (for example, Rogers et al. 2014) and industry crop consultants. Chief among the battery of chemical weapons available to growers are newer systemic insecticides such as imidacloprid, spirotetramat, clothianidin, thiamethoxam, and dinotefuran. But the dousing of citrus orchards with an ever expanding array of insecticides at increasingly high levels has failed to do anything more than slow, for a short time, the rate at which the citrus greening is spread; the citrus psyllid has time and again escaped the clutches of its chemical adversaries by evolving resistance to the array of synthetic poison cocktails that growers and entomologists have thrown at it. As scientists race to develop alternative strategies (such as genetically modifying orange trees), growers perceiving an emergency have obtained government approval to apply ever greater levels of newer systemic insecticides (for example, EPA 2015b). Concomitantly, tensions with beekeepers have flared. In the spring of 2013, matters between commercial beekeepers and citrus growers came to a head after one beekeeper lost thousands of his beehives due to acute poisoning from Montana 2F—­an imidacloprid-­based insecticide—­used on orange groves near where his bees were pollinating other trees (National Pollinator Defense Fund 2013). The state of Florida found that Ben Hill Griffin Inc., one of Florida’s largest citrus growers, violated the label recommendations for Montana 2F by applying the poison when honeybees were likely foraging on orange blossoms (Salisbury 2013). While the $1,500 fine that Florida slapped on the company was viewed as “nothing to the grove people,” the beekeeper who lost bees to the tune of $150,000 and his colleagues welcomed the first official recognition of what they saw as a systematic practice of pesticide misapplication by citrus growers (Salisbury 2013). Growers are important actors in the complex situation in which beekeepers, honeybees, and other insect pollinators find themselves. As this vignette shows, growers, who are faced with the prospect of their crops and livelihoods collapsing, use all available means to salvage what they can in the short term, even if it leads to longer-­term consequences that eventually damage the social and ecological relationships upon which their crops thrive. At the same time, as several growers have become increasingly

54

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

reliant on managed honeybees for obtaining yields of higher quantity and quality, they also have an interest in having sufficient numbers of healthy bees to pollinate their trees. This contradictory dynamic between commercial agriculture and insect pollinators is likely to intensify because the area cultivated with pollinator-­dependent fruits and vegetables is increasing across the globe with the growth of consumer demand even as populations of various insect pollinators, including honeybees, continue to dwindle in parts of North America and Europe (Aizen and Harder 2009; but see Melathopoulos et al. 2015). How do growers’ simultaneous dependence on commercially provided honeybees for pollination services and their need to use pesticides affect their perspectives on the knowledge of different stakeholders in the CCD controversy? What knowledge is necessary to end the decline in bee populations? What do they see as substantiated knowledge and ignorance in the CCD debate? Whose knowledge do they take seriously and why? And what knowledge do they see as the appropriate foundation for government regulation and honeybee pollination practices? We begin this chapter by tracing the rise of the business of crop pollination during the early to mid-­twentieth century. We then discuss the responses of growers—­both pollinator-­reliant and non-­reliant—­to beekeepers’ concerns regarding agrochemical use patterns and the increasing lack of adequate and diverse sources of flora for bees to forage on. We argue that growers are collectively aligned with the agrochemical industry in their views on knowledge and ignorance in the controversy over systemic insecticides and in being more willing to address the problem of honeybee health through altering forage environments than through reducing pesticide use. Of course, growers are not much more monolithic than beekeepers, and we end this chapter by looking at the emerging alliance between groups of sustainable growers and beekeepers aiming to catalyze meaningful shifts toward truly sustainable and pollinator-­friendly cropping practices.

The Rise of the Business of Pollination Managed pollination on a substantial scale emerged as a systematized need for growers and as a reliable source of revenue for beekeepers in the context of the establishment of an increasingly highly chemically dependent



Bees under the Treadmill

55

industrial agriculture in the United States in the mid-­twentieth century. As far as we can tell from the historical record, prior to this time, while growers were beginning to see the value of bees as pollinators, commercial beekeepers had not begun systematically to charge for their services in significant numbers.1 Beekeeper-­mediated pollination during this period was largely an extension of already existing manipulative practices of honey production. Beekeepers hauled beehives into fields, where they grew and produced honey from the flowers that bloomed in the crop and surrounding areas. Since beekeepers made honey in the process of pollinating farmers’ crops, they usually didn’t require much more than a handshake as remuneration for pollinating the crop (Spivak and Mader 2010). Growers, in turn, benefited, since their crop’s quality and quantity was improved by honeybee pollination. By the mid-­twentieth century, and especially during the post–­World War II period, the structure and practices of U.S. agriculture were rapidly transforming, and managed pollination became more than occasional. Farm numbers declined even as farm sizes shot up, in terms of both acreage and sales (Lobao and Meyer 2001). Larger agricultural operations became increasingly specialized, going from producing multiple products to focusing largely on a single agricultural commodity (USDA 2005). Commercial pressure to maximize profit in a globalizing and highly competitive market influenced the development of grower cropping knowledge and practices. Growers increasingly emphasized not only greater crop yields but also higher commodity prices and cosmetic appeal (Sawyer 1996; Scott 1998; Kleinman 2003, 75). The diversity of agricultural crops decreased, with cultivars that fulfilled these criteria gaining favor and others getting marginalized (Scott 1998; Kloppenburg 2004). Monocropping, the practice of planting a single variety of crop at high densities on a given piece of land, became established as a simple and quick way of increasing and standardizing crop yields. Monocrop varieties with similar plants and fruits were particularly amenable to the logic of mechanization and allowed farm operators to replace hired farm labor with mechanized equipment (for example, see Hightower 1978). The “simplification” (Scott 1998, 266) of agriculture in the sense of the cultivation of larger tracts of genetically similar monocrops was, however, hardly a simple task to maintain. Highly vulnerable to outbreaks of “pests” and plant diseases, the establishment of monocropping went

56

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

hand in hand with the development of new agrochemicals (Altieri 2000). World War II stimulated the development of newer, more potent synthetic chemicals for warfare, which then were quickly adopted in agriculture to combat crop pests (Perkins 1982; Russell 2001; Kleinman 2003). The drain on soil resources in monocrop fields justified an uptick in the development of petroleum-­based fertilizers to chemically modify the composition and fertility of soils. Industrial agriculture in the United States thus took a path that entailed the increasing use of fertilizers and pesticides on large tracts of land populated by single crop cultivars that were bred for specific commercial traits. These shifts in practices occurred simultaneously with the progressive loss of growers’ control over their means of production. Expensive mechanized equipment leased from large companies and transnational agribusiness operations increasingly controlled how they used patented seeds and the chemicals that accompanied them (Altieri 2000; Lobao and Meyer 2001; Kloppenburg 2004). At the same time, growers turned increasingly to government-­and industry-­affiliated scientists for their everyday knowledge of the system of crops, land, and inputs. And, of course, their dependence on beekeepers’ commercial pollination services grew. USDA, an early booster of an industrial chemically dependent agriculture, recognized and further fueled the ascendancy of honeybees for pollination purposes in 1942 with its first ever published listing of all crops known to benefit from the pollination services of honeybees. This publication was reissued several times and was influential in bringing agro-­industry’s attention to the pollination value of managed honeybees (Martin and McGregor 1973). The timing of this initial publication was a perhaps not coincidental. In a 1951 address, the USDA’s leading honeybee scientist, E. F. Phillips, highlighted what others were recognizing: Increased use of insecticides has often resulted in the reduction of beneficial insects in such areas, honeybees suffering with the others . . . More recently there has been an increase in the use of insecticides on field crops, and the decline in beneficial insects in such fields has been even more pronounced than in orchards, because of the more effective applications by modern equipment, the greater effectiveness of modern insecticides, and because of the unrestricted areas that permit application on every square inch . . . Clearly from now on many orchardists and seed growers cannot insure adequate population for effective pollination



Bees under the Treadmill

57

without using honeybees. There is no other species of insect that can be carried in and removed when their services are no longer required. (Phillips 1951, 14; our emphases)

Thus, growers’ observations in their own fields made them aware, as early as the middle of the twentieth century, of the difficulty of balancing chemical use and pollinator health in the interest of maximizing crop yield and vibrancy. At the same time, the increasing expansion and specialization of agricultural operations meant that pollinator-­dependent growers were less likely to manage their own beehives, and this allowed commercial beekeepers to carve out a new niche for themselves as providers of managed pollination services.2 Growers’ increasing reliance on managed honeybees for pollination led to the realization among beekeepers that their bees were worth much more than a mere handshake. Beekeepers began transporting beehives at an increased scale and with greater frequency to dispersed and varied crop settings all over the United States. This escalation in scale and mobility was made possible by semitrailer trucks, power hoists, and fork lifts, which allowed commercial beekeepers to move large numbers of hive boxes fairly rapidly between farms. But the burgeoning business of pollination brought managed honeybees into contact with evolving practices of industrial agriculture, including chemicals, at a level never seen before. The development of a highly chemically dependent form of large-­scale industrial agriculture has thus shaped the conditions in which commercial pollination has replaced honey production as the largest source of revenue for the U.S. beekeeping industry.3

A Taste for Almonds and the Need for Honeybees Today, anyone looking at the state of the U.S. beekeeping industry cannot avoid pointing time and time again at an amazing statistic: roughly 70 percent of all beehives in the United States gather annually to pollinate California’s expanding acres of almond trees (Burgett et al. 2010). It is the “biggest single pollination event on Earth” (Hart 2013). Over the past two decades, California’s almond producers have become the economic engine

58

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

that drives the U.S. honeybee industry (Rucker et al. 2012). Stretching over 1,000 square miles across the Central Valley of California, the monoculture of almond trees is the foundation for a booming sector. It is responsible for producing an estimated 85 percent of the world’s almonds, and, as growers are fully aware, this would not be possible without the pollination work of honeybees. Since 1980, California’s almond-­bearing acreage has increased by an astounding 148  percent—­from around 327,000 acres to 810,000 acres—­and the demand for beehives has increased with the growth of acreage under cultivation (USDA Economic Research Service [ERS] 2013). In 2004–­2005, the continued taking of land for almond cultivation coincided with the first reports of unusual declines in beehive numbers, which later came to be called CCD. A California State Beekeepers survey estimated that the winter mortality rate of honeybees had doubled from 15 percent in 2003–­2004 to 30 percent in 2004–­2005 (Sumner and Boriss 2006). Aware that beehive numbers were declining just as their acreage increased, there was a widespread fear among almond growers that there would not be sufficient numbers of bees to pollinate their trees (Cline 2005). Amid rumors of an impending bee crisis in 2004, almond growers successfully lobbied the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS)—­a government agency in charge of regulating the entry of nonhuman living organisms into the United States—­to allow the importation of honeybees for the first time since 1922.4, 5 To further ensure that a sufficient number of bees would be present, concerned growers began offering never-­before-­ seen prices to beekeepers. Between 2004 and 2006, the average almond pollination fee per beehive went from around $54 to $136 (Sumner and Boriss 2006), and today it stands at around $151 (Rucker et al. 2012). Lowered honey prices during the same period made almonds all the more attractive for struggling beekeeping operations, and beekeepers from all over the United States flocked to pollinate the orchards. With the almond industry continuing to boom (USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service 2014), and almond pollination fetching a dramatically increased return, for some it has never been a better time to be a commercial beekeeper. Still, for all the economic gains that crop pollination has brought for commercial beekeepers, as some growers certainly recognize, several concerns have arisen about the direct and indirect effects of pollinator-­reliant growers’ burgeoning demands on the well-­being of managed honeybees and unmanaged wild



Bees under the Treadmill

59

insect pollinators. Chief among these worries are the “pesticide pressure” wrought by various technologies of pest management and the monocrop agro-­ecosystems that limit honeybee access to diverse and healthy forage and fuel the spread of bee diseases.

Growers’ Responses: Collectively in Step with Agrochemical Industry Notwithstanding the heterogeneity of responses among individual growers to beekeepers’ concerns, growers and agroindustry as a whole have shown much greater willingness to tackle the perceived paucity of pollinator-­ friendly vegetation in monocultural agricultural landscapes than to seriously consider pesticide pressure. Significantly, growers’ responses, as well as their knowledge and ignorance regarding what they see as the appropriate foundation for government regulation and honeybee pollination practices in the CCD controversy, are heavily mediated by a handful of dominant companies in agrochemical industry. While pollinator-­reliant growers are interested in having healthy honeybees to service their crops, they are also heavily invested in their ability to use the agrochemical and fertilizer inputs that they perceive as essential for the success of their cropping business. At the individual level, pollinator-­reliant growers have responded in a variety of ways to concerns expressed by beekeepers from whom they rent beehives. Some growers in Yuma, Arizona, have reportedly shifted to nighttime pesticide applications, recognizing area beekeepers’ concerns that pesticide exposure may be hurting honeybees (Brandon 2013). But a grower trade group representative notes, “When growers need to spray for plant bugs, for example, they need to do it right now. They can’t get over all that acreage with ground equipment at night; they have to have airplanes to apply these products, and nighttime application just won’t work” (quoted in Brandon 2013). This trade group official points out, “One size doesn’t fit all. What works in Yuma won’t work in the hills of Mississippi, or even in the Mississippi Delta.” He instead stresses the “need for local producers, consultants, beekeepers, and others to sit down at the table and figure out what will work in their area” (quoted in Brandon 2013).

60

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

While some growers have sought to address beekeepers’ concerns, collectively, growers—­both pollinator-­reliant and non-­reliant—­align with the agrochemical industry in taking a stance against limits on the use of agrochemicals that are purported to play a key role in bee declines. As we describe in chapter 4, the controversy over newer systemic insecticides illustrates the fault lines within and between agro-­industry and the beekeeping industry in the United States. In opposing any new limitations on their usage of neonicotinoids, growers’ arguments consistently feature two closely related narratives relevant to the politics of knowledge and ignorance regarding bee decline—­lack of definitive knowledge linking agrochemicals to heightened levels of honeybee losses and lack of viable alternative tools of pest control. The Absence of Definitive Science-­Based Knowledge

In the wake of the European Union’s precautionary suspension of imidacloprid, clothianidin, and thiamethoxam in 2013 related to their putative roles in honeybee die-­offs in various parts of Europe (European Commission 2013), growers in the United States are increasingly nervous about the prospects of similar regulation and its negative consequences for their cropping operations. Some growers question whether claims by beekeepers and allied scientists and environmentalists about the supposed links between neonicotinoids and honeybee decline are based on real-­world science. At a fall 2013 meeting of pollinator-­reliant cranberry growers in Wisconsin, a vocal grower asserted that while he did not doubt that neonicotinoids are toxic to bees, he thought researchers were really just speculating when it came to linking these chemicals to bee declines (Patrice Kohl, personal communication).6 Similarly, in flatly opposing beekeepers’ 2012 emergency petition for suspending clothianidin’s registration, the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) contended, “While corn growers remain concerned about the recent decline in bee populations in the U.S. and the potential impact on the larger agricultural economy, studies suggest that there are multiple and complex causes of colony collapse disorder and the role of neonicotinoid pesticides such as clothianidin has been overstated. There are no demonstrated long term effects on bee colonies” (NCGA 2012, our emphases). Also effectively rejecting regulatory action based on beekeeper



Bees under the Treadmill

61

concerns, the National Cotton Council (2012) outlined a “sound science” approach as the basis for their conclusion that the science is insufficient to warrant the suspension of any neonicotinoids: “Isolation of factors requires careful research planning to remove confounding interactions and should represent field based activities, including doses or concentrations of products over time.” Growers’ and their representatives’ rhetorical leveraging of “science”—­what Thomas Gieryn would call “boundary-­work”7—­draws on the cultural authority of a particular variety of control-­oriented entomology that we examined in chapter 2. Growers’ position on the state of knowledge (and ignorance) in the controversy over systemic insecticides reflects their interests, and their perspective aligns with the position taken by agrochemical industry (chapter 4). Lack of Viable Alternatives

Beyond the lack of conclusive evidence to justify limiting the use of new systemic insecticides, growers of multiple major crops in the United States and their allies argue that demands to limit the use of these insecticides are retrograde because there are no alternative pest control technologies available that are as effective in controlling economically important insect “pests.” Growers’ associations consistently draw attention to the absence of “alternatives on the market that will provide effective control” (for example; National Flower Association 2009; National Potato Council 2009; National Cotton Council 2009; National Cotton Council 2012; Paramount Farming Company 2012). Apart from seeing neonicotinoids as the most effective protection against insect pests and noting a lack of viable alternatives, many growers also characterize neonicotinoids as “safe to the environment” as well as to grower-­users. Thus, the National Corn Growers Association points out that “due to the fact the seed is incorporated beneath the soil surface during planting time” the use of clothianidin-­treated corn not only reduces “human health effects for corn growers because it reduces the need for soil applied sprays or granules” but is also environmentally safer than other pesticides, decreasing “exposures to birds” and the probability of runoff to water bodies (NCGA 2012).8 Growers argue that limiting the use of newer systemic insecticides would force them to go back to more environmentally harmful

62

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

classes of synthetic insecticides, such as organophosphates, many of which are known carcinogens and are in the process of being phased out by the EPA (for example, National Flower Association 2009; National Potato Council 2009; National Cotton Council 2009; National Cotton Council 2012; Paramount Farming Company 2012). In the perceived absence of viable pest control alternatives, many growers have been extremely reluctant to cede any ground in the CCD debate that could become the basis for limitations on their perceived right to use pesticides. Instead, grower trade groups offer “science and best management practices” as the ways to “ultimately better benefit bees, growers and society” (California Farm Bureau 2012; NCGA 2012). Initiatives by Growers

The scientific uncertainty around the causes of accelerated honeybee declines such as CCD has led many growers, following Bayer and EPA, to oppose regulatory action restricting the use of newer systemic insecticides and to feel justified in taking this position. Some growers, however, in the face of this uncertainty about the complex mix of factors that may be contributing to such die-­offs, have initiated collaborations with beekeepers to fuel further scientific research and to develop practical “best management practices” (BMPs) to enhance foraging spaces for honeybees and minimize exposure to bees from pesticides. Project Apis m. Emerging in 2007 after the first cases of CCD, Project Apis m. or PAm is a prime example of such a collaboration, involving the almond growers’ industry, the U.S. beekeeping industry, the University of California’s extension service, and multinational agrochemical industry firms. As a 501(c)(5) nonprofit organization, funded by donations from individual beekeepers, growers, agroindustry firms, and philanthropists, PAm “funds and directs research to enhance the health and vitality of honeybee colonies while improving crop production” (projectapism.org; accessed 1/22/14). PAm funding has primarily supported extension-­related bee research at land-­grant universities and the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service bee laboratories, including some research into the effects of fungicides, neonicotinoids, and their synergistic interactions with beekeeper-­applied miticides. PAm also provides bridge funds for beekeepers looking to have their



Bees under the Treadmill

63

beehives analyzed for pesticide residues—­an otherwise expensive proposition. In addition, PAm regularly publishes best management practices for beekeepers and almond growers on issues such as providing diverse forage, pollinator-­sensitive timing of pesticide applications, and model pollination contracts for beekeepers and growers. Monsanto Bridging Growers and Beekeepers. Efforts by grower groups such as PAm increasingly involve major agrochemical industry firms. In July 2013, PAm co-­organized a “Honey Bee Health Summit” with agrochemical industry giant Monsanto’s9 Honey Bee Advisory Council—­“comprised of members of the beekeeping industry, experts and academia.”10 At this first-­of-­its-­kind summit attended by leaders in the world of honeybee health, Monsanto announced its intention to be “a conduit between beekeepers and growers” (Mazurek 2013). Recognizing research that points to the challenges to honeybee health to which lack of quality forage contributes, PAm and Monsanto have worked since 2012 on a three-­year “honey bee forage project.” This partnership targets California’s landowners and almond growers with educational materials such as guides for planting “forage for honey bees” along with “specific planting instructions for three seed mixes” custom-­made by PAm and Monsanto “to enhance honey bee nutrition.” These are shared with “beekeepers, media, public land managers, crop advisors, extension representatives and growers” during coordinated “field day” events (Mazurek 2013). Monsanto reports that its collaboration with PAm exceeded its first-­year goal of planting 350 acres of its seed mixes by 130 percent (Boyd 2013). How to Be(e) Friendly and Keep Growing: Uncertainties and Contradictions

The underlying assumption accompanying the proliferating numbers of pollinator-­friendly planting guides and seed mixes on offer from initiatives such as the PAm-­Monsanto collaboration is “if you build it, they [honeybees and other pollinators] will come.” While there is accumulating evidence in support of this idea (for example, Morandin et al. 2011; Morandin and Kremen 2013), this points to the complex set of factors and interactions that affect pollinator health. Important crop-­, field-­, and landscape-­specific questions, such as how many patches or hedgerows of pollinator-­friendly vegetation ought to be grown on a certain number of crop acres, and where

64

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

on a farm they would be most effective so that they can provide for insect pollinators without attracting pollinators away from the grower’s main crop, remain to be answered. The uncertain state of knowledge regarding how growers can go about raising pollinator-­friendly vegetation in ways that will not harm their bottom line and the productivity of their primary agricultural commodities sets the stage for some ironic situations. For example, following concerns in 2012 and 2013 among beekeepers in Canada and the United States about multiple incidents of mass honeybee die-­offs linked to the emission of clothianidin-­ treated seed-­corn dust during spring planting, corn growers are being advised by agronomists to reduce future exposure to the pesticides by managing (that is, controlling for) the growth of bee-­friendly dandelions and other flowering “weeds” in and around their fields (for example, Baute and Stewart 2013). But growers remain dependent on these pesticides, and, aware of the threat they pose to the pollinators on which they rely, some growers, at the urging of environmental, governmental, and industry organizations, are planting more bee-­friendly forage in and around their fields to attract and restore bee populations. Importantly, growers and the agrochemical industry have been willing to support these forage-­enhancing initiatives on the basis of imperfect knowledge of the causes of honeybee and pollinator distress. This contrasts with their unwillingness to seriously consider altering policies on systemic insecticides despite increasing evidence of their role in contributing to bee losses. Improving forage quality is a win-­win situation. It helps beekeepers, and improved bee health contributes to crop quality, aiding growers. For agrochemical companies, working toward improved forage is valuable public relations and serves their interests in maintaining their products on the market.

Factors Shaping Growers’ Knowledge, Ignorance, and Responses to Honeybee Declines Growers are oddly contradictory regarding the controversy over neonicotinoids: they will not take action to limit the use of neonicotinoids even though there is increasing evidence that these chemicals are harming



Bees under the Treadmill

65

honeybees and other insect pollinators, and they continue to use these insecticides even though the evidence is ambivalent that their consistent use improves yields. What growers see and don’t see as substantiated knowledge in the debate over honeybee losses and how they respond to it are intimately tied to their livelihood concerns and to the social networks of agricultural knowledge on which they rely to maintain their commercial operations. Yield Stability in the Face of Economic and Environmental Uncertainties

Growers’ widespread adoption of systemic neonicotinoids reflects a preemptive orientation, which recognizes that in any given growing season, pests may not hurt their crops, but the risk that they could warrants the prophylactic use of neonicotinoids to protect against possible harmful levels of insect pest populations. Investing in neonicotinoid-­treated transgenic corn seed does not always give significant yield gains and economic benefits for corn growers, argues Christian Krupke, crop extension entomologist at Purdue University in Indiana. Krupke and his colleagues conducted field trials in 2011 and 2012 at Purdue where they planted fields with transgenic corn either at the maximum allowed rate of Poncho (clothianidin), or a third of the maximum allowed rate, or no Poncho at all. They did not find any significant differences between the neonicotinoid-­treated and untreated corn fields in crop yield and the extent of root damage by pests (Arnason 2013). These results, while undoubtedly shaped by the particular spatial, temporal, and weather-­related conditions of the study as well as by a “control-­oriented” entomological approach to experimental design, measures, and statistics, raise a broader issue. As Krupke put it, “If there is variation [in insects] from year to year, then why are we putting it on every seed, every year? There is a place for these compounds, but the volume we are using is completely unsupported by this [data] or any other data that I’ve ever seen . . . I don’t want to say, let’s ban this tomorrow, but I do want to say the way we’re doing it is not the best way” (Krupke quoted in Arnason 2013). Similarly, a recent EPA (2014a) analysis of the value of imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, and clothianidin seed treatments in soybean production concludes that “these seed treatments provide negligible overall benefits to soybean production in most situations.”11

66

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

A 2009 survey of corn growers in Illinois reveals how growers’ understanding and use of evidence is shaped by their livelihood concerns. That study found that 79 percent of growers “would still plant a Bt hybrid for corn rootworm or European corn borer even if they anticipated low densities of either pest” (Gray et al. 2011, 5856; our emphases). Indeed, the main benefit of transgenic Bt hybrid corn technology, most of the seeds of which come pretreated with a neonicotinoid and fungicide combination, is not to maximize yield but to minimize variations in yield and thereby reduce growers’ perceived risk of crop damage due to unanticipated weather and pests (Shi et al. 2013). Growers, university extension scientists, and agricultural economists view Bt hybrid corn technology (for example, Shi et al. 2013) and neonicotinoid seed treatments (for example, Hurley and Mitchell 2014) as affording growers greater levels of control over pests in their fields, helping them minimize their economic risks and insure against unanticipated losses in crop yields. Such preemptive usage of transgenic and chemical tools of pest control is not restricted to corn growers; it is a common practice among a broad swath of growers, both pollinator-­reliant and non-­reliant (EPA 2014a; Hurley and Mitchell 2014), thus regularly and repeatedly exposing honeybees to biological and chemical pest control substances. Countervailing Regimes of Regulatory Knowledge: Food Safety and Good Agricultural Practices

In the face of uncertain knowledge about the role played by agrochemicals in heightened honeybee and other pollinator die-­offs, governmental policies such as federal agricultural subsidies and food safety regulations further reinforce growers’ choices of specific production and pest control practices. The bias of federal agricultural subsidies is toward large, specialized cropping operations (Bell 2004). Many of these farms depend on honeybee pollinating services, and the loosely coupled requirements for environmental compliance associated with subsidies ironically encourage growers to take up high-­capital, high-­input, monocultural chemical cropping practices. And many beekeepers and others contend that these practices have harmed honeybee and other insect pollinator populations over the longer term (Suryanarayanan 2014).



Bees under the Treadmill

67

Government food safety regulations make it more difficult for growers to implement honeybee-­friendly practices on their farms, evidence notwithstanding. Especially since the 1990s, large-­scale outbreaks of pathogenic bacteria associated with the handling and distribution of leafy vegetables have fueled collaborative efforts between government agencies, researchers, and affected sectors of agro-­industry to devise and implement a set of “good agricultural practices” aimed at stopping the spread of food-­borne illnesses (for example, see www.caleafygreens.ca.gov; accessed 1/22/14). In addition, many retail stores, suppliers, and distributors who handle and sell vegetables have developed their own food safety requirements, which include buying only from growers who follow certain best management practices. As a result, growers are faced with multiple sets of food-­safety requirements and audits by government agencies, agro-­food firms, and third-­party certifiers that often go against government requirements for conservation compliance, limiting the diversity of forage plants from which honeybees can draw. The main point here is that growers face multiple and oftentimes contradictory regimes of regulatory knowledge and policies—­environmental, food safety—­from different government agencies. As a result, growers end up acting on knowledge that will be most compatible with their livelihood stakes. Thus, they maximize the productivity of their agricultural operations while negotiating the path of least resistance through the maze of multiple bureaucratic regulations, even though this may be ultimately incompatible with their environmental concerns, such as developing non-­crop vegetation to provide sources of habitat and nutrition for wildlife, including insect pollinators. Social Networks of Grower Knowledge and Ignorance

Notwithstanding their own collectively shared knowledge (for example, Hassanein 1999; Carolan 2008), many growers have come to rely predominantly on off-­farm agrochemical supply dealers and private crop consultants for knowledge about pest control, pollination, and crop production (Ward and Munton 1992; Czapar, Curry and Gray 1995; Wolf 1995). For example, blueberry growers acknowledge beekeepers’ concerns regarding fungicide use but point to private crop consultants, who advise them that they should keep applying fungicides at recommended levels (Hackenberg

68

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

2013). Growers also rely on university extension scientists for knowledge regarding the management of crop operations, but land-­grant universities have become less likely in recent years to work with individual growers and more likely to interact with agrochemical manufacturers and crop consultants (Czapar, Curry, and Gray 1995). This is not to suggest that growers are passive agents whose cropping knowledge is determined by off-­farm agricultural experts. Many growers recognize that the knowledge of industry and university crop consultants may be biased and interpret the former’s knowledge through their own experiential knowledge of their growing operation. Indeed, growers frequently question, challenge, and problematize off-­farm experts’ knowledge of specific agricultural practices (Carolan 2008). However, the scope of growers’ knowledge remains focused on how to best maximize the productivity of their operations within the conditions of the dominant mode of industrial agriculture. In other words, conventional growers tend to ignore—­or take for granted—­the “background assumptions” of the prevalent agricultural model, such as profit maximization, specialization, chemically intensive industrialization, and scaling up (Carolan 2008). Growers’ dependency on agrochemical industry firms and agricultural scientists for knowledge and means of large-­scale crop production is the outcome of historical struggles in which agrochemical industry emerged, since the mid-­twentieth-­century, as a dominant force in defining the kinds of pest-­control knowledge and tools growers have access to (Kleinman 2003). At the same time, as Kloppenburg (2004) notes, the very processes that led growers (and beekeepers) to become active participants in an agricultural-­ecological system where power is concentrated in the hands of a few chemical and pharmaceutical corporations have also ignited networks of growers and activists who want to “change the way America farms” (for example, Hassanein 1999; Bell 2004), and concerns about the impacts of pesticide use patterns on insect pollinators are increasingly visible in the world of sustainable agriculture. On December 2, 2013, a full-­page ad in the New York Times announced “a national media campaign” to “save bees,” calling on the U.S. government to “impos[e] an immediate moratorium on the use of neonicotinoids.” The ad was placed by the National Family Farm Coalition,12 an umbrella organization for grassroots groups of growers mobilizing “to empower family farmers by reducing the corporate control



Bees under the Treadmill

69

of agriculture and promoting a more socially just farm and food policy” (www.nffc.net; accessed 1/22/14). Alliances like this one between growers and beekeepers are essential to change policy and practice, as evidenced in France, where coalitions of growers and beekeepers were crucial in beekeepers’ ability to influence policy-­level actions by reluctant governmental regulators (Suryanarayanan and Kleinman 2014).

Conclusion Growers are in a crucial and contradictory position on the matter of honeybee and insect pollinator health. Their practices, such as pesticide use patterns and monocropping, can negatively affect honeybees and other beneficial organisms. At the same time, a substantial and growing number of growers have an economic stake in the health of managed honeybees since they rely on these insects for pollinating their crops. In this chapter, we examined the knowledge that growers take seriously as appropriate foundations for their understandings of, and responses to, beekeepers’ concerns regarding the links between particular agricultural practices and the contemporary phenomenon of vanishing bees, as well as the knowledge they ignore. Most growers, especially large-­scale commercial ones, have not seriously considered shifting their use patterns of newer systemic insecticides in response to suggestive evidence from scientists and beekeepers about the chronic and pervasive effects of these chemicals on honeybee and pollinator health. Their interests dictate the knowledge they are most attentive to. By contrast, they have found more common ground with beekeepers around the latter’s concerns about the lack of bee-­friendly forage. Growers have invested in “best management practices” and “field days,” which train individual growers and landowners to grow pollinator-­friendly plants and to use pesticides according to label recommendations to minimize pesticide-­related harm. Importantly, large-­ scale growers—­ both pollinator-­ reliant and non-­reliant—­are closely aligned with the agrochemical industry based understandings of science, knowledge, and ignorance in developing their responses to beekeepers’ concerns. Growers’ justifications for refusing to

70

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

seriously consider the accumulating knowledge regarding the influence of newer systemic insecticides on honeybees and other insect pollinators echo the prevalent agrochemical industry understanding (see chapter 4), which privileges a particular variety of control-­oriented entomology as “real-­world science.” As a result, growers go along with powerful agrochemical industry firms in signaling their willingness to ignore the interactive and cumulative ways in which systemic insecticides, in combination with other factors, may be responsible for accelerating declines in populations of honeybees and various insect pollinators. Furthermore, most growers’ widespread preference for newer systemic insecticides relies on the knowledge and ignorance of agrochemical industry, governmental regulators, and university scientists, who see these chemicals as the most effective and environmentally safe tools for pest control. The growers’ livelihood stakes lead them to take less seriously knowledge based on beekeepers’ field observations or more generally to reject less than definitive findings that their change of practice in response to could conceivably have negative effects on their crop production. Growers’ choices regarding what knowledge they do or do not act on are shaped by a variety of incentives and constraints that ultimately shape their livelihoods. Knowledge about the causes of accelerated honeybee deaths is uncertain, and in the face of this uncertainty growers could hurt their crop yield and crop quality by discontinuing or restricting the use of neonicotinoids. By contrast, there is only an upside to working to improve forage quality, even if the evidence of how to do this and whether it is actually helpful is uncertain. Significantly, the knowledge that growers seriously consider, as well as the knowledge they ignore, is affected by the character of industrial agriculture and the role of honeybees and other pollinators in it. It is only with the growing intensification of a highly industrialized and chemically dependent form of U.S. agriculture during the mid-­twentieth century that growers began to see the virtue of honeybees as crop pollinators in the first place. As pesticide usage and monocrop production on increasingly large farms led to the growing productivity of American agriculture, the transformation of the U.S. food production sector also began to produce changes in the place of honeybees in the agricultural economy. Used more regularly as crop pollinators, a commercial beekeeping pollination industry emerged. Early in



Bees under the Treadmill

71

the emergence of this sector, there were signs that the character of the new industrial agriculture was inimical to bees. Honeybees were vulnerable to pesticide exposure, threatened by the diseases to which they were exposed when working in monocropped fields, and stressed by constant travel and work. In this chemically dependent system of industrial agriculture, rhetorically all interested parties assert that both managed pollination and pesticide treatments are equally important and “essential” (Cutler and Scott-­Dupree 2007, 770); in practice, however, the entire system of industrial agriculture focuses on advancing grower objectives. Thus, the relationship between growers and beekeepers is an asymmetrical one. Beekeepers and honeybees have gained societal and commercial relevance in the context of the rise of a chemically intensive form of large-­scale industrial agriculture. Migrant bees and nomadic beekeepers are serving grower clientele, not the other way around. And beekeepers are the ones who largely have had to adjust in response to growers’ changing practices of cropping and pest management. They are led to move their beehives out of harm’s way, douse their bees with a plethora of artificial supplements, use antibiotics and in-­hive pesticides, and ultimately struggle to keep hives alive. Some scientists and representatives of agro-­industry justify this “unfortunate incompatibility” between growers and beekeepers as an “essential” component of “modern agriculture” (Cutler and Scott-­Dupree 2007, 770) that is necessary to feed the world. The historically established system of industrial agriculture is thus grounded in a utilitarian calculus in which the beekeeper is a “stepchild of agriculture” (Horn 2005, 146, quoting Cale 1943), and honeybees and other insect pollinators are collateral damage. And this is the context within which knowledge is developed and acted upon by all key stakeholders.

4 • The Bot tom Line for Bayer Agrochemical Companies and “Bee Care”

The January 2010 North American beekeeping conference session was standing room only. At the podium, Richard Rogers, a bee scientist employed by the North American agribusiness division of the German multinational Bayer, was trumpeting the completion of a “successful cooperative” field study. He proudly described a one-­of-­a-­kind collaboration between the chemical corporate giant, the U.S. honeybee industry, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). At stake was the market expansion of Bayer’s latest chemical innovation, the systemic insecticide Movento (which contains spirotetramat as its main insecticidal chemical), which depended in part on its safety to honeybees. According to Rogers, the field study’s results showed unambiguously that Movento, when sprayed on blooming citrus trees at the maximum rate allowed by EPA’s guidelines, had no negative long-­term effects on either exposed beehives or their brood development in comparison to unexposed beehives (Rogers et al. 2010). Rogers’ presentation left no time for questions from the audience, which included federal regulators, university scientists, and beekeepers. As soon as his presentation ended, a group of beekeepers stormed out of the room, visibly upset. After conferring with each other, they returned to the session to publicly challenge Rogers’ interpretations, objecting to their names being attached to a study the results with which they did not concur.

72

The Bottom Line for Bayer

73

While these commercial beekeepers publicly called into question the supposedly successful collaboration, Bayer’s first explicit attempt to collaborate with beekeepers belied a desire to show the public that it was “working with beekeepers” and “not lying” about its product’s effects on honeybees.1 After all, the commercialization of Bayer’s next-­generation insecticides, spirotetramat, and its synthetic derivatives, were on the line at a particularly sensitive time. CCD has put agricultural chemicals in the spotlight. And, as we suggested in earlier chapters, although there is no definitive evidence of the impact of newer systemic insecticides on honeybees, many suspect, not least many commercial beekeepers, an important role for these chemicals. Bayer and the company’s newer systemic insecticides have drawn particular attention. In this chapter, we explore the perspectives and actions of Bayer in the debate over the place of newer systemic insecticides in causing accelerated honeybee die-­offs. The world’s second largest manufacturer of agrochemicals and the seventh largest seed company, Bayer CropScience controls approximately 17 percent of the global agrochemical market (Shand 2012). Neonicotinoids such as imidacloprid and clothianidin have become some of the most widely used worldwide and are among the company’s top ten selling pesticides. By 2008, Bayer’s neonicotinoids were generating approximately $1.65 billion and had gained 24 percent of the global insecticide market and 80 percent of the insecticide seed-­treatment market ( Jeschke et al. 2011). This is not a case of a large corporation manipulating data or misleading regulators or the public, an instance of a headline-­grabbing conspiracy. Instead, the company utilizes, supports, and shapes the standards of evidence accepted by entomologists and honeybee toxicologists and upon which the EPA bases its interpretations for regulatory purposes. This, however, is enough, for Bayer has an interest in perpetuating uncertainty about its best-­selling insecticides. As long as uncertainty remains, the company’s chemicals can legally stay on the U.S. market. In this context, we examine Bayer’s research and the associated strategies through which the company has sought to enhance uncertainty during the course of particular controversies over honeybee die-­offs that erupted across parts of Europe and North America over the past two decades.

74

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

Field Relevance: Leveraging Research Norms and Practices of Honeybee Toxicology Bayer’s arguments in defense of its newer systemic insecticides rest centrally on the claim that field toxicological experiments are the most realistic and definitive means of assessing the extent of exposure to and the effects of these chemicals on honeybee health. In making its case for “field relevance,” Bayer is simply echoing the norms for good science adhered to by toxicological researchers. The ways in which Bayer leverages field toxicological research resonates more with the historically established standards of evidence used by university entomologists and governmental regulators in North America than with those favored in Europe. In the section below, we examine the development of Bayer’s position and strategy in successive controversies over honeybee deaths and neonicotinoids in France, Canada, and the United States. Mad Bee Disease in France

The alleged contribution of imidacloprid—­Bayer’s first “reduced risk” systemic insecticide—­to “mad bee disease” in France set the stage on which the corporation built a scientific and legal case in defense of its insecticidal products in subsequent bee die-­off incidents. Imidacloprid—­under the brand name Gaucho—­was registered in France in 1991 and became available as a “seed-­dressing” for sugar beet, maize, and sunflower. Soon after its initial use in the sunflower fields of central France in 1994, beekeepers who brought their beehives into these fields to make sunflower honey reported seeing unusual behavioral symptoms in their bees. These behaviors were accompanied by unusually high beehive losses, ranging between 30–­50 percent (as compared to previous loss levels of 5–­10 percent), and a significant drop in honey production. Based on their field observations, French beekeepers suggested that Gaucho was responsible and demanded more in-­ depth studies by Bayer and the French Ministry of Agriculture (Maxim and van der Sluijs 2007). In response to French beekeepers’ demands for more in-­depth research, Bayer scientists conducted extensive laboratory and field studies (reviewed in Maus et al. 2003). In laboratories, Bayer scientists investigated the “acute”

The Bottom Line for Bayer

75

and “chronic” oral toxicity of imidacloprid by feeding honeybees sugar solutions spiked with varying levels of the chemical for a period of two to three days (acute) or five to ten days (chronic). Based on such studies, they identified the dosage levels at which half of the exposed group of honeybees died within two to three days (the LD50) and the level below which “no observed adverse effects” were discernible in exposed individual bees. By helping define these standard toxicological values, Bayer indirectly shaped how subsequent experiments have been designed and interpreted in university and governmental settings. The standards they helped establish became common yardsticks as these appeared in Bayer-­initiated peer-­reviewed publications (for example, Nauen et al. 2001), academic conference proceedings (for example, Nikolakis et al. 2008), and trade journal communications (for example, Krohn and Hellpointner 2002). Bayer also conducted multiple semi-­field and field studies. In semi-­field studies, Bayer-­funded scientists simulated more-­natural conditions by placing beehives next to Gaucho-­treated crops under enclosed tents several meters in length. Through this method, they sought to ensure that honeybees were only exposed to the pesticide treatment. In field studies, Bayer scientists simulated the “most natural conditions” (Maus et al. 2003, 52) by exposing beehives to sunflower or canola fields that had been drilled with Gaucho-­treated seeds. Here, Bayer scientists initially claimed that honeybees were not being exposed to Gaucho because their analytic techniques showed no quantifiable residues of imidacloprid in the pollen and nectar of seed-­treated plants (AFSSA 2002; Maxim and van der Sluijs 2007). Subsequently, however, the corporation revised its claim in the face of more sensitive measurement techniques employed by government-­affiliated bee scientists. Using this approach, Bayer found that honeybees were getting exposed to low levels—­between two and six parts per billion—­of imidacloprid in the pollen and nectar of sunflowers and maize (van der Sluijs and Maxim 2007). Bayer scientists also monitored “bee mortality, bee losses, foraging activity, bee behavior, colony development, brood status and changes in pollen and nectar stores” (Maus et al. 2003, 52) and found no measurable ill effects from exposure to Gaucho. Moreover, the levels of imidacloprid residues that Bayer and government-­affiliated scientists found in the pollen and nectar of treated sunflowers were far below the “no observed adverse effects level” of twenty parts per billion established by

76

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

Bayer scientists in the lab, which suggested that the levels of Gaucho that honeybees were getting exposed to in the field were not a cause for concern. On the basis of their field studies, Bayer concluded that there was no definitive evidence of a “causal relationship between Gaucho seed dressing in sunflowers and the French bee malady” (for example, Schmuck 1999, 267; Maus et al. 2003). However, asserting a false negative orientation, the company overlooked the potential for low levels of Gaucho to cause damage to honeybees through progressive interactions with other ambient pesticides and pathogens—­a possibility that laboratory studies by French government scientists and beekeepers’ observations suggested (La Coordination des Apiculteurs de France 2000a, b; Scientific and Technical Committee for the Multifactor Study of the Honeybee Apiaries Decline 2003). Beyond concern about Bayer’s findings that were inconsistent with their own laboratory data about progressive interactions, French government-­ affiliated honeybee scientists were also skeptical of the reliability of field studies generally. Inevitably, bees experience a huge amount of environmental variability in field studies, and this poses a considerable challenge to efforts to achieve the experimentally desired level of chemical exposure and reliably assess the sole effect of the tested chemical. French government scientists preferred more controlled laboratory and semi-­field studies, and these “raised suspicions” about Gaucho “without formally proving its responsibility” (Ministère de l’Agriculture 2001; quoted in Maxim and van der Sluijs 2013, 406; emphasis added). As a practical matter, French government scientists preferred to err on the side of caution and act as if Gaucho were harmful. Theirs was a false positive orientation, whereby a substance is assumed to be harmful in the face of suggestive evidence. Amid intense beekeeper-­led public protests, the French Ministry of Agriculture took heed of the recommendations of these government-­affiliated bee scientists. Preferring caution over risk, the government invoked the precautionary principle and suspended the use of Gaucho on sunflowers and maize in 1999 and 2004. Based on similar concerns and following a comparable logic, in 2013, the European Union suspended the use of imidacloprid, clothianidin, and another “newer” systemic insecticide—­thiamethoxam—­ manufactured by the Swiss agrochemical manufacturer Syngenta for two years.

The Bottom Line for Bayer

77

In a bid to reverse the French government’s decision, Bayer, along with other multinational agrochemical manufacturers, sued French beekeepers and the French Ministry of Agriculture in the country’s highest court: the State Council. Bayer’s legal case rested on field experiments as the evidential gold standard. On the basis of these experiments, the company insisted that there was no clear evidence of imidacloprid’s involvement in mad bee disease. Bayer emphasized that its position was based on studies done in accordance with international academic standards for experimental design, implementation, and inference (for example, Maus et al. 2003, 52). However, the State Council ruled that the risk posed by Gaucho could also be reasonably assessed from results of laboratory studies—­a common practice in French honeybee research—­and hence ruled in favor of the precautionary position advocated by the French government and beekeepers (Fau 2000; Maxim and van der Sluijs 2007; Suryanarayanan and Kleinman 2014). The State Council based its ruling on the assertion that there is no law mandating that the toxicity of pesticides be assessed primarily on the basis of field experiments and invoked the European Council’s 1991 Directive, which empowers European Union member states to withdraw any plant protection product that is shown to have “unacceptable influence” on nontarget species (91/414/EEC of 15 July 1991; also see Fau 2000 for an excerpt of the court’s decision). Even though Bayer lost its battle against the amorphous French coalition of bee scientists, state structures, and beekeepers, it had in the process developed a comprehensive set of toxicological studies and associated non-­precautionary interpretations, which garnered much more credibility in subsequent controversies in North America over its highly valued insecticides. Unusual Losses in Canada

In 2000, Canadian beekeepers on Prince Edward Island (PEI) suffered unexplained and significant beehive losses, and based on their observations, they linked their unusual losses to usage patterns of Bayer’s Admire—­a soil formulation of imidacloprid—­on potato crops. The application of Admire had expanded significantly since 1995, when the Canadian government first granted Bayer temporary permission to sell the chemical. In the wake of heavy bee losses, beekeepers began to push back against the Canadian

78

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

government’s systemic insecticide policy. Citing a Canadian government study of Admire’s dispersal in the water and soil of Prince Edward Island (PMRA 2001), beekeepers argued that while bees do not visit potato flowers for either nectar or pollen, residues of Admire were likely washing into nearby ditches and consequently found in the nectar and pollen of the goldenrod and clover plants growing there, which honeybees forage on. PEI beekeepers also asserted that imidacloprid was likely persisting in the soil and was consequently present in the crops and weeds in the years following potatoes. The PEI beekeepers’ claims stressed the complicated and indirect ways in which imidacloprid might be harming honeybees, and the circuitous pathways they described suggested that standard highly controlled experiments that seek to measure the direct effects of systemic insecticides on bees would miss the role of these chemicals in contributing to honeybees’ ill health. Like in France and later on in the United States, PEI beekeepers called for a moratorium on Admire usage until appropriate studies by independent authorities addressed their concerns. The Prince Edward Island beekeepers were especially concerned that Bayer’s soil formulation would release seven times the amount of imidacloprid in PEI’s soils compared to a seed-­dressing formulation such as Gaucho (Sandler 2001). In response, Bayer funded a field study that was carried out by Richard Rogers and Roger Kemp. At the time Rogers ran a research and consulting firm called Wildwood Labs, Inc. Later, he became an employee of Bayer CropScience. Kemp was a pollination biologist at the University of Prince Edward Island. While the scientists found that significant levels of imidacloprid persist in Admire-­treated soils, they did not find levels of concern in nearby clover flowers (Rogers and Kemp 2003).2 A subsequent field study by Rogers and Kemp apparently found no ill effects on exposed beehives (David Fischer, Director of Ecotoxicology Bayer CropScience, Interview,1/13/10).3 In contrast to the French government’s precautionary approach, the Canadian authorities accepted the non-­precautionary orientation advocated by Bayer on the basis of these field studies. Consequently, Canada did not enact additional limitations on the usage of Admire (Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment 2007). It was with a decade-­long history supporting research and engaging in advocacy that Bayer entered the fray over the role of systemic insecticides in honeybee deaths in the United States. The company had developed a

The Bottom Line for Bayer

79

substantial base of scientific knowledge and created an elaborate network of collaborating scientists, policymakers, growers, and beekeepers in struggles involving its highest-­grossing chemicals and honeybee health.4 Neonics in the United States

In 2003, even as French beekeepers and their allies marched in the streets of Paris against the use of Gaucho on maize, a group of thirteen commercial beekeepers in North Dakota filed a class-­action lawsuit against Bayer for unusually severe losses of beehives in their beekeeping operations, allegedly from exposure to Gaucho-­treated canola. Based on Bayer’s testimony that the levels of imidacloprid residues analyzed in affected beehives were far below the published “no observed adverse effects level,” the plaintiffs’ arguments were dismissed in 2008 by a U.S. federal district court judge. With the help of supporting expert testimony from Canadian bee scientists such as Cynthia Scott-­Dupree—­the University of Guelph entomologist who led the ill-­fated field study discussed in chapter 2—­and Richard Rogers, Bayer successfully argued that there was no conclusive evidence that, at the low levels found, imidacloprid would cause any harm to exposed beehives “in a realistic field situation.”5 Ensuing beekeeper reports of unusual bee death incidents, some of which came to be called colony collapse disorder, and their alleged links to neonicotinoids have been summarily rejected by Bayer as “anecdotal with no definitive, reliable, or scientific evidence” (Fischer, 2009, 2). For the most part, all Bayer has needed to do to make its case is to provide data consistent with the evidential standards that are prevalent in North American academic and regulatory institutions. As we have shown in previous chapters, established evidential norms in the CCD-­neonicotinoid controversy in the United States benefit Bayer. With U.S. regulators, Bayer opposes all efforts to remove neonicotinoids from the market absent consistent definitive evidence from field toxicological experiments on beehives treated with “field-­realistic” low doses. By contrast, beekeepers and their allies contend that accumulating suggestive evidence from laboratory studies and emerging field studies should suffice to restrict, if not remove, Bayer’s neonicotinoids from the market. The two groups of stakeholders have different views of what counts as knowledge and ignorance.

80

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

Take the 2007 case of the field study by Chris Cutler and Cynthia Scott-­ Dupree, which we examined in chapter 2. This data was utilized by Bayer to satisfy the EPA’s requirement for a field pollinator test to upgrade the registration status of clothianidin from “conditional” to full. In November 2010, a leaked EPA internal memo identified deficiencies in Cutler and Scott-­ Dupree’s field study. The EPA found “some cross contamination between treated and non-­treated (control) experimental plots and inadequate separation between treated and control portions of the study” (EPA 2010, 65). Still, the agency maintained that “there was useful information that could be used to qualitatively describe hive survival following exposure to clothianidin” (EPA 2012). In December 2010, in the face of EPA’s then equivocal support for the study, Bayer CropScience pushed back, stating that the field study had been “conducted in accordance with Good Laboratory Practices (GLP) by independent experts and published in a major peer reviewed scientific journal” (Bayer 2010). Bayer insisted that the EPA had approved the field study as scientifically sound and as satisfying the guideline requirements for a field toxicity test with honeybees. Even as outrage about the EPA’s “wimpy watchdogging” ensued in beekeeping and environmentalist communities, Bayer’s retort seemed good enough for the EPA. The 2010 reevaluation did “not change the agency’s conclusion that the registered uses of clothianidin meet the FIFRA risk/benefit standard for registration” (EPA 2012). Beyond the deficiencies (as defined by established research norms accepted among professional scientists) of the ill-­fated field study recognized by the EPA, neither Bayer nor the EPA has been willing to consider that such control-­oriented field studies tend to overlook scenarios where low levels of newer systemic insecticides by themselves do not cause beehives to collapse but may do so in interaction with other prevalent pesticides and pathogenic factors progressively across a beehive’s lifecycle. Bayer CropScience’s director of ecotoxicology David Fischer asserts that “interactive effects at low concentrations [are] a myth.”6 Bayer and its allies argue that studies providing evidence of the complex set of interactions through which sublethal amounts of neonicotinoids potentially contribute to CCD (for example, Alaux et al. 2010; Vidau et al. 2011; Pettis et al. 2012) do not realistically model field situations and that bees may react quite differently in an “artificial laboratory environment” than they would “under realistic field conditions” (Heintzelman et al. 2012).

The Bottom Line for Bayer

81

Bayer’s insistence on the absence of direct, causal evidence of harm from field experiments as sufficient grounds for keeping its chemicals on the market finds willing ears among some beekeepers, governmental regulators, and university scientists in the United States. Influential beekeeper Randy Oliver draws on Bayer’s studies among other pieces of evidence to repeatedly insist that “not only is there no compelling evidence to date that exposure to seed-­treated crops is causing harm to bees, but there are plenty of examples to the contrary, such as the thriving bee operations in the Corn Belt” (2012b). Gene Robinson, a distinguished honeybee scientist at the University of Illinois–­Urbana-­Champaign and member of the National Academy of Sciences, notes that corn and soybean agriculture in East Central Illinois is “ground zero for neonicotinoid use but there have been no documented cases of Colony Collapse Disorder” (Yates 2013). Similarly, the EPA’s director of the Office of Pesticide Programs, Steven Bradbury, supports Bayer’s position against a citizens’ emergency petition to revoke the conditional registration of clothianidin, stating that “the EPA does not find there currently is evidence adequate to demonstrate an imminent and substantial likelihood of serious harm occurring to bees from the use of clothianidin” (2012, 6; emphasis added). In this context, a historically shaped convergence in the norms and stakes of university bee scientists and the EPA’s regulatory culture has meant that control-­oriented field toxicological studies occupy a privileged evidential position among academic scientists and governmental regulators. As a formal matter, what we do or do not know about the putative links between honeybees and pesticides is established by studies like the one carried out by Cutler and Scott-­Dupree (2007). And this has provided Bayer with a valuable opportunity to gain widespread credence for its understandings of the (non-­)relationship between CCD and its insecticides over and above the evidential claims of contending beekeepers.7

Highlight Complexity, Create Uncertainty Apart from relying on established research norms and shaping knowledge production in toxicological research on honeybees, Bayer disseminates narratives that deflect attention away from its systemic insecticides by pointing to honeybee losses as a “highly complex issue” (Bayer 2009). According

82

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

to Bayer scientists in France, “a complex of heterogeneous factors,” which includes Varroa, poisoning from “overdosage” of beekeeper-­applied chemical treatments against Varroa and from non-­systemic pesticide sprays, “adverse climatic conditions,” and bacterial diseases contribute to large-­ scale honeybee deaths (Maus et al. 2003, 55). Because so many factors may be involved in honeybee losses, Bayer can legitimately turn attention to influences other than neonicotinoids, including “Varroa mites, pathogens, nutritional deficiencies, and beekeeper use of unapproved miticides” (for example, Fischer 2009). In a letter to the EPA and to beekeepers belonging to the National Honey Bee Advisory Board, Bayer’s David Fischer noted that “imidacloprid had been in widespread use in U.S. agriculture for more than a decade before” the first reports of CCD began to emerge (Fischer 2009, 3), and for Fischer, this fact suggests that beekeepers’ claims regarding the correlation between accelerated honeybee declines and the use of imidacloprid are “simply not true.” Importantly, Fischer’s argument ignores massive increases in the levels and patterns of usage of imidacloprid since 19948 and the fact that the commercialization of another Bayer neonicotinoid, clothianidin, coincided with the first reports of CCD in 2004.9 Beyond these facts, Bayer feels confident dismissing claims about the role of systemic insecticides in contributing to CCD because the research on which they are based do not conform to established evidential standards of definitive causal evidence from field experiments. Beekeepers, who contend that neonicotinoids contribute to CCD, often suggest that the role of the chemicals are indirect and sublethal. They argue that a complex set of interactions shape the impact of neonicotinoids and accept that the multiple factors that interact may together contribute to CCD. Ironically, Bayer’s argument is not radically different. The difference is that beekeepers want take the systemic insecticides off the market as long as uncertainty about their effects remain. The company, by contrast, suggests that as long as the complexity of interacting factors makes it impossible to separate the role of neonicotinoids from other potential contributors to CCD, their chemicals should not be taken off the market. Beyond stressing complexity and uncertainty, Bayer also provides alternative explanations for the evidence that beekeepers see for the role of neonicotinoids in CCD. Thus, when massive bee kills in Ontario, Canada, in

The Bottom Line for Bayer

83

2012 and 2013, Indiana in the United States in 2010, and southwest Germany in 2008 were traced by beekeepers and scientists to the use of clothianidin seed treatments in nearby maize plantings (for example, Krupke et al. 2012), Bayer insisted that these die-­offs were one-­time events caused by growers’ use of faulty sowing equipment that inadvertently released clouds of toxic clothianidin-­treated seed dust into the air. In other words, the bees’ deaths are not explained by clothianidin exposure as such but due to the misapplication of clothianidin (Bayer 2008). Along these lines, Bayer consistently argues that its newer systemic insecticides, “when correctly applied”—­that is, at levels and rates permitted by governmental guidelines and with the appropriate equipment—­are not to be blamed for incidents of increased honeybee deaths (Bayer 2008). Bayer further bolsters uncertainty about the role of neonicotinoids in contributing to CCD by disseminating scientific critiques that challenge studies linking neonicotinoids with accelerated honeybee deaths. At the 2011 American Beekeeping Federation’s annual meeting in Galveston, Texas, Bayer’s David Fischer, working with University of Montana bee scientists Jerry Bromenshenk and Colin Henderson, presented a poster critical of a widely discussed field survey of agrochemicals and miticides in commercially operated North American beehives (Mullin et al. 2010). The survey was undertaken by Christopher Mullin, a toxicologist at Penn State University, along with scientists at the USDA. That study documented troubling numbers and levels of over one hundred pesticides in the sampled beehives and noted the potential for harm from “multiple pesticide interactions” (Mullin et al. 2010, 15). Apart from one pollen sample that contained an exceptionally high level of imidacloprid (912 ppb), the results of the pesticide survey did “not support sufficient amounts and frequency in pollen of imidacloprid (mean of 3.1 ppb in less than 3 percent of pollen samples) or the less toxic neonicotinoids thiacloprid and acetamiprid to account for impacts on bee health” (Mullin et al. 2010, 17). That said, Mullin and his coauthors cautioned that imidacloprid seed treatments may have more indirect impacts on bee health “through synergistic combinations” with fungicides and other ambient pesticides (2010, 17). Given that the study found fungicides and beekeeper-­applied miticides to be far more prevalent than neonicotinoids, Bayer’s Fischer countered that the “speculation” presented by Mullin and his colleagues was scientifically unjustified and that it drew

84

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

unfair attention to the neonicotinoids. Bayer and University of Montana scientists reanalyzed the Mullin team’s (2010) data, calculating “the actual risk quotients” for various pesticides, including, of course, the neonicotinoids, and concluded that the Mullin group’s “analysis does NOT support the conclusion that pesticide residues in beehives pose a serious risk.” Although some beekeepers and journalists see conflict of interest and implicit threats made to beekeepers as the heart of the CCD controversy, we have argued that Bayer need not rely on intimidation or direct manipulation. Instead, the company’s reliance on established evidential norms and practices and its efforts to cultivate uncertainty about the causes of honeybee loses are sufficient to protect its interests. In this section, we have shown how highlighting the multifactorial complexity of accelerated honeybee deaths and the scientific uncertainty present in putative links to newer systemic insecticides serves Bayer well in the context of the U.S. system of pesticide regulation. Here, the absence of definitive, causal evidence from field experiments of a direct link between honeybee losses and particular pesticides is sufficient to keep the agrochemicals on the U.S. market.

Bee Care, Bayer Style: Constructing a Public Image of Concern for Bees and Beekeepers In the face of persistent and growing civil society mobilizations and concerns among scientists and governmental regulators about the links between accelerated honeybee deaths and newer systemic insecticides, Bayer and other agrochemical manufacturers, such as Syngenta and Monsanto, have sought to rescue their image as stewards of the environment and of honeybees. In this section, we highlight a key attempt made by Bayer CropScience to collaborate with U.S. beekeepers in order to secure full registration for Movento, its next-­generation systemic insecticide. Although Bayer had managed to keep its neonicotinoids on the U.S. market, the ongoing controversy about the role of Bayer’s chemicals in contributing to the heightened incidents of honeybee deaths cast a shadow over the commercialization of its next line of systemic insecticide products, chief

The Bottom Line for Bayer

85

among them being Movento (active ingredient: spirotetramat).10 The EPA had concerns of its own, and in 2008, the agency was only willing to grant Movento limited commercial status. The EPA required Bayer to address “uncertainties and data gaps” in its environmental effects, including undertaking a field study on honeybees, because laboratory studies suggested that “there is potential for mortality in adults and pupae, massive perturbation of brood development, and early brood termination as a result of spirotetramat use” (EPA 2008a, 41–­42). By this time, Bayer and its line of neonicotinoid products were being targeted by beekeepers, environmental groups, and investigative reporters (for example, Schacker 2008), and the environmental advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council was suing the EPA for failing to respond to its Freedom of Information Act request for agency records concerning the toxicity of pesticides to bees. In short, Bayer’s image as a responsible steward of the environment was taking a public beating.11 It was in this context that the University of Montana’s Jerry Bromenshenk and Bayer’s David Fischer convened a one-­of-­a-­kind “Bayer-­Beekeeper dialogue.” Their first meeting in California in November 2008 was attended by representatives of Bayer CropScience, national and regional beekeeper associations, the Almond Board of California, California’s Department of Food and Agriculture, and the University of California–­Davis. In order to address problems of “transparency and trust” between the beekeeping industry and agrochemical industry, beekeepers suggested that the two national beekeeping associations appoint a beekeepers’ advisory board that would “work with Bayer, reviewing proposed experimental design for trials prior to their initiation” (Bromenshenk 2008). Bayer representatives were “receptive” to the proposal for beekeeper involvement but ironically insisted that the advisory board beekeepers would have to sign a nondisclosure agreement; Bayer considered its trials and data proprietary information and claimed that unless protected, it could be made available to competitors (Bromenshenk 2008). In March 2009, Bayer approached the newly formed National Honey Bee Advisory Board (NHBAB) to collaborate on a field study intended to assess the toxic effects of Movento on beehives. The beekeepers agreed, with the awareness that Bayer could simply be exploiting them in order

86

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

to obtain full registration for its insecticide; however, the beekeepers also saw an historic opportunity here to redress an area of conflict between beekeepers and agrochemical firms (Interview, James Frazier, 11/10/2009; Field Notes, 12/01/2009). As Bayer pressed forward with the “cooperative” field study, disagreements with beekeepers emerged over the experimental design and interpretation of data regarding the effects of Movento on the long-­term survival of beehives, as well as over Bayer’s “perceived need for a Data Access Agreement,” a document that would restrict signatories’ access to and use of the data. Because of NHBAB beekeepers’ concerns regarding spirotetramat’s long-­term and chronic effects on brood, they had voiced a strong desire to have the final data collection occur “one year from the commencement of the study” in initial discussions with Bayer (NHBAB 2010). Bayer scientists nevertheless ended the study in seven months, at which point they declared no observable difference in the “long-­term” survival of Movento-­treated versus untreated beehives (Rogers 2010). NHBAB beekeepers disagreed with Bayer’s interpretation and listed a number of subtle but “measurable” differences in brood weight, coloration, hatching dates, and patterns of development, all of which suggested to them that “Movento treated hives stored less” nectar and pollen compared to control beehives (NHBAB 2010). Moreover, the fact that “only two of the original twelve Movento hives and four of the dozen control hives survived” not only indicated to NHBAB members an “unacceptable” survival rate for control beehives but “an even more severe problem” with the Movento-­treated beehives. Bayer rejected the NHBAB beekeepers’ interpretations, asserting they were based on claims about control hives managed by involved beekeepers that muddied the research results (Fischer 2010). NHBAB beekeepers also charged that public information, such as the protocols Bayer used to conduct residue analyses of spirotetramat in bee samples, was being hidden by Bayer under the guise of the company’s need to hold data as proprietary business information (NHBAB 2009). The so-­called dialogue fell apart in short order. Bayer had effectively used the collaboration to foster further uncertainty about the role of its systemic insecticides in contributing to honeybee health challenges. While the company did use its proprietary data card to withhold access to some information, the essence of its position in this case was to argue against an experimental design and interpretation of data that might conceivably

The Bottom Line for Bayer

87

have bolstered the beekeepers’ position. While it is possible to stress the conspiratorial aspect of Bayer’s involvement here, to a significant degree the company positioned itself as taking a position in a scientific debate. Indeed, among academic scientists, research findings are often challenged over questions of the quality of experimental design and data interpretation. This is the terrain on which Bayer has consistently sought to fight. Of course, this collaboration had done little to engender the trust of NHBAB beekeepers, but it did allow Bayer to gain full registration for Movento and to keep the debate over the role of neonicotinoids on the terrain of experiment, data, and uncertainty.

Conclusion The German multinational Bayer is the central agrochemical industry player in the controversy over CCD and massive honeybee deaths more generally. The company’s newer line of systemic insecticides is at the center of the debate over vanishing honeybees in the United States and elsewhere. Bayer has significant stakes in the success of its newer systemic insecticides, which have come to be some of the most widely used insecticides in agricultural markets across the globe. Bayer has had a substantial influence on the debates—­and thus knowledge and ignorance about honeybee health—­that raged in Europe and North America in the aftermath of unusual incidents of honeybee deaths, where affected beekeepers suggested that Bayer’s neonicotinoids were primarily involved. In defending its interests in these debates, Bayer has engaged in several distinct practices. First and foremost, the company has consistently drawn on historically established evidential norms as the basis for dismissing evidence presented by beekeepers of the role of neonicotinoids in contributing to heightened honeybee losses. Relatedly, Bayer has dismissed existing scientific research on the neonicotinoid connection by suggesting that these studies do not capture realistic field conditions and thus their findings are suspect. Significantly, Bayer’s argument resonates with, and fuels, those being made by university scientists in ongoing scientific debates within honeybee and pollinator biology (for example, Carreck and Ratnieks 2014; Blacquière et al. 2012; Dively et al. 2015).

88

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

Bayer has also bolstered its contention that its systemic insecticides should remain on the market by asserting that the relationship of the plausible factors contributing to CCD is so complex that there is a high level of uncertainty about which factors are most important and what precise role individual factors play. Importantly, in the U.S. regulatory environment, uncertainty effectively permits Bayer to keep its systemic insecticides on the market. Bayer has thus leveraged the primacy of control-­oriented research norms and practices of entomology and the scientific consensus around the multifactorial complexity of honeybee deaths to maintain scientific and regulatory uncertainty over the involvement of its neonicotinoids, and in this way has helped shape the state of ignorance of what we do not know regarding the plausible indirect and interactive effects of neonicotinoids on honeybees. In the United States, an historical convergence in the orientations of university entomologists, toxicologists, and the EPA has meant that the search for definitive evidence through field-­based experiments is the basis for any significant change in the governmental regulation of already registered pesticides in the United States. The established standards of experimental design and interpretation make it highly unlikely that scientists will find definitive causal evidence of low levels of neonicotinoids interacting with other pesticides and pathogens to cause the bee die-­offs. In this situation, all Bayer has to do is point to the lack of consistent definitive evidence from field experiments carried out by independent scientists. Thus, in the United States, Bayer succeeds by using the legitimacy of the approach taken by entomologists, toxicologists, and the EPA to not only bolster its own position but also delegitimize the position of a set of critical beekeepers and allied scientists. Bayer’s leveraging of the scientific dispute over neonicotinoids points to an expanded notion of Harry Collin’s (1991 [1985]) concept of the problem of experimenter’s regress. At the heart of the problem of experimenter’s regress are the criteria for determining the validity of an experimental system in the midst of a scientific controversy. According to Collins, an experimental system is considered to be working if it gives the expected result; however, the expected result is considered valid only when one is confident that the experimental system is working (Collins 1991 [1985]). Thus, in disputes over findings, it is always possible to question experimental design.

The Bottom Line for Bayer

89

If there are problems with experimental design, then resulting data can be questioned. In many ways, the honeybee controversy over neonicotinoids is a classic experimenter’s regress problem. In this case, Bayer regularly calls into question the validity of experimental systems providing evidence of harm. In this context, more research results obtained from the replication of experiments by themselves would not bring closure to the dispute because the extent to which an experiment is actually replicated would then become a new node of dispute, and the situation could continue ad infinitum. Importantly, the scientific dispute over neonicotinoids and Bayer’s role in it illustrates that the problem of experimenter’s regress is shaped by the social organization of science as a result of which certain ways of performing experiments are granted more credibility than others. Bayer has capitalized on the widespread acceptance of a control-­oriented variety of field toxicology as a reliable experimental system to assess the real-­world effects of neonicotinoids on honeybee health in North American academic and regulatory contexts. By discrediting research that does not conform to the prevalent experimental system and by supporting research on other possible causes of accelerated honeybee losses, Bayer fuels the problem of experimenter’s regress and helps maintain scientific uncertainty, which enables its products to stay on the market in the U.S. regulatory context. Several of the U.S. beekeepers, scientists, and environmentalists who are calling for limitations in the usage of Bayer’s systemic insecticides emphasize what they see as the problem of “the fox guarding the chicken coop” (for example, Ellis 2010; Theobald 2010; Simon 2014). That is, Bayer and agrochemical industry as a whole have manipulated the regulatory system for their profit-­making purposes by spinning the science and swaying influential lawmakers, beekeepers, and scientists through lobbying, financial rewards, and intimidation. According to those who take this position, Bayer’s chemicals are still on the U.S. market because coopted regulators, beekeepers, and scientists have become mouthpieces of the agrochemical industry and defend poor science while rejecting sound science. There may be some evidence in support of such action by Bayer, but we contend that this is not the main reason for the success of Bayer’s perspectives in the United States. The overly sensationalist focus on Bayer’s conspiratorial strategies diverts attention away from the much more prevalent, everyday practices and established traditions of producing entomological and

90

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

toxicological knowledge that Bayer has utilized to maintain the expansion of its chemicals in the U.S. market. Overall, in the United States, Bayer has been able to use evidential norms and claims of complexity to effectively assert that we do not know whether and to what extent the company’s systemic insecticides contribute to heightened honeybee deaths. Thus, these chemicals remain on the market.

5 • Regulating Knowledge The EPA and Pesticide Standards

It is not in the center of U.S. governmental power—­in Washington, DC—­but at its edges, in an unimpressive, relatively new terra-­cotta and beige office building in Crystal City, Virginia, where key players who are establishing U.S. pesticide policy work. In this semi-­planned city that emerged from an area filled with junkyards, industrial sites, and low-­rent motels in the 1970s, much about the fate of honeybees and other pollinators in the United States is determined. Here in the offices of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), officials decide on whether the dangers to exposure of certain pesticides for humans, plants, and animals are sufficiently great that a given chemical should be prohibited from use, and in these offices questions about the threat to honeybees of exposure to systemic insecticides are considered for the purposes of policy. In this chapter, we explore the role of the EPA in the production of ignorance about the contribution of newer systemic insecticides to the phenomena of accelerated honeybee deaths as exemplified by the controversy over colony collapse disorder. We first discuss the origins of the EPA and then turn to five orientations or practices at the EPA that have shaped what we know about CCD and the role of pesticides in contributing to it. We show that to date, government policies have excluded certain types of evidence about the role of systemic insecticides from consideration in policy discussions about CCD. The result is that chemicals that many beekeepers and others consider to have an indirect role in causing CCD remain in use.

91

92

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

What pesticides get to market is determined by regulations that define requirements for chemical efficacy, economic benefits, and environmental and human health risk. In setting standards, government regulators also determine what evidential criteria are required in assessing hazard and risk. As we show, these standards, in turn, determine (1) what we know about the chemicals in our environment, or, in other words, what counts as legitimate data—­knowledge; (2) whose knowledge about these chemicals counts; and (3) the relative power of the different stakeholders in affecting regulation.

Genesis of the EPA Marking the founding of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is complicated. Formally, the agency owes its existence to President Richard Nixon’s Reorganization Plan Number 3 of July 9, 1970. In that plan, Nixon indicated his desire to create a new agency from a scattering of government entities, which, up to that time, had been responsible for what federal environmental policy there was. While formally rooted in Nixon’s Reorganization Plan, most would agree that the EPA’s deeper origins are integrally tied to the emergence of the modern environmental movement and, more specifically, the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. That book, serialized in the New Yorker, documented the hazardous effects of DDT, a chemical pesticide, and other chemicals on wildlife, especially birds. Silent Spring prompted public outrage over human and environmental exposure to toxic chemicals, and the environmental movement that emerged in the wake of the book’s publication repeatedly called for more serious regulation of chemicals introduced into the environment. As envisioned by the Nixon administration, the EPA would be the U.S. government’s new environment watchdog. The agency would establish and enforce environmental protection standards. Importantly, the new EPA would be responsible for undertaking research on the effects of pollution and chemicals on the environment, and this research would provide the foundations for new policies. Significantly, from its initial conceptualization, the EPA was imagined as a science-­based regulator, an organization where science and not politics

Regulating Knowledge

93

would determine policy and the fate of the environment. Of direct relevance to CCD, the EPA administers the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and is consequently responsible for registering and managing the use of all pesticides sold in the United States.1 Chemical registration is in many ways at the heart of the controversy over the role of systemic insecticides in contributing to CCD. All chemical registration must, according to law, be grounded in scientific research. Again, the standards are intended to be unambiguous and beyond judgment. However, as we will suggest, the particular research norms institutionalized at the EPA reflect a specific history and set of values. These standards systematically exclude the data collection and knowledge production of (some of) the beekeepers we described in chapter 1. In so doing, the formal rules that govern research expectations at EPA contribute to ignorance about the role of systemic insecticides in contributing to CCD and provide the foundation for permitting the chemicals to remain on the market. Certain research done by scientists (not to mention the systematic observations undertaken by some beekeepers) is excluded too because it does not meet the agency’s formal standards for evidence. According to Jasanoff, the EPA has always been caught between the proverbial devil and the deep blue sea in its efforts to protect the environment. The agency could err on the side of caution with the result that it would be perceived as “caving in to naïve romanticism” or permit the use of chemicals about which there are concerns and be viewed as a “captive to powerful agribusiness interests” (1990, 123). The ostensible transparency and unambiguousness of science notwithstanding, this positioning is complicated by the fact that it has always been a challenge to prove that pesticides pose real and measurable risks, “especially at low levels of exposure” ( Jasanoff 1990, 123). And while producing conclusive evidence about the dangers of specific chemicals for humans or the environment is a challenge, the economic benefits of pesticides, in terms of decreased crop loss and increased yield, are more tangible. Thus, questions of possible unreasonable risks and environmental costs posed by pesticides are juxtaposed to easier to measure yield gains. Although FIFRA prohibits registration of pesticides that cause “unreasonable” adverse effects to humans or the environment, this is always weighed against the economic, social, and environmental costs and benefits of the pesticide’s use, and when put in these terms—­especially when the

94

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

issue is not a matter of possible human cancers—­benefits typically win out over costs (Hoberg 1990, 264). It is precisely the institutionalization of this balance in favor of chemical use that has shaped EPA policy in the CCD controversy over systemic insecticides. The evidential standards the agency has established as well as the structure of what is termed good laboratory practice place the agency on the side of the chemical industry and systemic insecticide use. And industry derives substantial benefit from the agency’s regulatory decisions without the EPA needing to explicitly and formally take sides. As elsewhere in our story, this is not a case where data suppression or fabrication leads to ignorance about the true causes of CCD. Instead, a specific history has shaped a specific set of norms about what counts as knowledge and what does not. And while there is no conspiracy at work, the evidential norms that govern the EPA’s policymaking converge with the norms most commonly adhered to by the community of academic entomologists and bee scientists, and this convergence in turn provides legitimate grounding for the position of Bayer on the appropriateness of keeping neonicotinoids on the market.

The Exclusion of Complexity: The Failure to Assess Indirect Effects As we have discussed in previous chapters, beekeepers and many researchers contend that CCD is explained not by a singular linear causal chain but by a complex set of interactions. The role of newer systemic insecticides in contributing to CCD, as we discussed in chapters 1 and 2, may be indirect. Many hypothesize, based on the results from laboratory and field experiments, that sublethal levels of newer systemic insecticides contribute to phenomena of accelerated honeybee deaths such as CCD through chronic interactions with factors such as mites, pathogens, other pesticides, and nutritional issues (for example, Alaux et al. 2010; Vidau et al. 2011; Anderson et al. 2012; Pettis et al. 2012). In this context, whether EPA standards specify acceptable techniques for measuring sublethal and interactive effects of pesticides is a matter of some

Regulating Knowledge

95

dispute. Despite widespread discussion about the possible complexity of the causal soup out of which CCD emerges, the EPA pesticide registration process only requires testing the direct effects of active ingredients—­typically single compounds exhibiting the main insecticidal activity in the chemical product (EPA 2014b). According to one EPA official (interview, 10/29/09), the agency currently sanctions no formal means of assessing the sublethal and interactive effects of pesticides on pollinators, including honeybees. This official’s characterization of the current state of play is contradicted by the former director of EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, Debra Edwards. In a letter to the Sierra Club (Edwards 2008), an organization that has urged the EPA to take certain newer systemic insecticides off the market, Edwards claimed, “For more than five years, the EPA has required studies to evaluate sub-­lethal effects of nicotinyl pesticides on bees as requirement for registration.” Edwards goes on to say, “These studies and information available in the open literature to date do not demonstrate a link between these [sublethal] effects and severe adverse impacts to bees” (Edwards 2008). So—­ has the EPA not sanctioned sublethal testing in which case they have no data on the basis of which to rule out the sublethal effects of systemic insecticides? Or does data support claims that there are no such effects? Edwards’ letter is disingenuous or minimally a matter of carefully crafted political speak. The official, who indicated that there is to date no formally validated way to assess sublethal and interactive effects, was speaking of the ability to capture indirect effects using traditional research protocols, the limited array of approaches the EPA certifies acceptable for providing data for use in the agency’s regulatory actions. Edwards’ letter points to research that does not support claims—­like those made by some beekeepers—­that the effects of systemic insecticides on honeybees are sublethal, but she qualifies this with a crucial statement: “no evidence directly linking pesticides” to CCD (Edwards 2008; emphasis added). This apparent contradiction is not a contradiction at all. There may indeed be no direct relationship. But that is not the sole concern of beekeepers and others. These critics of EPA policy contend that the sublethal effects are the product of complex interactions with other factors and that they are indirect. The EPA is not testing for these, and thus, we do not know due to policy whether systemic insecticides play an indirect and sublethal role in contributing to phenomena of

96

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

accelerated beehive losses, such as CCD. The EPA is institutionally ignorant on this issue. In contrast to Edwards, the EPA official who suggested that the agency does not sanction a technique to measure sublethal effects explains that the absence of methods for making such assessments are the result of inadequate resources and insufficiently developed science (interview, 10/29/09). Scholarly analyses of the EPA suggest that resource limitations have always plagued the Office of Pesticide Programs, preventing it from doing what EPA staff might have hoped to do under different conditions (Hoberg 1990, 267). Furthermore, the EPA has been aware for over a decade that realistic assessments of pesticide toxicity need to incorporate the sublethal and interactive effects of pesticides and pesticide mixtures, with EPA scientists considering concrete approaches and challenges to regulating pesticide mixtures in the context of surface water contamination (for example, Lydy et al. 2004). Still, despite resource limitations and the absence of acceptable measurement techniques, one EPA official acknowledges that the agency does have some evidence of sublethal effects in acute tests (interview, 10/29/09). Existing standards, however, allow it to ignore this data, asserting that it is yet-­to-­be validated science. Policy thereby appears grounded in science and neutral. But, of course, standards for what counts as knowledge are human and social creations. They are not inherent in data or intrinsic to situations, and here again, we see that EPA standards define what we know as a formal and policy matter about systemic insecticides and honeybee health, and how and whether we can or should regulate the use of these chemicals. Even though the EPA has some data on the sublethal effects of neonicotinoids, Bayer, the primary manufacturer of imidacloprid and clothianidin, and Syngenta, the primary manufacturer of thiamethoxam, have not been required to submit sublethal tests.2 The EPA suggests it is not requiring such reporting because there is lack of agreement among scientists about appropriate protocols for undertaking such measurement (field notes, 11/8/09). There is a vicious circle here, and we see how the absence of established standards—­justified by the absence of a scientific consensus on method—­ perpetuate ignorance on an issue of crucial importance to honeybees, beekeepers, and consumers. While the EPA has not taken action to remove newer systemic insecticides from the market and publicly asserts that doing so is not scientifically

Regulating Knowledge

97

justified, widespread recognition of the possibility that the effects of systemic insecticides might play a role in causing CCD and other incidents of accelerated honeybee losses have prompted assorted actions by the EPA and manufacturers. As recently as January 2011, the U.S. Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) organized a workshop on pollinator pesticide risk assessment. The report from the workshop, jointly authored by an EPA official and an employee of Bayer, acknowledged that “the sublethal impacts of pesticides on honey bee learning, behavior, and physiology have been well documented in the scientific literature” (Fischer and Moriarty 2011, 22). At the same time, workshop participants were not willing to budge from standard methods used to understand and protect against the possible sublethal effects of systemic insecticide exposure on honeybees. According to the report, “Workshop participants agreed that further refinement in assessing and understanding sublethal effects on pollinators requires greater research in order to establish appropriate testing methods, to identify more uniform measurement endpoints (sublethal), and to determine linkages to existing regulatory authority assessment endpoints (e.g., impaired growth, reproduction, or survival)” (Fischer and Moriarty 2011, 22). The EPA has also sponsored field and laboratory research into the chronic effects of neonicotinoid exposure for honeybees. The field experiment, done by Galen Dively’s research group at the University of Maryland in collaboration with USDA bee scientists, was designed based on the same control-­oriented assumptions and methods that we argued are unlikely to get at the indirect and interactive contributions neonicotinoids might have in causing CCD (Dively et al. 2015). However, Dively and his USDA collaborators did not stop there. In a cutting-­edge twist to the field experiment (Pettis et al. 2012), the scientists found in a subsequent laboratory experiment that young bees from the field beehives that had been chronically exposed to low-­levels of imidacloprid were more vulnerable to fungal infection than young bees from unexposed control beehives. EPA scientists questioned the “biological relevancy of this study to bee colonies under natural field conditions” as being “highly uncertain,” primarily because the observed trend of increased fungal infections seen in individual bees exposed to imidacloprid in the field and subsequently studied in the lab was not mirrored in the field beehives (EPA 2012).

98

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

The view that the EPA continues to seek ways to scientifically measure and understand complex interactions was advanced by the agency’s Tom Steeger when he spoke at the 2011 North American Beekeeping Conference in Galveston, Texas. In his presentation, Steeger argued against relying on techniques that deviate from traditional research protocols, saying that the worst outcome would be to use an approach to measuring complex interactions that would lead to falsely negative results. This position is ironic insofar as the general evidential norm adhered to by the EPA, as we discuss in the next section, is to prefer false negative over false positive results. To explain the unwillingness of the EPA to accept existing measures of complex interaction, Steeger indicated that the EPA supports a “sound science” foundation for pesticide regulation. For Steeger, this means that the science must be able to “clearly delineate cause-­effect relationship[s] between a chemical and a receptor” in a reproducible manner (interview, 1/6/2011). Sound science requires “appropriate controls” that are “independently verified.” In addition, the EPA requires quantitative measures of assessment, a fact that distinguishes the United States from some other countries (Brickman et al. 1985, 40; Jasanoff 2005). Significantly, as we discussed in chapter 2, many beekeepers are seeking to measure the complex set of interactions they believe lead to heightened incidents of unexplained beehive losses such as CCD; however, their approach is qualitative and less formal than EPA demands. Thus, their knowledge cannot be taken into account in making policy on the regulation of systemic insecticides. Two things are worth noting about the EPA’s position on the possible indirect effects of systemic insecticides in causing CCD. First, as things stand, ignorance results from the lack of a federal requirement that chemical companies test for sublethal and interactive effects before their compounds can be registered, essentially giving them the EPA’s seal of approval. Second, ignorance stems from the absence of acceptable tests for measuring these indirect effects. In this context, ignorance follows from excluding data from beekeepers and scientists on indirect effects, asserting that they are unacceptable or insufficiently definitive (for example, EPA 2012).

Regulating Knowledge

99

Evidentiary Norms and the Lack of Precaution The early years of pesticide regulation at the EPA were marked by a predominantly precautionary approach. Such an orientation has implications for the kind of evidence required in deciding upon pesticide regulation. Precautionary policy is premised on a false positive orientation where regulators may prohibit the commercialization of pesticides in the face of suggestive evidence of prospective harm (Brickman et al. 1985; Jasanoff 1990), recognizing that the data is not definitive and that subsequent study could suggest the given pesticide does not cause harm. Broadly speaking, since the mid-­1980s, the EPA has moved away from a precautionary approach, preferring a “sound science” position on pesticide regulation (Brickman et al. 1985; Jasanoff 1990). This is a false negative orientation, where the EPA permits the use and commercialization of chemicals and biological materials in the absence of definitive evidence of prospective harm to human health or the environment. Here, subsequent research might indicate that previous research was incorrect and that there is evidence that the given chemical causes harm. A raft of laboratory toxicity studies, which were based on false negative standards, suggest that the newer systemic insecticides have multiple cumulative, sublethal, and developmental effects on honeybees that could lead to phenomena of beehive deaths such as CCD in real-­world settings (reviewed in Maini et al. 2011; Blacquière et al. 2012 and Desneaux et al. 2007; Alaux et al., 2010; Vidau et al. 2011; Palmer et al. 2013; Moffat et al. 2015). Although these findings corroborate the conclusions of beekeepers, EPA officials note that these laboratory studies are inconsistent and do not necessarily translate to what actually occurs in the field. Mirroring dominant academic perspectives in the United States, EPA scientists demand more definitive causal evidence from field experiments on whole hives that are exposed chronically to the systemic insecticides before considering any limitations on the usage of these chemicals (for example, Edwards 2008; EPA 2012; Suryanarayanan and Kleinman 2013). Thus, with the EPA’s concurrence, experimental norms established among academic insect toxicologists (the preference for false negatives and for control-­oriented field studies over laboratory investigation) are reinforced (for example, Johnson et al. 2010) and beekeeper data is dismissed, not considered (relevant) knowledge.

100

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

A further factor makes the EPA’s regulatory culture unfavorable for serious consideration of pesticide effects on honeybee populations and thus reinforces the production of ignorance on the possible role of pesticides in causing CCD: Regulators have historically tended to suspend or limit the usage of a pesticide based on a notion of “imminent hazard” (Edwards 2008; EPA 2012), which, in practice, refers more to human than nonhuman health matters.3 By and large, instances when the EPA did take a precautionary stance revolved around the potential carcinogenic effects of the concerned chemicals on humans.4,5 This tendency is reinforced by the availability since the late 1990s of “reduced risk” pesticides such as the newer systemics, which are thought to have lower mammalian toxicity than the traditional pesticides (EPA 1999). In other words, the apparent relative safety of “reduced risk” pesticides to human health leads the EPA to fail to demand serious consideration of their potential negative effects on honeybees and other insect pollinators. Thus, the agency remains formally ignorant on these matters. We have seen the implications of this orientation in the EPA’s decision to deny the request of two organizations to take the systemic insecticide clothianidin off the market. Steven Bradbury, director of EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, indicated in his letter to Peter Jenkins of the Center for Food Safety and the International Center for Technology Assessment that the chemical did not meet the “imminent harm” standard established by FIFRA (Bradbury 2012). In the letter, Bradbury acknowledges the difficulty of measuring sublethal and interactive effects but, at the same time, insists on provision of direct evidence. There is another point worth noting about this petition denial, and this concerns the economic impacts of permitting or prohibiting systemic insecticides and the way economic calculations affect the standards for acceptable data used to regulate pesticides. Beekeepers have argued for the prohibition of neonicotinoids on the grounds that these chemicals hurt bees and contribute to phenomena of accelerated honeybee losses, including CCD. Heightened levels of honeybee deaths have clear environmental impacts, but the epidemic also has a substantial adverse effect on beekeepers’ livelihoods. In denying the petition, Bradbury criticizes the petitioners for not assessing whether the harm from clothianidin is outweighed by the “benefits to growers and the agricultural economy” (Bradbury 2012, 5). In taking this position, EPA is clearly siding

Regulating Knowledge

101

with the economic interests of growers and agrochemical manufacturers over beekeepers. Since the data on harm of clothianidin to bees is not, by EPA standards, definitive, it cannot provide the foundation for action that could economically harm growers and manufacturers. The livelihoods of beekeepers are not mentioned by Bradbury. Here, importantly, we see the complicated ways in which economic interests are tied with evidential standards and environmental regulation. The U.S. government’s policy is not the only way to approach this problem. In 1999, the French government set the precedent for precaution as the standard in the regulation of newer systemic insecticides in the case of honeybee exposure (Maxim and van der Sluijs 2007; Suryanarayanan and Kleinman 2014). French policy makers decided to limit the use of Gaucho (imidacloprid) and Règent TS (fipronil) in the face of uncertainty surrounding the risks they pose to honeybee health. They drew on a preponderance of indirect evidence from observations in actual crop settings by French beekeepers and follow-­up laboratory and field studies by researchers affiliated with the government. This research suggested that sublethal levels of the systemic insecticides were present in the pollen and nectar of treated crop plants and were retained in soils over multiple years and reentered crops during subsequent cultivations (for example, Bonmatin et al. 2005). These studies also provided evidence that chronic exposure to newer systemic insecticides in laboratory and semi-­field settings significantly impaired the capacity of exposed honeybees to learn, mature, and navigate.6 What is important is that evidential norms do not emerge from nature, and they are not handed down by God. They are established historically among communities of scientists and made into policy by governmental agencies. As we described in chapter 2, scientists have professional advancement interests in preferring a false negative standard over a false positive one. Perhaps the EPA’s commitment to “Science” led the agency to follow the lead of toxicologists on this matter. Or perhaps the prospect of confronting the wrath of the chemical industry—­and powerful and well-­organized interests—­if proven wrong as a result of using a false positive standard shaped EPA policy on this. Either way, it should be clear that there is nothing intrinsically superior about this norm, and it has implications for what counts as knowledge about the role of systemic insecticides in contributing to accelerated honeybee die-­offs and thus for government regulation.

102

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

Good Laboratory Practice A central mechanism through which the EPA controls the development of acceptable evidence on the possible role of neonicotinoids in CCD is what is termed good laboratory practice (GLP). GLP was not initially intended to limit the knowledge developed on pesticide risks and the means by which pesticides damage plants and animals. Rather, the explicit aim of GLP was to assure regulatory agencies that data submitted to them are reliable. GLP specifies how experiments should be designed, performed, tracked, recorded and reported, and by whom in order for the results to be usable in federal rulemaking. However, GLP has had the effect of producing substantial areas of ignorance in assessments of the toxicity of synthetic chemicals to public health and the environment (Editor 2010), including in the case of honeybees and other insect pollinators (for example, Cutler and Scott-­Dupree 2007).7 It is ironic that manufacturers have used calls for compliance to GLP standards to maintain ignorance about the possible role of systemic insecticides in contributing to CCD, since it was corporate malfeasance that prompted the development of GLP standards originally. Prior to the middle of the 1970s, the U.S. government—­and the Food and Drug Administration, in particular—­assumed that toxicology data provided to it by private toxicology laboratories was of good quality. Suspicion about data quality emerged in the case of studies in support of applications for two new therapeutic products submitted by major drug companies (Taylor and Stein 2003). Evidence of data quality problems prompted further inspections. Severe problems at Industrial Bio-­Test Laboratories (IBT Labs) and Biometric Testing prompted the FDA to prohibit these organizations from doing further preclinical studies. IBT Labs was, at the time, one of the largest testing labs in the United States. Its studies attested to the safety of a wide array of drugs, pesticides, and food additives. In light of these problems and the threat that poor-­quality research posed to the safety of drugs, pesticides, and food additives, the FDA and the EPA undertook a massive review of all studies relying on IBT Labs’ work. Among the more than 800 studies the EPA evaluated, it found 85 percent were invalid. The FDA, dealing with a much smaller number of studies, found 36% invalid. The EPA followed the FDA and issued so-­called good

Regulating Knowledge

103

laboratory practice (GLP) regulations in 1983. These standards cover all health and safety testing of agricultural and industrial chemicals as required by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Significantly, although GLP establishes a research standard, the pesticide registrant is the entity that undertakes safety tests of its products. According to EPA officials in the Office of Pesticide Programs (interview, 10/29/09; field notes, 01/05/2011), the EPA conducts some pesticide residue analyses in its own facilities, but the agency does not have sufficient funds and personnel to do more basic research. Given the problems that prompted EPA to establish GLP as its norm, this kind of fox guarding the hen house practice seems particularly ironic. The agency audits company data, but it is not clear that these audits are sufficient to give stakeholders—­ like beekeepers—­confidence in the quality of the data. There is a specific form of ignorance that results from this practice. The results of these tests are proprietary and belong to corporate registrants. Consequently, beekeepers and others concerned about the veracity of this research are not able to examine all the data the EPA uses to approve the chemicals beekeepers hypothesize are threatening their livelihoods (interview, 10/ 29/09). This is why government documents sometimes refer to research in the “open literature.” Some literature is not open for stakeholder or citizen inspection. Of course, industry conduct of tests required for government approval of pesticides under GLP standards is only the most obvious problem in the debate over the role of systemic pesticides in contributing to CCD. In addition, there are broader issues raised by the ways in which the research standards established by GLP create an environment for the production of ignorance about the role of agrochemicals in the accelerated losses of beehives. GLP calls for traditional approaches to isolating potential causal variables and to establishing experimental controls. In order to be deemed GLP-­compliant, approaches have to be “validated” by scientific regulatory bodies via “consensus building” processes that involve researchers from academia and the agrochemical industry (Editor 2010, 1104). This is made more complicated—­and ignorance is reinforced—­by the challenges to updating GLP and making it a more comprehensive tool for understanding complex and interacting effects of synthetic chemicals. According to the editors

104

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

of Nature, one of the most prestigious peer review science journals in the world, “The glacial pace of consensus building and validation required to update [GLP] guidelines can leave gaping holes that allow the approval of chemicals of questionable safety” (2010, 1104). The doggedness with which the EPA retains a commitment to GLP and the most traditional and formal scientific standards is made evident through a review of EPA guidelines from 1982, 1996, 2011, and 2014 for assessing pesticide toxicity to honeybees (EPA 1982; 1996; 2011a; 2014a). In 1982, in the wake of the scandal that led to GLP, the EPA stressed the importance of uniform methods, concurrent control groups, representativeness in samples, random assignment, the provision of “statistically sound” data, and the standard 95  percent confidence interval. Similar language is found in 1996, and the documents produced in 2011 and 2014 reiterate these standards and make clear that the agency is interested in establishing the unambiguousness of hazard and risk. The data they seek must provide evidence that the product is highly toxic at particular levels of exposure. The possibility that it might be toxic is not enough to affect policy. Narrowly construed formal methods are well positioned to provide relatively definitive data on limited matters. However, as we have discussed, data collected by beekeepers seeks to capture greater complexity, but it is inevitably more tentative. Across a period in which much has changed in science itself and during which there are several documented cases where practitioners and citizens have provided what turned out to be useful data that contradicts status quo viewpoints, data collected using nontraditional methods (for example, Wynne 1996), the lack of change in EPA policy is surprising and troubling for many. The failure to create regulatory space for understanding complexity in agricultural ecosystems is particularly ironic, since EPA documents suggest recognition of this intricacy. In the July 2012 letter referred to earlier, denying a petition by the Center for Food Safety and the International Center for Technology Assessment to take one systemic insecticide, clothianidin, off the market because of the possible adverse effects it may have on pollinators, the EPA noted that “there is a significant challenge in understanding the complex relationship between pesticides and effects to honey bees as well as other factors in terms of characterizing and interpreting the potential for sublethal effects” (EPA 7/17/2012).

Regulating Knowledge

105

Good laboratory practice is not, contrary to widely held assumptions, a neutral set of guidelines. It embodies a specific set of values and reflects a particular history. GLP standards serve to systematically exclude certain kinds of data (including the knowledge beekeepers glean from their daily experiences with their beehives about what might be causing CCD) as part of the foundation for pesticide regulation. The knowledge beekeepers acquire as part of their everyday practice and through on-­the-­ground informal experiments is not considered knowledge at all through a GLP lens. One might argue therefore that the knowledge foundation for EPA regulation is incomplete and has blind spots that could be circumvented with a different orientation to what counts as acceptable data.

Target Organisms and Ignorance According to a senior risk evaluator and environmental toxicologist at the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, the very notion of assessing risks to insects is relatively recent at the EPA: insects have historically been regarded as “target” taxa—­organisms to kill, not preserve.8 An historical goal to kill insects means that cumulative, sublethal, and interactive effects of pesticides across the life cycles of honeybees have not, until very recently, been of interest. Indeed, in keeping with the dominant toxicological norms, EPA’s toxicity tests on honeybees mandated by the FIFRA have been geared to target insect pests and emphasize relatively rapid, lethal effects on adult developmental stages. Thus, agency tests focus on “acute toxicity,” and adhere to the LD50 standard. LD50 is the median lethal dose. In other words, it is the dose that causes death to 50 percent of exposed organisms as a result of a single treatment of the chemical of interest within a relatively short time frame. LD50 is decidedly not a measure for assessing chronic, sublethal, and interactive effects. The institutionalization of the research practices we have discussed thus far reflects the EPA’s commitment to traditional and well-­established norms of what counts as rigorous science and widely accepted preferences in the scientific community for understanding a narrow set of causes with precision over grasping a broader set of interactions with a higher degree of uncertainty. As one of these methods, the LD50 standard reflects a now

106

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

outdated understanding of the place of insects in our environment. In terms of insects, the initial use of this measure was intended to establish the lethal effectiveness of insecticides. The chemicals were meant to kill insect pests. Most parties recognize honeybees not as pests, however, but as crucial contributors to agro-­economic vitality. LD50, which can measure only direct and immediate harm to honeybees from chemical exposure, is not an appropriate technique for seeking to understand sublethal effects and complex interactions that may result in CCD, and use of LD50 reinforces a failure to consider indirect and sublethal effects and the ignorance of the array of factors that might be involved.

Pesticide-­Use Compliance Finally, we turn to EPA policy on pesticide-­use compliance. The EPA relies primarily on state agencies to enforce compliance laws related to pesticide usage as mandated in the FIFRA. Until very recently, beekeepers wanting to report incidents of bee kills due to apparent pesticide poisoning were required to register their complaints with state departments of agriculture that, in turn, were expected, but not required by law, to report them to a national database called the Ecological Incident Information System (EIIS) run by the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs. An incident is defined by the EPA to occur when the use of a registered pesticide is “known or suspected of causing the death or other adverse toxicological effect to wild animals and plants other than the intended target species,” including bees (EPA 2011a). Data reported from such incidents might yield useful information in assessing the role of pesticides in contributing to phenomena of accelerated honeybee losses. However, according to one EPA official, the EIIS has received very few reports of pesticide-­related bee kills, and this has led the agency to believe that particular pesticides do not pose a major problem for bees (field notes, 01/05/2011). But commercial beekeepers belonging to the National Honey Bee Advisory Board (NHBAB) argue that many incidents that they reported to their respective states did not show up in the EIIS database (NHBAB 2011). They suggest that state departments of pesticide regulation do not take these incidents seriously and choose not to report them to the EPA (NHBAB 2011). Furthermore, NHBAB beekeepers allege,

Regulating Knowledge

107

“Many beekeepers have reported uncooperative—­even ‘hostile’—­attitudes from state pesticide officers when they attempt to report honey bee poisoning from pesticides” (NHBAB 2011). These beekeepers suggest that the inaction on the part of state agencies is due to a disproportionately strong influence of agroindustry at the level of state governments. Another former NHBAB beekeeper suggests that there is no “incentive for beekeepers to report to the state . . . , [since] we are told reports are ‘filed away’ and never get to the EPA” (2011). In response to beekeepers’ concerns, the EPA in 2013 instituted the National Portal for Incident Reporting (NPIC), which enables beekeepers to file their complaints directly to EPA’s Internet database. Under this new scheme, filing incident reports to state agencies still remains “essential” (Miller 2013) and “the most preferred option” (Steeger 2013). When beekeepers or others report an incident, they are also supposed to communicate the incident to the pesticide manufacturer (Miller 2013). According to James Frazier, a honeybee biologist at Penn State University and a scientific advisor to the NHBAB, when his university reported an incident on its own campus in which bees were inadvertently exposed to a pyrethroid insecticide and died, to the EPA, the EPA asked them to report this to the state and the pesticide manufacturer. But the company refused to acknowledge it was an incident, arguing that the chemical had been used in accordance with its label and registration requirements, and the company declined to formally relay this incident to the EPA (interview, 11/10/2009). The company was entirely within the law to not report, since manufacturers9 are required by 1998 amendments to the FIFRA only to relay “major incidents,” which in the case of insects and bees pertains only to pesticides that are either under “formal review” or to illegal applications (EPA 2011a). Since the pyrethroid at issue was used “correctly” and “according to label requirements” (Frazier interview, 11/10/2009), it did not constitute a reportable “major incident” for the manufacturer. Thus, differing understandings of what constitutes an “incident” affect the reports that get filed with the state and the EPA, and so what different government agencies know about the unintended consequences of certain pesticides. Whereas Penn State’s Frazier interpreted the incident to be “an unintended consequence of the use of the pesticide for a different purpose,” the manufacturer’s refusal to follow up implies a different understanding,

108

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

where an incident is an (un)intended consequence of the abuse of a pesticide. According to Frazier, the EPA acknowledges that incident reports are one of the major indicators that there is a problem that must be addressed. Thus, says Frazier, when the “reporting system is broken,” that’s a real problem (interview 11/10/09). Potentially useful data is not collected, and thus regulators do not know what they don’t know. The failure to report might be explained in at least two ways. First, there is little incentive for witnesses of incidents to report them, since the EPA does not have a record of acting on them. Thus, there may, in fact, be fewer reports than incidents. Second, the relatively decentralized structure of the system of reporting (which goes from the reporter to the state and then to the EPA) offers many opportunities for information to fail to reach the EPA. Whatever the explanation for the low level of incident reports, the absence of evidence here leads to yet another form of ignorance. This ignorance is induced perhaps in part by reporting procedures and in part by the organization of incentives. In the end, however, we do not know whether there are few incidents or simply few reports. Evidence of either would help those seeking to understand the role of systemic insecticides in causing accelerated honeybee die-­offs to get a better picture of the phenomenon. Once an incident is registered, governmental agencies respond by sending inspectors who are tasked with determining the veracity of the reported incident (for example, Lund 2013). Inspectors are often from representative state agencies. Interestingly, incidents of CCD are excluded from being recognized as “bee incidents” by the EPA, because “CCD results from a combination of factors” and “the nature of the combination remains uncertain” (Lund 2013). Based on this definition, state officials who follow up on reported incidents, can, a priori, invalidate any beekeeper reports that link CCD in their beehives to chronic, indirect effects of pesticide exposure. By corollary, only bee kills that exhibit acute or chronic direct effects are considered pesticide-­related incidents of bee kill. Here again, we see how a two-­tiered decentralized system of enforcing pesticide use compliance fuels ignorance about serious concerns regarding the pervasive, indirect effects of agrochemicals on honeybees.

Regulating Knowledge

109

Conclusion The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is the ultimate arbiter of whether an insecticide is placed or remains on the market or should be taken off. Established formally to protect and preserve our biosphere, the agency has always been caught between this role and the expectation that its actions facilitate—­or certainly do not hinder—­the success of the same American industries it regulates and national economic prosperity more broadly. While these contradictory roles contribute to the agency’s policy on CCD and the related ignorance on the contributing role of systemic insecticides, it is really the intersection of these sometimes clashing responsibilities and the agency’s commitment to well-­established norms and practices of mainstream science that have added to the current state of ignorance on the role of new systemic insecticides in honeybee die-­offs and the related policy to permit these chemicals to remain in use. While the links between the EPA and manufacturers sometimes seem too cozy, in this chapter, we have shown that it is the deeply institutionalized character of standard research norms—­from the preference for results that are precise and that establish clear causal pathways to more specifically good laboratory practice and LD50—­that have contributed to regulatory ignorance and inaction in the case of CCD. In outlining the set of research practices acceptable at EPA and those ignored, we have shown how the EPA contributes to the social production of ignorance. The agency does not find existing methods for measuring sublethal effects sufficiently precise to include data from them in regulating systemic insecticides. While the EPA has funded some research on the sublethal effects of newer systemic insecticides on honeybees and other insect pollinators, such as through its Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program,10 its support is limited by its adherence to a control-­oriented research framework in which observed sublethal effects are valued as biologically relevant only when they are causally connected to discrete measurement “endpoints”—­colony growth, survival, and its capacity to produce honey (EPA 2015). In other words, sublethal effects of neonicotinoids on beehives, such as shifts in foraging patterns (Henry et al. 2012), queen failure (Williams et al. 2015), decreased production of male offspring (Henry et al.

110

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

2015), and increased susceptibility to fungal infections (Pettis et al. 2012), would not qualify as being “biologically relevant” in the EPA’s eyes to the extent that these are not shown to negatively affect the survival, growth, and reproduction of beehives. Given that observed sublethal effects and assessment endpoints may be related in extremely complex and indirect ways, establishing direct, causal connections between these factors may be too high a barrier for the control-­oriented variety of research that the EPA supports. The EPA’s insistence on adherence to GLP standards for studies purporting to affect the registration status of a pesticide make it even harder for scientists to design research that gets at the complex and often uncertain connections between pesticides and honeybee health. Thus, the agency focuses on acute effects, assessment endpoints, and imminent hazards. In so doing, the EPA implicitly acknowledges that it cannot know whether the newer systemic insecticides it has approved for use in U.S. agricultural fields and urban settings are indirectly contributing to CCD and other incidents of hive losses.

Coda Toward Just Research and Policy on Bee Health

On April  2, 2015, the Office of Pesticide Programs at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a letter suggesting stringent restrictions on new uses of neonicotinoids (EPA 2015a). The agency wants new data on the impact of these chemicals on honeybees. While the EPA is not prohibiting existing uses of these systemic insecticides, the agency’s letter suggests recognition that we need more and better data on the impact of neonicotinoids on developing bees. But our study implies that as long as it is epistemological business as usual—­as long as the norms that govern what counts as acceptable methods and standards are not revised—­neither scientists nor beekeepers are likely to generate appropriate and acceptable data on the basis of which to end the controversy over accelerated honeybee deaths (such as CCD) and alter policy. In this context, in the pages that follow, we describe a project we are undertaking that seeks a new way to produce pollinator-­ relevant knowledge. Before we turn our attention to our new initiative, we summarize the argument we have put forth in the preceding chapters and discuss the relationship between what we might term the knowledge-­ ignorance dynamics in the case of the honeybee controversy and in two related instances.

111

112

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

The Politics of Knowledge and Ignorance: Vanishing Bees and Beyond Vanishing Bees is a story about knowledge and ignorance. Knowledge is never complete (Haraway 1991; Harding 2000). Different modes of data gathering, standards of evidence, premises about causality, thresholds for the acceptability of chance outcomes, and criteria of evaluation shape what we know and what we do not about a given phenomenon. Two things are important to recognize here. First, there is nothing inherent or intrinsic that makes one set of knowledge acquisition practices or one set of norms about evidence better than another. As we have shown, knowledge acquisition practices and assessment norms have particular histories, and in the course of those histories they become institutionalized and their value comes to be taken for granted. Second, controversies about what counts as appropriate and adequate knowledge (or, indeed, what the truth is) reflect differences across stakeholder groups about appropriate norms and practices around knowledge acquisition. In turn, stakeholder positions on norms and practices are linked to interests, interests that might be professional-­ reputational, livelihood-­motivated, or broadly or narrowly economic or societal. The first layer in understanding the CCD epidemic or the broader pollinator crisis must begin with scientists’ knowledge and, particularly, the scientific knowledge that has dominated discussions of the potential involvement of newer systemic insecticides, has been reflected in U.S. government policy, and has been echoed by the Bayer Corporation. As we showed in this book, entomological knowledge and ignorance are deeply shaped by control-­oriented research norms and practices, which emphasize the precise isolation of the quantifiable effects of individual chemicals on honeybees. Disagreements between university entomologists regarding the role played by neonicotinoids in honeybee declines have come to hinge upon what constitutes real-­world evidence of harm and the scientifically valid grounds for demonstrating that. A rapidly increasing body of laboratory experiments as well as a few emerging field experiments suggest that neonicotinoids—­at levels representative of those found in treated crops—­ can negatively affect the health of honeybees and other insect pollinators such as bumble bees and solitary bees (for example, Whitehorn et al. 2012; .

Coda 113

Henry et al. 2015; Rundlöf et al. 2015). Contending scientists, however, point to the lack of definitive evidence of harm in the majority of field experiments, which, many contend, are more akin to the realistic conditions being faced by honeybees in agricultural ecosystems. What is more, as we showed, even though the prevalent entomological discourse emphasizes the complex and multifactorial nature of honeybee deaths, in practice field experiments are designed to isolate individual factors and the direct, causal roles they might be playing in honeybee health. They are control-­oriented. In sum, as valuable as this research has been, subsequent work based on existing research norms is unlikely to move the debate forward as long as the same research norms and practices are followed. We will continue to understand pieces of the puzzle but be ignorant about the larger picture. As we have discussed, some commercial beekeepers have offered a different approach to understanding CCD than typical among entomologists. Their data-­gathering practices and norms of evidential adequacy differ from those of most entomologists involved in the CCD debate. These beekeepers use an in situ, informal approach. While their orientation does not isolate the effects of individual factors impinging upon bee health with the controlled precision that entomologists advocate, it does lead beekeepers to seriously consider the potential influence of multiple factors that are difficult to isolate and quantify. Their conclusion that honeybee decline is the product of a complex interaction of factors means that these beekeepers would not expect to see systemically improved health of pollinators to result from simply removing neonicotinoids from the market. That said, given their economic stakes in honeybee health, many U.S. commercial beekeepers would be happy to see neonicotinoids significantly restricted. They are comfortable basing policy on suggestive evidence, reflecting a willingness to subsequently find that their research produced falsely positive findings. That is, these beekeepers would prefer to be wrong about the putative harm posed by neonicotinoids to honeybees—­suggested by their everyday observations and various scientific studies—­than to overlook real harm and damage their livelihoods as a result. The understandings of these beekeepers and the expertise they possess have generally not been recognized in contexts in which the control-­ oriented variety of entomology is the established standard for doing research and the basis on which to make policy. The EPA’s evidential

114

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

standards for assessing the harm posed by pesticides to bees have come to adhere closely to the control-­oriented variety of norms and values adopted by academic entomologists. Since the early 1980s, the EPA has shifted from taking a broadly precautionary (false-­positive) orientation to pesticide regulation to a false-­negative one, where regulators permit the commercialization of chemicals in the absence of definitive evidence of direct harm to human and/or environmental health. EPA standards such as good laboratory practices not only exclude the knowledge and variety of expertise of commercial beekeepers who engage in informal experimentation but also certain research done by scientists, which points to the indirect, interactive and sublethal ways in which neonicotinoids could be contributing to ongoing honeybee losses. At the policy level, EPA standards define what we know and what we do not—­what we are ignorant about—­in the case of the role played by neonicotinoids in colony collapse disorder. And while Bayer, the central corporate player in this controversy, has played little direct role in defining the standards of research and evidence used to regulate the chemicals they manufacture, the status quo benefits the company. Demands for definitive, direct causal evidence maximize the likelihood that Bayer’s systemic insecticides will remain on the market. And, thus, it makes perfect sense that Bayer’s public statements, analyses of research findings, and critiques of beekeeper data all draw on the research standards historically established by academic entomologists that underlie federal government regulatory policy. Their actions reinforce existing evidential norms and in so doing contribute to what we know and do not about CCD. The case of knowledge, ignorance, and colony collapse disorder is not unique and offers a number of general lessons. There are other instances where different stakeholders in knowledge controversies have had different ideas about what they can know, what they do know, and the basis on which policy decisions should be made. In parallel cases, we see, like in this one, that established evidential standards are (at least initially) followed and that, consequently, the knowledge claims of socially dominant stakeholders are accepted and the claims of marginalized groups are ignored or dismissed. Among the most prominent episodes with parallels to the honeybee case is the controversy surrounding drug testing in the early days of HIV-­ AIDS (Epstein 1996). This case pitted drug researchers and government

Coda 115

regulators, on the one hand, with AIDS treatment activists, on the other. At a broad general level, the question raised by this case is, what can we know about drug efficacy and how can we know it? When this controversy arose in the 1980s, the gold standard for drug testing was double-­blind randomized clinical trials in which the experimental treatment was compared to a placebo. The approach here is to set up a rigorous, tightly controlled experiment in which one group of subjects gets the experimental treatment and the other group of subjects gets a fake treatment (they are the control group). This approach should allow researchers to definitively conclude whether the experimental treatment is effective or not. But, as in the case of CCD, the world is more complicated than the experimental design allows. Among other things, given the deadliness of AIDS, showing the efficacy of any experimental treatment using the gold-­standard approach depended on members of the control group dying. This raised ethical and practical problems for the stakeholder groups. The ethical issues should be clear. The practical problem is that knowledgeable research subjects would be unlikely to risk getting the placebo and thus face certain death, creating recruitment problems. Who would participate? It also creates a context in which trial participants might seek ways to “cheat.” In the AIDS case, trial participants in high-­profile cases threatened to share their “treatments,” and thus all participants would have received a mixture of the experimental drug and the placebo. Such practices would, of course, make the findings less than helpful. Activists’ calls for redesigning clinical trials were initially ignored by scientists and the National Institutes of Health. Subsequent discussion, however, led to broad consideration of alternatives to traditional gold-­ standard trials. One option involved giving different groups of subjects different forms of treatment and then comparing the efficacy (no group received an outright placebo). The second option involved comparing different health measures of patients before and during treatment with a new experimental drug. While results from these approaches may not have been as definitive as gold-­standard clinical trials, these alternative approaches produced useable (and thus valuable) results. They produced knowledge that was ultimately cleaner than scientists would have been able to produce using traditional strategies. Another episode that resonates in interesting ways with the CCD controversy is the case of cancer clusters in Woburn, Massachusetts, in the 1970s

116

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

and 1980s (see Brown and Mikkelsen 1990). A cancer cluster is an instance in which a group of people in a concentrated geographic area is diagnosed with the disease. Such concentrations commonly prompt epidemiologists to seek to understand patterns and causes. In this case, there were several distinct stakeholders: area residents, Massachusetts government officials, an area chemical company, and later academic epidemiologists. Beekeepers work closely with their beehives and so are likely to observe patterns that more sporadic observers might miss. What is more, their observations are contextual. They look at their hives not in isolation but in relation to the fields where they are placed and the factors their bees are consequently exposed to. In Woburn, groups of neighbors were the first to observe a pattern of leukemia cases, which they carefully documented. Living in the community, they also noted unusual developments—­discolored water coming from residential showers, among other things. Residents pressed government officials to investigate. In 1980, a joint Massachusetts-­federal study explored the relationship between water and diseases. Researchers found twelve cases of leukemia where chance alone would predict five. Subsequent research in which the twelve cases were compared to twenty-­four people in the community who did not have leukemia failed to discern factors that systematically distinguished between those with and those without cancer. However, researchers did not have data—­believed to be crucial by residents—­on the relationship between water quality and disease since they lacked water quality data for the period before 1979. Researchers could not rule out water as the culprit, but preferred for professional reasons false negative results over false positive. Residents worried that water was the causal agent and would have preferred to err on the side of caution, even if subsequent research proved them wrong, and remove themselves from exposure to a possible carcinogen. The residents persisted. They found collaborators among biostatisticians from Harvard. Together, they conducted a residential survey that pointed scientists to factors they would not have otherwise explored. And this was, indeed, a collaboration. Residents helped with survey wording attentive to local language, which ensured valid results. This data combined with additional water tests ultimately led to the conclusion that polluted water contributed to the cancer cases in Woburn.

Coda 117

The Woburn case shares much with the CCD controversy. First, government scientists and residents accepted different standards of evidential adequacy, and these differences reflected the different stakes scientists and residents had in the case. Second, residents were more attentive to local conditions and to local factors than scientists. Third, the polluting company did not try to manipulate data but simply pointed to the standards of evidence used by the government scientists involved. Openness to a broader array of evidence and research methods ultimately changed what policymakers knew and the decisions they made. Of course, the AIDS treatment case and the leukemia cluster episode in Woburn, Massachusetts, are not identical to the story we tell about honeybees and colony collapse disorder, but they do have parallels, and together, these three cases suggest some general lessons (also see Ottinger 2010). First, of course, the established and traditional norms and practices of the particular sciences provide a context in which knowledge can be produced but equally create an environment in which ignorance results. Adhering to these norms and practices may not always be the best way to understand a phenomenon, and when lives and livelihoods are at stake, these norms and practices may not be the most appropriate. Second, adopting nontraditional norms and practices may allow us to produce valuable knowledge in ways the standard route does not. Third, there are reasons that higher-­status stakeholders adhere to traditional norms and practices, and the explanation for this commitment is not simply that doing so produces the best knowledge. Their reasons are inextricably tied to their interests, or what we called livelihood stakes. Given the institutionalized expectation that experiments will carefully control and isolate variables and that evidence will establish statistical significance measured at the 95 percent level of certainty, scientists’ career recognition and advancement depends on their adherence these norms. Companies with a product on “trial” are more than happy to point to these standards as they are most likely to advance the company’s bottom line. And insofar as regulatory standards also support these norms and practices, knowledge that could best serve the interest of patients, community residents, or, in our case, beekeepers, may be dismissed or overlooked. Finally, paying systematic attention to the knowledge generated by, or the approaches proposed by, those directly affected by the problem that is the focus of attention (and those who typically have less social status)

118

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

may produce valuable knowledge reflecting local circumstances and contextual complexity. Beyond the value of their research methods, matters of equity suggest the appropriateness of attention to these stakeholders. One issue raised by the CCD case, but not central in the AIDS drug treatment or Woburn leukemia cluster episodes, is the matter of complexity. The established way of doing science in the CCD controversy places high value on reductive experimental approaches that control and isolate individual variables and that produce results with relatively high levels of certainty. While there is little doubt of the value of such approaches, they are limited too. We live in a complex world where few doubt that most outcomes are the product of complex interactions, mixtures of indirect and direct effects, circuitous causal pathways. The dominant norms and practices in particular sciences may not be well-­suited to understanding this world and finding solutions to our most pressing problems, such as climate change and environmental pollution. Research structured to understand matters of concern to us in all of their complexity may produce suggestive rather than definitive evidence, but in light of the social, environmental costs at stake, it may be time to rethink our adherence to false negative standards of evidence. A precautionary policy that does not ignore what is not known may be in our collective best interests.

Toward an Alternative Experimental Model How do these lessons apply in the CCD case? While the widely accepted approach to studying the plight of honeybees does not fully consider the interactive and multiple contexts in which commercially managed honeybees are experiencing die-­offs, this does not mean that a control-­oriented approach has no value. Indeed, we have learned a great deal from research done using this approach. However, a control-­oriented approach is arguably not well-­adapted to grapple with the interactive and cumulative effects of combinations of factors that may be leading to honeybee declines in the field, where the effects of environmental variation are much harder to control. Honeybee scientists seem well aware of the limits of taking a control-­oriented, reductive approach to field research but see adherence to these norms as a practical necessity, which is an historical outcome of the

Coda 119

particular development of entomology in relation to agricultural science in the United States. The fact that a control-­oriented approach constitutes the prevalent means to understand accelerated honeybee deaths and the role of newer systemic insecticides in contributing to this crisis leaves us ignorant in systematic ways (Kleinman and Suryanarayanan 2013; Kleinman and Suryanarayanan 2015). First, research examining interactions between multiple factors in the field is less likely to get done. Accounting for interactions involving relatively low levels of neonicotinoids is difficult in a control-­ oriented framework because of the inordinately high numbers of resources (for example, beehives, research labor) that would be needed to meet widely accepted statistical conventions. Since it is hard to accomplish this in the prevalent control-­oriented framework, we are left with an area of “undone science” (Frickel et al. 2010). Second, the control-­oriented field research that does get accomplished produces knowledge and nonknowledge that can be misleading, to the extent that it precludes serious consideration of the interactive, indirect, and sublethal effects of the chemicals in question (for example, Cutler and Scott-­Dupree 2007). It leads to a variety of ignorance that some have termed “false knowledge” (Smithson 1985). Third, criteria for concluding whether observed differences between experimentally exposed and unexposed beehives are statistically significant and biologically relevant reflect a false-­negative-­error norm—­a non-­precautionary orientation that prefers to overlook the possible harm posed by a chemical rather than conclude incorrectly that a chemical is harmful. In other words, at a professional level, academic biologists and entomologists would prefer not to make fools of themselves by claiming an effect where there is none (for example, see Colquhoun 2014). Here, institutionalized professional norms of academic entomology shape the production of ignorance by not seriously considering “inconclusive” results as knowledge. The inability of the existing control-­oriented approach to field experiments on pesticides and honeybees to provide the basis for understanding the honeybee crisis and allowing us to act on the challenges facing honeybees and other pollinators suggests the need for additional approaches. These would seek a better balance between experimental control and environmental complexity and include nonscientist stakeholders such as commercial beekeepers and growers and their varieties of expertise

120

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

in formulating research designs and goals (Suryanarayanan 2013). Such “complexity-­oriented”1 approaches would attend to the multiple overlapping contexts—­spatial, temporal, and social—­that constitute, and are constituted by, honeybees and other insect pollinators. Spatial contexts include landscapes and assemblages of plant-­animal-­microbial communities as well as “abiotic” elements such as soils, climates, and water availability. Temporal contexts, which are intricately tied to spatial ones, include, for example, the developmental dynamics of a beehive across multiple generations and historical (longer-­term) population-­level shifts in particular geographical regions. Social and cultural contexts, many of which we have outlined in the preceding chapters, include culturally diverse practices of beekeeping, bee breeding, and agriculture as well as the social organization of research, policy, and industries shaping these practices. Being attentive to these multiple contexts would entail experimental practices such as geo-­spatial mapping of landscapes across which beekeeping operations are moving and correlating landscape-­level parameters, such as the extent of monocropping within a radius of two to three miles around beehives,2 to long-­term data on the health and disease status of these beehives. It would require archival research into historical trends in honeybee health and ethnographic fieldwork and survey research to gain a better sense of beekeepers’ heterogeneous practices and perspectives. To be sure, some of this “complexity-­oriented” research is already happening, led by the Bee Informed Partnership team as well as by other honeybee scientists (vanEngelsdorp et al. 2012). Significantly, this context-­sensitive approach could lead us to ask a different set of research questions, with potentially different results: for example, how do specific mixes of beekeeping, agricultural practices, and spatio-­temporal circumstances interact with the biological dynamics of beehives? In so doing, we might move away from the control-­ oriented focus on isolating the effects of individual factors. Importantly, a complexity-­oriented approach would shift our analytic focus from bees per se to human-­bee relationships. Not just bees but human observers are sensitive to specific social, spatio-­temporal, and historically influenced contexts—­ organizational, commercial, disciplinary, and so forth. The results gathered might differ depending on an observer’s background, interests, values, and investments in particular ways of making knowledge. The results that a bee biologist sees, when he or she observes

Coda 121

individual bees and beehives, are affected not only by her or his particular specializations—­toxicology, genetics, behavior, and so forth—­but also by peer-­reviewed standards for experimental design and measurement and modes of interpretation in publications and grant proposals. While an academic landscape ecologist’s perspectives may have quite a bit in common with that of a toxicologist, especially in their predilection for false negative results, they may also differ because the landscape ecologist’s concerns might be at the level of plant-­pollinator interactions and landscapes, not the bee or beehive alone. A migratory large-­scale beekeeper, on the other hand, would be more concerned with keeping his or her business afloat, and her or his observations would be predicated on a preference for false positive (type I errors) over false negative (type II errors) results. Such a beekeeper would prefer to take action on the basis of incomplete and perhaps ultimately incorrect data than to overlook suggestive data and fail to take action where subsequent evidence suggests action was appropriate. Large-­ scale beekeepers might prefer relatively rapid practical solutions to improve the current plight of their beehives over long-­term research to figure out the exact causes of the die-­offs. The key point here is that appropriate questions, methods, and modes of interpretation change depending on the point of view, and no one point of view is inherently better than another in this case. However, some observers are more powerful, and by dint of their accumulated material and symbolic capital, their observations are more privileged. A complexity-­oriented approach could identify the set of relations, or the “narrative” (McCormick et al. 2004), which reveals blind spots and contingencies in each observer’s point of view and, at the same time, builds upon what these different views might tell us about the multifactorial problem of honeybee decline. From a regulatory science standpoint, this would entail not ignoring uncertain knowledge generated in laboratory and field studies as well as in beekeepers’ studies. Precisely what would constitute acceptable standards for gauging suggestive evidence of harm to honeybees and other insect pollinators needs to be resolved through carefully designed deliberations between these stakeholders, facilitated by parties who do not have a direct stake in the outcome. From a social scientific perspective, the broader normative implication is that beekeepers, growers, multiple different scientists, and governmental representatives would need to be included in the processes of

122

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

developing research and policy. This would require careful facilitation and trust building, because, as we have seen throughout this book, these groups have a historically shared politics of conflict, cooperation, and exploitation (Suryanarayanan 2013; Suryanarayanan 2015).

Dynamic Experimentation Several analyses in science and technology studies (STS) have documented citizens’ involvement in, and contributions to, science and technology policy matters (Kleinman 2000) and actual research practice (Brown and Mikkelsen 1990; Epstein 1996). Epstein (1996) describes how the on-­the-­ ground experience and knowledge of AIDS activists led to the development of better clinical research. Similarly, Brown and Mikkelsen (1990) show how the insights of community members living next to toxic waste sites improved epidemiological understanding of a particular set of cancer clusters. This and other scholarship provides compelling evidence that motivated nonscientific citizens are not only able to grasp complex social and technical issues in ways that point to gaps in expert understandings but can also contribute substantively with their own knowledge (Brown and Mikkelsen 1990; Epstein 1996). This research reinforces the value of making nonscientist citizens active participants, along with scientists, in the process of producing and validating knowledge, especially in those cases where the knowledge has important implications for their lives. But simply bringing together scientists and nonscientists may not be sufficient for a collaboration that is meaningful to all participants as long as the issues remain framed by a dominant scientific culture (Wynne 2003). Initiatives to formally organize interactions between citizens and scientists and post-­collaboration analyses have occurred primarily in the context of science and technology policy (for example, Sclove 2000; Kleinman et al. 2011). Comparatively less attention has been given to the task of systematically initiating and analyzing efforts to democratize actual knowledge production regarding phenomena of broad social concern (but see Brown and Mikkelsen 1990). With the support of the National Science Foundation, we have begun to lay the ground for advancing our understandings of citizen engagement in knowledge production through a real-­time “experiment” in deliberative democracy aimed

Coda 123

at developing a complexity-­oriented approach to better understand the problems of sustaining honeybees and other insect pollinators. Our initiative is an experiment in a double sense. First, we aim to see whether we can help facilitate a mode of interaction among stakeholders that allows actors with different interests and perspectives to collaborate in an effort to advance our understanding of accelerated declines of honeybees and other insect pollinators. Second, we hope to create an environment in which stakeholders can design and oversee the undertaking of actual field research that can capture complexity, provide data of use to stakeholders and policymakers, and serve as model for further scientific research and policy. We have enrolled thirteen participants—­five commercial beekeepers and two commercial growers (spanning divergent practices and economies of scale), four academic scientists (two research and extension entomologists, a pollination ecologist, and a honeybee biologist), a federal governmental agency official, and a conservation group representative. In recruiting participants, we sought stakeholders with high levels of credibility in their fields of practice, who have a history of collaborating beyond their respective areas of expertise and who are known to be relatively open-­ minded. We are organizing several day-­long deliberations between these participants over the course of two years, interspersed with a pilot field experiment where we are implementing the group’s agreed-­upon ideas for design and measurement to get at the mix of factors affecting the health of honeybees.3 The initial deliberations and the first iteration of the field experiment shed light on the potential and challenges of the approach we have set out to explore. The first deliberation aimed to lay the groundwork for the remainder of the initiative. The participants got an opportunity to learn about each other’s stories, professional practices, and perspectives with regard to the health of honeybees and other insect pollinators. They also heard from academic scientists in the group about the kinds of research they are undertaking, the rationale for their particular approaches, and findings of relevance to beekeepers, growers, and policymakers. Notably, when one of the biologists showed and interpreted a graph with a seemingly linear relationship—­ but with high degree of variability—­between per-­acre cranberry yields and number of beehives, the beekeepers and growers provided an array of

124

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

compelling alternative explanations for the sources of variability, tied to their experiential knowledge. Overall, the deliberants drew attention to two enduring issues: the perceived lack of good-­quality landscapes for foraging honeybees as well as habitats for wild pollinators and potentially problematic patterns of pesticide use in grower and beekeeper operations. Moving forward, participants noted the need to devise ways to understand these two issues not in isolation but together and also to precisely delineate the issues to be studied. The second deliberation occurred at a commercial beekeeping operation and a commercial crop growing operation, where participants got a hands-­on sense of beekeeping and cropping practices, and the knowledge and practical constraints that shape them. This deliberation focused on how to put together a pilot field study using beehives. The goal was not to isolate the specific causal mechanisms of honeybee decline but rather to explore how one could understand real-­world interactions between landscape quality and beekeeping and cropping practices. While beekeepers and growers frequently deferred to participating scientists in these discussions, participating nonscientists often made interesting and valuable suggestions. For example, during a discussion about how to capture shifts in the pesticide composition of pollen stored in beehives, one beekeeper suggested that one could place an empty frame with drawn comb that bees would fill up with pollen, which could then be sampled during our inspections. Although generally enthusiastic about our deliberative approach to field research focused on capturing complexity, some of the university entomologists in the group pushed for a field study design, where the effects of each factor would be examined in isolation and compared to the effects of each combination of factors, with sufficient number of beehives needed within each treatment to enable statistical comparisons at 95 percent confidence levels. The sheer number of beehives and resources required to examine the effects of cumulative interactions between various factors across multiple times and scales in a replicable manner would make it practically unfeasible to carry out a field study that attempts to resolve the interactive effects of various combinations of factors. We had imagined the field study as exploratory. It turned out different members of the group had different understandings of “exploratory.” We were imagining an initiative that might generate new measures and new approaches to experimentation. For the participating

Coda 125

scientists, however, “exploratory” meant generating potentially useful preliminary data about the different effects of various variables on bee health. They expressed concern that as originally proposed, inordinate time and effort would be spent producing data that would be indistinguishable from background noise, and instead pushed for a study design that would provide preliminary data on the effects of landscape-­level factors on colony health. Through careful discussion, we were able to come to agreement on an approach that balanced our divergent understandings of “exploratory.” The deliberations have raised several productive challenges so far. First, from the very beginning, time commitment has been a huge issue, which is also a central issue in democratic engagement in general (Kleinman, Delborne, and Anderson 2011). All of our participants have demanding full-­ time jobs, so scheduling sessions all could attend was challenging, and it has been hard work to ensure that participants are able to return to subsequent sessions. The issue of time has cropped up in other ways as well. For example, we found that beekeepers supported immediate, concrete results that could help them keep their hives alive. By contrast, the scientists were inclined to think in terms of the length of time required to produce well-­ replicated studies. Another challenge has been grower fear that the entire process would be biased by beekeeper beliefs about the negative effects of chemically intensive agro-­industrial practices on honeybees. Over time, emerging trust among participants has led some of these concerns to fade into the background. While we initially observed a certain amount of deference among beekeepers and growers toward the participating scientists, over time that dynamic has diminished somewhat. The change was particularly perceptible in the deliberation following the field study, when we shared the emerging results of the pilot field study. But first, a brief explanation of the field study that the deliberants co-­ created is in order. In June 2014, beehives were situated in two types of landscapes—­relatively high and low intensities of agricultural development. Each landscape type was represented by two field sites. The agricultural intensity of each site was determined based on collaborating beekeepers’ knowledge of the landscape in which they managed honeybees as well as the surrounding acreage of corn, soy, and potato crops obtained from a geographical information system database of the watershed area

126

Va n i s h i n g B e e s

developed by one of the entomologists in the group. Distances between each location were at least six to seven miles, diminishing the likelihood that honeybees from one location interacted with another. A pallet of four beehives was placed at each of the four sites. Beehives were started by one of the collaborating commercial beekeepers in late April 2014 from package bees and queens purchased from a package producer in California, in hive boxes containing a mixture of frames with new wax foundation and prior year’s comb with older wax, honey, and pollen. The beekeeper fed all beehives with high fructose corn syrup throughout the period of initial establishment. This is a fairly standard way to initiate new beehives among large-­scale commercial beekeepers. In general, all beehives received the same type and level of beekeeping manipulations. Study beehives were not treated for parasitic mites until the autumn, even though mites sometimes hurt the health of honeybees. A two-­to four-­person crew of beekeepers and researchers gathered several measures during five sampling days in May, June, July, September, and October, including the number of frames covered with adult bees; brood pattern (a beekeeper measure of hive health); amount of comb area covered with sealed brood, open brood, nectar, and pollen; pesticide residue levels in beehives; levels of mites and Nosema (a bee gut pathogen); and beehive mortality. Most strikingly, six out of eight beehives in the more agriculturally intensive sites were dead (no bees and no brood) at the last sampling date. By comparison, three out of eight beehives situated in the less agriculturally intensive landscape sites were dead at the same time point. The mite levels were well below the threshold level of concern (five mites per one hundred bees) until the last sampling point, when they skyrocketed in all beehives, while the Nosema levels decreased steeply over the same period. These preliminary results matched beekeepers’ and farmers’ experiences as well as scientists’ expectations of trends. The emerging results not only validated some of the beekeepers’ and growers’ experiences but were also consistent with previously published results in honeybee biology. Deliberating on the preliminary results provided a space in which the nonscientists began sharing their understandings much more openly. We believe that gathering around an object (the field study results) in which participants felt some sense of creative ownership, and to which they could relate meaningfully based on their own experiences, helped to fortify the trust that has slowly been building between

Coda 127

these participants, whose fields of practice share a protracted history of conflict and tension as well as collaboration. As we write this, we are gathering results in the aftermath of a second field season of honeybee research, and we are hopeful that the collective work of our deliberants will help lay the ground for future efforts to do research differently in cases where scientists and practitioners face problems that are not easy to understand or resolve, and where new approaches to collective engagement and understanding complexity offer the prospect of productive resolutions. Many of the problems we face today share features with the controversies around insect pollinators: intricate sets of stakeholders with divergent interests and an environment in which the plausible causes and effects are not easily disentangled and conceivably interact across multiple scales and times in complicated ways. As we continue our work to learn more about the deliberative process and pollinator health, and have stakeholders move beyond their particular roles and interests, we hope not only to prompt a reconsideration of the research norms and practices upon which most research and policy is based in this arena but also to provide a generalizable model for understanding how phenomena marked by complexity, controversy, and scientific uncertainty—­biodiversity, biofuels, climate change, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, and other issues—­can be understood in fuller and fairer ways in research and policy making.

notes

Introduction 1  According to scientists from Bayer, which is one of the primary manufacturers of these newer kinds of insecticides ( Jeschke and Nauen 2008; Jeschke et al. 2011), systemic insecticides such as imidacloprid persist for extended periods inside the tissues of treated plants and thus afford growers extra protection from insect “pests” compared to other insecticides. 2  We do not claim that stakeholder interests overdetermine the kinds of norms and practices they follow. Adherence to particular norms and practices is not only affected by interests and livelihood stakes but also by culturally and historically shared understandings and meanings. Furthermore, interests are not static but are actively constructed and renewed in struggles over epistemic authority and resources in various research and policy making arenas. That said, once contending actors construct norms, rules, and regulations in accordance with particular values, interests, and stakes, these already constructed factors can constrain practices in particular fields (Kleinman 1998).

chapter 1  Knowing with Their Eyes? 1  Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from Clint Walker come from our interview with him on January 14, 2010. 2  Given the widespread “cultural authority of science” (Gieryn 1999) especially in the United States (Kleinman and Kinchy 2003), it is no coincidence that Walker’s argument takes on a rhetorical form mirroring an experimental scientific logic of isolation and control, potentially toward gaining the attention of regulators and scientists. 3  January 2011, field notes from the North American Beekeeping conference in Galveston, TX. 4  Many large-­scale and small-­scale beekeepers are attuned to policies and scientific findings of relevance to honeybee health through local, regional, and national gatherings of beekeepers, scientists, and regulators. 5  The premier trade magazine of French beekeepers. 6  Peter Borst is a former commercial beekeeper and former New York State apiary inspector who works as lab manager in the Cohen Lab, a biomedical research laboratory at Cornell University in the state of New York. 7  See Oliver’s personal website scientificbeekeeping.com.

129

130

Notes to Pages 25–51

8  As one might expect, NHBAB and other beekeepers have a response to Oliver’s claim. They point to laboratory toxicological studies to argue that that some of the metabolites that imidacloprid breaks down into are at least as toxic to bees as the parent compound. 9  Borst’s most recent utterances in this regard suggest a modest shift in his position and indicate that viewpoints about science are not static: “The idea that science is value neutral is false. Information alone can tell us nothing; it has to be interpreted. Everything we think is based on our accumulated knowledge, which is completely personal and unique to each of us” (Borst 2015). 10  “Summary of Strategic Planning Retreat for NHBAB,” October 26–­­27, 2009, at Penn State University, State College, compiled by Dr. James L. Frazier (facilitator). 11  Pseudonym. 12  http://www.projectapism.org/ (accessed on May 9, 2012). 13  Unless otherwise noted, information and quotations by Michael and responding beekeepers will be cited as “beekeeper-­scientist exchanges 2009.” These are based on a set of private e-mail exchanges between beekeepers and bee scientists that occurred between November 1 and November 5, 2009, which we obtained from an informant. 14  That said, beekeepers have in turn pointed out to so-­called dissenters that “while feed supplements improve bee health and seem to deter CCD like symptoms, you need [to] realize that your presentation is leading regulators to believe that bee mortality is simpl[y] a nutrition issue” (beekeeper-­scientist exchanges 2009).

chapter 2  Keeping the Research Disciplined 1  Also see Edwards (2008) for a similar dismissal of a petition to suspend the neonicotinoid imidacloprid in 2008. 2  It is worth noting here that in proposing field toxicity tests on whole colonies, Johnson et al. (2010) cite a French study (Colin et al. 2004), which by contrast used miniaturized colonies. 3  The typical commercial insecticide formulation consists of one or more active ingredients, which are the principal lethal agents, along with other “inert” ingredients that are supposed to facilitate the action of the active ingredients. 4  In some cases, the very same agricultural entomologists who helped develop insecticides also established experiments on nontarget bees, such as Laurence Atkins Jr. at the University of California. 5  Henry’s group departed from the traditional control-­oriented approach and took a landscape ecological approach in establishing a field experimental design that stuck radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on individual bees and tracked their flight and behavior patterns across neonicotinoid-­treated fields and inside beehives. In this way, Henry et al. (2015) examined individual honeybees as well as the beehives from which those individuals came. The French group claims to “provide the missing link”



Notes to Pages 55–57

131

between laboratory studies showing negative effects and field studies showing negligible effects of neonicotinoids on honeybees. The study found that more individual bees died from neonicotinoid exposure; however, at the level of beehives this translated to a sublethal effect—­affected beehives attempted to compensate for the loss of their individual foragers by delaying the production of male brood and switching to producing more female brood. While Henry and his colleagues take this demographic switch to be evidence of “behavioral disorders triggered by trace levels of nonicotinoids,” industry scientists interpret the evidence to mean that beehives can successfully recover from exposure to neonicotinoids (e.g., Dewar 2015). The subtle demographic effect observed in Henry et al.’s field experiment adds a new wrinkle in scientific debates over the role played by neonicotinoids in honeybee health, but it is unlikely to be seen by regulators and pesticide manufacturers as being sufficient to affect “endpoint measurements” such as hive mortality and longevity (see chapter 5).

chapter 3  Bees under the Treadmill of Agriculture 1  In the early decades of the twentieth century, many orchard growers were convinced that keeping honeybees would yield “more and better fruits from their orchards” (Root and Root 1920, 301). One grower, reflecting the views of many others, noted in 1920 that he “could not do without bees.” But he was not collecting and selling their honey. “I never take a pound of their honey,” he said. “All I want them to do is to pollinate the blossoms . . . I’ve got 50 colonies now, and am building up the apiary each year” (Root and Root 1920, 358). The 1920 revised edition of A. I. and E. R. Root’s The ABC and XYZ of Beekeeping, a widely used manual of beekeeping, bee diseases, and bee laws, made a big pitch for the use of honeybees in pollinating a variety of “fruit blossoms.” Acknowledging the “important part” that “indigenous insects” play in “the pollination of wild flora,” the highly respected beekeepers and authors asserted: modern fruit culture requires the special agency of the honeybee. In sections where immense orchards cover many square miles of territory and fruit is grown by the ton and carload, the wild insects are wholly inadequate to pollinate the great expanse of bloom, and many apiaries must be established to obtain the best results. The only pollinating insects under the control of man are honeybees, and these must be introduced in large numbers in order to make fruit-­growing commercially profitable. Fruit growing has a marvelous future before it, and must ever be associated with bee culture. (340; our emphases) 2  The establishment of “pollination for hire” around the 1940s is evident from historical records of discussions between beekeepers. The topic of “pollination” begins to appear systematically in records of national beekeepers’ meetings in the 1940s, and the first “annual pollination conference” was organized by the American Beekeeping Federation in 1945 (Milum 1964).

132

Notes to Pages 57–65

3  Concomitantly, the U.S. beekeeping industry has, in a manner similar to agroindustry more generally, grown progressively more concentrated, with larger commercial operations that provide migratory pollination services owning the bulk of the nation’s bees. As of 2002, approximately 73 percent of beekeeping operations had less than twenty-­five hives per operation, but accounted for only around 2 percent of all managed bee hives. On the other hand, approximately 27 percent of beekeeping operations account for over 93 percent of all managed bee hives in the United States (Daberkow et al. 2009). 4  Tammy Horn (2005) notes that “the 1922 Honey Bee Act was fueled by fear of diseases, immigrants and contamination” (165, footnote 65). 5  In 2010, following renewed fears of the importation of exotic bee pathogens, APHIS stopped the Australian imports. Today, the U.S. APHIS allows queens and packages of adult honeybees to be imported from Canada and New Zealand. 6  The cranberry grower also said “his” beekeeper has 6,000 beehives he took all over the country and did not have any colony collapse issues (Patrice Kohl, personal communication). 7  Thomas Gieryn’s notion of “boundary-­work” (1983, 1999) refers to the ways in which actors distinguish their work from others’ in effort to gain authority and influence in struggles over resources and credibility. Actors are constantly drawing and re-­drawing boundaries in attempts to advance their own claims to expertise while simultaneously delegitimizing others’. The most powerful kinds of boundary-­work draw on discourses and practices that have acquired historical stature in specific cultural fields, such as the contemporary cultural authority of “science.” 8  In contrast to growers’ claims about the low probability of runoff to water bodies, multiple recent surveys from regions of high usage of neonicotinoids in Canada, United States, and Europe report the widespread occurrence of low levels of these insecticides in wetlands, rivers, streams, lakes, and other water bodies (van Dijk et al. 2013; Huseth and Groves 2014; Main et al. 2014). Furthermore, a recent European study correlates recent declines in populations of insectivorous birds with the rise of neonicotinoid usage (Hallmann et al. 2014). 9  Spearheading Monsanto’s “bee unit” is Jerry Hayes, former chief apiary inspector of Florida’s state department of agriculture and an apiarist with immense credibility in the U.S. beekeeping industry, whom Monsanto hired in 2011. 10  http://www.monsanto.com/improvingagriculture. Apart from a few names of the HBAC members mentioned in the Honey Bee Health Summit report online, which included commercial beekeeper Dave Mendes and bee scientists Diana Cox-­Foster and Dennis vanEngelsdorp, no other information is publicly available. 11  The agrochemical industry has responded by mobilizing a counter-­coalition called Growing Matters (growingmatters.org) led by Bayer CropScience, Syngenta, and Valent U.S.A. Corporation, which has enrolled agricultural economists from land-­grant universities to develop “independent” cost-­benefit research showing the immense value of neonicotinoid seed treatments to soybean and other agricultural crops (e.g., see Hurley and Mitchell 2014).



Notes to Pages 68–81

133

12  The campaigners for suspending neonicotinoids include environmental and consumer advocacy organizations; “natural” and organic retailers, certifiers, and producers; faith-­based groups; and “socially responsible” investment firms. Notably, the Washington State beekeepers association is the sole beekeepers group that has indicated its support for the campaign.

chapter 4 The Bottom Line for Bayer 1  Interview, January  13, 2010, David Fischer, director of ecotoxicology, Bayer CropScience. 2  The peer-­reviewed research study published in the Bulletin of Insectology provides neither an acknowledgment of the scientists’ conflicts of interest nor any mention of funding by Bayer. 3  The results of this latter study are not available in the public domain because Bayer is concerned that the study results could reveal sensitive trade secrets to competitors. 4  The controversy over Admire in 2000 was followed more recently by an unusually high level of honeybee deaths in 2012 and 2013 allegedly due to the release of clothianidin-­contaminated corn dust during the planting of seed-­treated corn (e.g., Baute and Stewart 2013). Bayer asserted that this was a problem of misapplication by growers. In an alliance with other agrochemical manufacturers, growers, beekeepers, and scientists (called the Crop Dust Consortium), Bayer invented a modified seed-­ sowing technique that would supposedly reduce the spread of seed-­corn dust during planting. See chapter 3 for more on this particular episode. 5  Bauer v. Bayer AG, 564 F. Supp. 2d 365 (U.S. Dist. Court, Pennsylvania 2008). 6  Field notes, North American Bee Conference, January 15, 2011. 7  Although we focus on how Bayer has relied on evidential norms and established research practices to keep its chemicals on the market, Bayer is not beyond gaining the upper hand in this debate in other ways. Thus, for example, the results of the Prince Edward Island Admire field study conducted by Bayer-­funded scientists are not available in the public domain. The Canadian regulatory authorities used this research to absolve Bayer of any responsibility for beekeepers’ losses, but in this case and others, interested citizens, beekeepers, and scientists were not able to verify or attempt to replicate Bayer’s methods. The resulting veil of ignorance in turn breeds conspiratorial arguments by activists and beekeepers about fraudulent manipulation by corrupted regulators and the agrochemical industry. Similarly, Bayer finances university scientists to carry out studies on the effects of its pesticides on honeybees. Collaborating with academia enhances Bayer’s scientific credibility. However, the nature of these collaborations and contracted research endeavors remain hidden from public view in nondisclosure agreements that prevent university entomologists from speaking about their research with Bayer and from disclosing the amount of funding they obtain.

134

Notes to Pages 82–101

8  See the U.S. Geological Survey’s historical “Estimated Agricultural Use of Imidcloprid” here: http://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/pnsp/usage/maps/show_map.php?year=2012& map=IMIDACLOPRID&hilo=L. 9  See the U.S. Geological Survey’s historical “Estimated Agricultural Use of Clothianidin” here: https://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/pnsp/usage/maps/show_map.php?year=2012& map=CLOTHIANIDIN&hilo=L. 10  Bayer’s latest systemic insecticide is Sivanto (active ingredient: flupyradifurone). 11  Bayer has worked hard at improving its public image as a responsible steward of pollinator health. Thus, on May 29, 2013, Bayer CropScience broke ground on its North American Bee Care Center at its Research Triangle Park headquarters in Raleigh-­ Durham, North Carolina. A 2013 press release in the American Bee Journal—­the U.S. beekeeping industry’s signature trade magazine—­proclaimed that the “state-­of-­the-­ art” facility for research, education, and collaboration on honeybee issues is a part of Bayer’s “continued commitment” to “help solve some of the most pressing honey bee health problems” (ABJ Extra 2013). While this center may contribute to Bayer’s image, it also seeks to shape substantive scientific debates about the factors affecting honeybee health. Turning attention away from bee exposure to pesticides, so-­called bee therapeutics is a focus of research at the North America Bee Care Center. To date, the Center’s work has focused on the effects of viruses, fungi, and mites on honeybees.

chapter 5 Regulating Knowledge 1  FIFRA was passed in 1947 in the wake of the WWII development of a host of chemicals with insecticidal properties (Brickman, Jasanoff, and Ilgen 1985, 31, 32). 2  In multiple conversations, different Bayer representatives pointed out that they systematically provide the EPA with sublethal effects data even though they are not required to do so. 3  EPA official, Office of Pesticide Programs (interview, October 29, 2009). 4  See Brickman et al. (1985) for specific case studies. 5  Interestingly, the evidence for cancer in humans hinged primarily on the extrapolation of vertebrate toxicity data, which attended to cumulative and sublethal effects of pesticides as well (Brickman et al. 1985). 6  The French government’s precautionary decision was a temporary suspension in the usage of Gaucho and Règent TS on a limited number of crops. It was by no means a complete and permanent ban, and Gaucho was not the only neonicotinoid product being used by growers. While the precautionary suspension did get renewed and even expanded to maize in 2004, the controversy remained alive—­beekeepers and allied scientists asserted that honeybee health had markedly improved in the aftermath of the suspensions, while some governmental agencies and scientists claimed that honeybees



Notes to Pages102–123

135

were still experiencing accelerated levels of die-­offs despite the suspensions (Suryanarayanan and Kleinman 2014). 7  Concrete examples of GLP studies of honeybees are extremely limited in the public domain since a vast majority of GLP studies are carried out by industry for the purposes of pesticide registration and/or changes in the registration status. That said, the Cutler and Scott-­Dupree (2007) field experiment of clothianidin on honeybees, which we examined in chapter 2, is an excellent example of the kind of GLP study that we take issue with here. 8  Interview, January 6, 2011. 9  Pesticide applicators and wholesale retailers of pesticide products who receive incident reports are supposed to relay them to the manufacturer (EPA 2011a). 10  For example, the EPA funded a university graduate student’s research titled “Effects of Neonicotinyl Insecticides on Honey Bee and Bumblebee Fecundity and Survival” between 2011 and 2014 (http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncer_abstracts/index.cfm/fuseaction/ display.abstractDetail/abstract/9831/report/0).

Coda 1  “Complexity” is a polysemic term, and a detailed examination of its multiple meanings in relation to our particular usage is beyond the scope of this book. For noteworthy treatments of the concept of complexity in the context of sociology of science and technology, see Hayles (1999), Law and Mol (2002), Luhmann (1995), Wynne (2005), and Mitchell (2009). 2  Two to three miles is the maximum distance a forager honeybee is estimated to travel in search of nutritional resources for her beehive (Spivak 2010). 3  The structure of our deliberations is informed by literatures in political science and STS on deliberation as a mode of democratic engagement (e.g., Wittenbaum et al. 1999; Schkade et al. 2000; Sclove 2000; Sunstein 2002; Carpini et al. 2004; Kleinman et al. 2011).

References

Abbott, Walter S. 1925. “A Method of Computing the Effectiveness of an Insecticide.” Journal of Economic Entomology 18: 265–­67. ABJ Extra. 2013. “Bayer CropScience Breaks Ground on North American Bee Care Center.” American Bee Journal Extra News, May 29. Available at http:// us1.campaign-­archive1.com/?u=5fd2b1aa990e63193af2a573d&id=2ae6d2a323 (accessed May 2013). AFSSA (Agence Française de la Sécurité Sanitaire des Aliments). 2002. “Analyse des Phénomènes d’affaiblissement des Colonies d’abeilles.” Paris: AFSSA. Available at http://www.affaire-­gaucho-­regent.com/pdf_abeilles/RapportAfssaSept2002.pdf (accessed April 2015). Aizen, Marcelo A., and Lawrence D. Harder. 2009. “The Global Stock of Domesticated Honey Bees Is Growing Slower Than Agricultural Demand for Pollination.” Current Biology 19: 915–­18. Alaux, Cedric, Jean-­Luc Brunet, Claudia Dussaubat, Fanny Mondet, Sylvie Tchamitchan, Marianne Cousin, Julien Brillard, Aurelie Baldy, Luc P. Belzunces, and Yves Le Conte. 2010. “Interactions Between Nosema Microspores and a Neonicotinoid Weaken Honeybees (Apis mellifera).” Environmental Microbiology 12: 774–­82. Altieri, Miguel. 2000. “Ecological Impacts of Industrial Agriculture and the Possibilities for Truly Sustainable Farming.” In Frederick Buttel, Fred Magdoff, John Bellamy Foster, eds., Hungry for Profit: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment. New York: Monthly Review Press, 77–­92. Alvarez, Lizette. 2013. “Citrus Disease with No Cure Is Ravaging Florida Groves.” New York Times, May 9. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/us/disease -­threatens-­floridas-­citrus-­industry.html?par&_r=0 (accessed May 2013). Anderson, Jeff, Manley Bigalk, Linda Bigalk, et al. 2012. “Emergency Citizen Petition to the United States Environmental Protection Agency.” Http://www.regulations .gov/#!documentDetail;D=EPA-­HQ-­OPP-­2012–­0334–­0002 (accessed May 2012). Anderson, Lauren D., and E. Laurence Atkins Jr. 1958. “Effects of Pesticides on Bees: Laboratory and Field Tests Study the Effects of Agricultural Pesticides on Highly Important Pollinators of State’s Crops.” California Agriculture 12, no. 12: 3–­4. ———. 1968. “Pesticide Usage in Relation to Beekeeping.” Annual Review of Entomology 13: 213–­38. Anderson, Lauren D., E. Laurence Atkins Jr., Frank E. Todd, and Marshall D. Levin. 1968. “Research on the Effect of Pesticides on Honey Bees, 1966–­67.” American Bee Journal 108, no. 7: 277–­79. 137

138 References

Arnason, Robert. 2013. “No Yield Benefit from Neonicotinoids: Scientist.” Western Producer May 10. Http://www.producer.com/2013/05/no-­yield-­benefit-­from -­neonicotinoids-­scientist/ (accessed May 2013). Atkins Jr., E. Laurence. 1951. “Spray Tests on Citrus to Control Fruit Tree Leaf Roller.” Journal of Economic Entomology 44, no. 1: 82–­87. Atkins Jr., E. Laurence., D. Kellum, and K. W. Atkins. 1978. “Integrated Pest Management Strategies for Protecting Honey Bees from Pesticides.” American Bee Journal 118, no. 8: 542–­43, 547–­48. Barrionuevo, Alexei. 2007. “Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril.” New York Times, February 27. Baute, Tracey, and Greg Stewart. 2013. “Taking Steps towards Reducing the Risk to Pollinators.” Field Crop News. Http://fieldcropnews.com/2013/01/taking-­steps -­towards-­reducing-­the-­risk-­to-­pollinators/ (accessed December 2013). Bayer. 2008. “Safety of Clothianidin to Bees.” Available at http://www.cropscience .bayer.com/en/Media/Backgrounds/Safety-­of-­clothianidin-­to-­bee .aspx?overviewId=01BC0BC0–­950A-­4B79–­8643-­B64CB395744E (accessed February 2014). ———. 2009. “Bee Safety and Colony Collapse Disorder.” Available at http://www. cropscience.bayer.com/~/media/Bayer%20CropScience/Global-­Portal/Press/ Background-­Information/Bee-­safety-­and-­Colony-­Collapse-­Disorder-­1 .ashx?force=1 (accessed November 2009). ———. 2010. “Bayer CropScience Responds to Honey Bee Concerns.” Available at http://home.ezezine.com/1636/1636–­2010.12.17.15.26.archive.html (accessed December 2010). Bell, Michael Mayerfeld. 2004. Farming for Us All: Practical Agriculture and the Cultivation of Sustainability. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Blacquière, Tjeerd, Guy Smagghe, Cornelis A. M. van Gestel, and Veerle Mommaerts. 2012. “Neonicotinoids in Bees: A Review on Concentrations, Side-­Effects, and Risk Assessment.” Ecotoxicology 21: 973–­92. Bonmatin, Jean Marc, I. Moineau, R. Charvet, Marc E. Colin, C. Fleche, and E. R. Bengsch. 2005. “Behaviour of Imidiacloprid in Fields. Toxicity for Honey Bees.” In E. Lichtfouse, J. Schwarzbauer, and D. Robert, eds., Environmental Chemistry: Green Chemistry of Pollutants in Ecosystems. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer-­Verlag, 483–­94. Borst, Peter. 2011. “Science Is the Center.” February 2, e-mail to BEE-­L Listserve Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology. Available at http:// community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-­LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2= ind1102&L=BEE-­L&F=&S=&P=8263 (accessed February 2011). ———. 2012. “Re: The Xerces Society: Are Neonicotinoids Killing Bees?” March 30, e-mail to BEE-­L Listserve Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology. Available at http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-­LSOFTDONATIONS .exe?A2=ind1203&L=BEE-­L&F=&S=&P=359521 (accessed March 2012).

References

139

———. 2015. “Being Informed.” November 25, e-mail to BEE-­L Listserve Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology. Available at http://community .lsoft.com/scripts/wa-­LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2=ind1511&L=BEE-­L&F =&S=&P=293771 (accessed November 2015). Böschen, Stefan, Karen Kastenhofer, Ina Rust, Jens Soentgen, and Peter Wehling. 2010. “The Political Dynamics of Scientific Non-­Knowledge.” Science, Technology, and Human Values 35, no. 6: 783–­811. Boyd, Vicki. 2013. “Monsanto Teams with Honeybee Industry to Boost Forage.” The Packer, June 14. Available at http://www.thepacker.com/news/Monsanto-­teams -­with-­honey-­bee-­industry-­to-­boost-­forage-­211561651.html (accessed November 2013). Bradbury, Steven P. 2012. “EPA Response to Clothianidin Petition.” Http://www .regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=EPA-­HQ-­OPP-­2012–­0334–­0006 (accessed July 2012). Brandon, Hembree. 2013. “Pollinators Next Big Battleground for Ag Pesticides.” Delta Farm Press, March 1. Http://deltafarmpress.com/cotton/pollinators-­next-­big -­battleground-­ag-­pesticides (accessed March 2015). Brickman, Ronald, Sheila Jasanoff, and Thomas Ilgen. 1985. Controlling Chemicals: The Politics of Regulation in Europe and the United States. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Bromenshenk, Jerry J. 2008. “Bayer-­Beekeeper Dialogue.” November 11 meeting, minutes. Bromenshenk, Jerry J., Colin B. Henderson, Charles H. Wick, Michael F. Stanford, Alan W. Zulich, Rabih E. Jabbour, Samir V. Deshpande, Patrick E. McCubbin, Robert A. Seccomb, Phillip M. Welch, et al. 2010. “Iridovirus and Microsporidian Linked to Honey Bee Colony Decline.” PloS ONE, 5: e13181. Brown, Phil, and Edwin J. Mikkelsen. 1990. No Safe Place: Toxic Waste, Leukemia, and Community Action. Berkeley: University of California Press. Burgett, D. Michael, Glenn C. Fisher, Daniel F. Mayer, and Carl A. Johansen. 1993. Evaluating Honey Bee Colonies for Pollination: A Guide for Growers and Beekeepers. Pacific Northwest Extension Publication, PNW 245. Available at https://ir.library. oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/34448/PNW%20245 .pdf?sequence=3 (accessed May 2012). Burgett, Michael, Stan Daberkow, Randal Rucker, and Walter Thurman. 2010. “U.S. Pollination Markets: Recent Changes and Historical Perspective.” American Bee Journal 150, no. 1: 35–­40. Cale, G. H. 1943. “Where Is Our Moses.” American Bee Journal 83, no. 1: 7. California Farm Bureau. 2012. “Agency Response to the Clothianidin Petition.” September 10. Available at http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=EPA -­HQ-­OPP-­2012–­0334–­0944 (accessed July 2014). Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment. 2007. “Canadian Water Quality Guidelines: Imidacloprid; Scientific Supporting Document.” Available at http://

140 References

www.ccme.ca/files/Resources/supporting_scientific_documents/imidacloprid _ssd_1388.pdf (accessed April 2015). Carolan, Michael S. 2008. “Democratizing Knowledge: Sustainable and Conventional Agricultural Field Days as Divergent Democratic Forms.” Science, Technology, and Human Values 33: 508–­28. Carpini, Michael X. D., Fay L. Cook, and Lawrence R. Jacobs. 2004. “Public Deliberation, Discursive Participation, and Citizen Engagement: A Review of the Empirical Literature.” Annual Review of Political Science 7: 315–­44. Carreck, Norman L., and Francis L. W. Ratnieks. 2014. “The Dose Makes the Poison: Have ‘Field Realistic’ Rates of Exposure of Bees to Neonicotinoid Insecticides Been Overestimated in Laboratory Studies?” Journal of Apicultural Research 53: 607–­14. Ciarlo, Timothy J., Christopher A. Mullin, James L. Frazier, and Daniel R. Schmehl. 2012. “Learning Impairment in Honey Bees Caused by Agricultural Spray Adjuvants.” PLoS ONE 7, no. 7: e40848. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0040848. Clay, Heather. 2009. “Pollinating Hybrid Canola—­The Southern Alberta Experience.” HiveLights, August. Available at http://www.honeycouncil.ca/documents/ CanolaSthAB2009.pdf (accessed December 2012). Cline, Harry. 2005. “Almond Growers Facing Bee Crisis.” Western Farm Press, May 27. Http://westernfarmpress.com/almond-­growers-­facing-­bee-­crisis (accessed August 26, 2013). Colin, Marc E., Jean-­Marc Bonmatin, I. Moineau, C. Gaimon, S. Brun, and J. P. Vermandere. 2004. “A Method to Quantify and Analyze the Foraging Activity of Honey Bees: Relevance to the Sublethal Effects Induced by Systemic Insecticides.” Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology 47: 387–­95. Collins, Harry M. 1991 [1985]. Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Collins, Harry M., and Robert Evans. 2002. “The Third Wave of Science Studies: Studies of Expertise and Experience.” Social Studies of Science 32, no. 2: 235–­96. ———. 2007. Rethinking Expertise. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Colquhoun, David. 2014. “An Investigation of the False Discovery Rate and the Misinterpretation of P-Values.” Royal Society Open Science 1: 140216. Available at http:// dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.140216 (accessed March 2015). Cornman, R. Scott, David R. Tarpy, Yanping Chen, Lacey Jeffreys, Dawn Lopez, Jeffery S. Pettis, Dennis vanEngelsdorp, and Jay D. Evans. 2012. “Pathogen Webs in Collapsing Honey Bee Colonies.” PLoS ONE 7, no. 8: e43562. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0043562. Cox-­Foster, Diana L., Sean Conlan, Edward C. Holmes, Gustavo Palacios, Jay D. Evans, Nancy A. Moran, et al. 2007. “A Metagenomic Survey of Microbes in Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder.” Science 318, no. 12 (October): 283–­87. Cresswell, James E. 2011. “A Meta-­analysis of Experiments Testing the Effects of a Neonicotinoid Insecticide (Imidacloprid) on Honey Bees.” Ecotoxicology 20: 149–­57.

References

141

Cresswell, James E., Nicolas Desneux, and Dennis vanEngelsdorp. 2012. “Dietary Traces of Neonicotinoid Pesticides as a Cause of Population Declines in Honey Bees: An Evaluation by Hill’s Epidemiological Criteria.” Pest Management Science 68: 819–­27. Cutler, Christopher G., and Cynthia D. Scott-­Dupree. 2007. “Exposure to Clothianidin Seed-­Treated Canola Has No Long-­Term Impact on Honey Bees.” Journal of Economic Entomology 100, no. 3: 765–­72. Czapar, George F., Marc P. Curry, and Michael E. Gray. 1995. “Survey of Integrated Pest Management Practices in Central Illinois.” Journal of Production Agriculture 8: 483–­86. Daberkow, Stan, Penni Korb, and Fred Hoff. 2009. “The Structure of the U.S. Beekeeping Industry.” Journal of Economic Entomology 102, no. 3: 868–­86. Delaplane, Keith S. 2009. “Managed Pollinator Coordinated Agricultural Project: A National Research and Extension Initiative to Reverse Pollinator Decline.” American Bee Journal (November): 1057–­58. Delaplane, Keith S., and Daniel F. Mayer. 2000. Crop Pollination by Bees. New York: CABI Publishing. Desneux, Nicolas, Axel Decourtye, and Jean-­Marie Delpuech. 2007. “The Sublethal Effects of Pesticides on Beneficial Arthropods.” Annual Review of Entomology 52: 81–­106. Dewar, Alex. 2015. “Expert Reaction to New Study on Neonicotinoid Toxicity to Honeybees.” November 18. Available at http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/ expert-­reaction-­to-­new-­study-­on-­neonicotinoid-­toxicity-­to-­honeybees/ (accessed November 2015). Dively, Galen P., Michael S. Embrey, and Jeffery S. Pettis. 2010. Assessment of Sublethal Effects of Imidacloprid on Honey Bee and Colony Health: Final Report Submitted to the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign. Available at http://entomology .umd.edu/uploads/4/4/1/3/44130801/nappc_final_report_of_2008_study -­dively.pdf (accessed November 2011). Dively, Galen P., Michael S. Embrey, Alaa Kamel, David J. Hawthorne, and Jeffery S. Pettis. 2015. “Assessment of Chronic Sublethal Effects of Imidacloprid on Honey Bee Colony Health.” PLoS ONE 10, no. 3: e0118748. Editor. 2010. “The Weight of Evidence.” Nature 464, no. 7292: 1103–­4. Edwards, Debra. 2008. “EPA Response to Sierra Club’s Request to Suspend Nicotinyl Insecticides.” October 10. Available at http://www.regulations.gov/#!document Detail;D=EPA-­HQ-­OPP-­2008–­0844–­0120 (accessed July 2012). Ellis, Steve. 2010. “A Beekeeper’s Perspective on U.S. Pesticide Policy.” First International Conference on Pollinator Health, Biology, and Policy, Penn State University, July 26. Available at http://ento.psu.edu/pollinators/public-­outreach/ 2010-­conference/NHBABRemarksSEllis (accessed November 2013). EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency). 1982. Pesticide Assessment Guidelines, Subdivision L, Hazard Evaluation: Non Target Insects. Report No.

142 References

EPA-­540/9–­82–­019. Washington, DC: EPA, Office of Pesticides and Toxic Substances. ———. 1996. Ecological Effects Test Guidelines: OPPTS 850.3020, Honey Bee Acute Contact Toxicity. Report No. 712-­C-­96–­147. Washington, DC: Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, EPA. ———. 1999. Implementing the Food Quality Protection Act: Progress Report. Report No. 735-­R-­99001. Washington, DC: EPA, Office of Pesticide Programs. ———. 2008a. “Pesticide Fact Sheet: Spirotetramat.” Available at http://www .thebeeyard.org/wp-­content/uploads/2010/03/plugin-­spirotetramat.pdf (accessed November 2008). ———. 2008b. “Pollinator Protection in the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs.” Pesticide Program Dialogue Committee Meeting (October 7). Transcript available at http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/ppdc/2008/oct2008/transcript.pdf: 239–­86 (accessed October 2009). ———. 2010. “Clothianidin Registration of Prosper T400 Seed Treatment on Mustard Seed (Oilseed and Condiment) and Poncho/Votivo Seed Treatment on Cotton.” Available at http://www.epa.gov/opp00001/chem_search/cleared_reviews/ csr_PC-­044309_2-­Nov-­10_b.pdf (accessed December 2010). ———. 2011a. “Guidance for Using Incident Data in Evaluating Listed and Non-­listed Species under Registration Review.” Available at http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/ science/efed/policy_guidance/team_authors/endangered_species_reregistration _workgroup/esa_incident_guidance.htm (accessed June 2014). ———. 2011b. “Interim Guidance on Honey Bee Data Requirements.” Available at http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/science/efed/policy_guidance/team_authors/ terrestrial_biology_tech_team/honeybee_data_interim_guidance.pdf (accessed June 2014). ———. 2012. “Technical Support Document for the Response to the Emergency Citizen Petition Seeking Suspension of Registration for Clothianidin Based on Claims of Imminent Hazard to the Environment.” July 17. Available at http://www .regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=EPA-­HQ-­OPP-­2012–­0334–­0012 (accessed July 2012). ———. 2014a. “Benefits of Neonicotinoid Seed Treatments to Soybean Production.” October 15. Available at http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014–­10/ documents/benefits_of_neonicotinoid_seed_treatments_to_soybean _production_2.pdf (accessed October 2014). ———. 2014b. Guidance for Assessing Pesticide Risks to Bees. Office of Pesticide Programs: Washington, DC. Available at http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/ files/2014–­06/documents/pollinator_risk_assessment_guidance_06_19_14.pdf (accessed February 2015). ———. 2015a. “New and Pending Submissions for Outdoor Uses of Products Containing the Nitroguanidine Neonicotinoids Imidacloprid, Dinotefuran,

References

143

Clothianidin or Thiamethoxam.” April 2. Available at http://www2.epa.gov/sites/ production/files/2015–­04/documents/neonicotinoid-­new-­use.pdf (accessed April 2015). ———. 2015b. “Pesticide Emergency Exemptions: Agency Decisions and State and Federal Agency Crisis Declarations.” February 5. Available at http://www .regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=EPA_FRDOC_0001–­16854 (accessed February 2015). EPA Official. 2009. Interview. October 29, Office of the Pesticide Programs. Epstein, Steven. 1996. Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press. European Commission. 2013. Decision No. 485. Official Journal of the European Union 2013, L 139/12. Fau, Bernard. 2000. “Gaucho: A propos de la décision du Conseil d’État.” Abeilles et Fleurs, no. 603. Fischer, David. 2009. “Response to National Honey Bee Advisory Board Letter on Imidacloprid Registration Review.” 5 June. Available at http://www.regulations .gov/#!documentDetail;D=EPA-­HQ-­OPP-­2008–­0844–­0115 (accessed February 2014). ———. 2010. “Spirotetramat.” January 9, January 12, e-mails to BEE-­L Listserve Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology. Available at http:// community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-­SOFTDONATIONS.exe?A1=ind1001B&L =bee-­1 #21 (accessed January 2010). Fischer, David, and Thomas Moriarty. 2011. Pesticide Risk Assessment for Pollinators: Summary of a SETAC Pellston Workshop. Pensacola, FL: Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Press. Frazier, Maryann., Christopher A. Mullin, James L. Frazier, Sara Ashcroft. 2008. “What Have Pesticides Got to Do with It?” American Bee Journal 148: 521–­23. Frickel, Scott. 2004. Chemical Consequences: Environmental Mutagens, Scientist Activism, and the Rise of Genetic Toxicology. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Frickel, Scott, Sahra Gibbon, Jeff Howard, Joanna Kempner, Gwen Ottinger, and David Hess. 2010. “Undone Science: Charting Social Movement and Civil Society Challenges to Research Agenda Setting.” Science, Technology, and Human Values 35, no. 4: 444–­73. Frickel, Scott, and Kelly Moore, eds. 2006. The New Political Sociology of Science: Institutions, Networks, and Power. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Frickel, Scott, and M. Bess Vincent. 2007. “Katrina, Contamination, and the Unintended Organization of Ignorance.” Technology in Society 29: 181–­88. ———. 2011. “Katrina’s Contamination: Regulatory Knowledge Gaps in the Making and Unmaking of Environmental Contention.” In Rachel A. Dowty and Barbara L. Allen, eds., Dynamics of Disaster: Lessons in Risk, Response, and Recovery. London: Earthscan, 11–­28.

144 References

Gieryn, Thomas F. 1983. “Boundary-­Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-­ Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists.” American Sociological Review 48, no. 6: 781–­95. ———. 1999. Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Godfray, H. Charles J., Tjeerd Blacquière, Linda M. Field, Rosemary S. Hails, Gillian Petrokofsky, Simon G. Potts, Nigel E. Raine, Adam J. Vanbergen, and Angela R. McLean. 2014. “A Restatement of the Natural Science Evidence Base Concerning Neonicotinoid Insecticides and Insect Pollinators.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 281: 20140558. Gray, Michael E. 2011. “Relevance of Traditional Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Strategies for Commercial Corn Producers in a Transgenic Agroecosystem: A Bygone Era?” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 59: 5852–­58. Gross, Matthias. 2010. Ignorance and Surprise: Science, Society, and Ecological Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hackenberg, David. 2010. Interview. North American Beekeeping Conference, Orlando, Florida, January 14. ———. 2013. “Field Notes: Wisconsin Honey Producers Association Meeting.” November 1. Hallmann, Caspar A., Ruud P. B. Foppen, Chris A. M. van Turnhout, Hans de Kroon, and Eelke Jongejans. 2014. “Declines in Insectivorous Birds Are Associated with High Neonicotinoid Concentrations.” Nature doi: 10.1038/ nature13531. Haraway, Donna J. 1991 [1988]. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” In Donna J. Haraway. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge, 183–­202. Harding, Sandra. 2000. “Should Philosophies of Science Encode Democratic Ideals?” In Daniel L. Kleinman, ed., Science, Technology, and Democracy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 121–­38. Hart, Adam. 2013. “Huge Scale of California Pollination Event.” British Broadcasting Service, March 26. Available at http://www.bbc.com/news/science-­environment -­21741651?print=true (accessed August 2013). Hassanein, Neva. 1999. Changing the Way America Farms: Knowledge and Community in the Sustainable Agriculture Movement. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Hayles, Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Heintzelman, Richard, Iain D. Kelly, David L. Fischer, and Christian Maus. 2012. “Overview of Recent Publications on Neonicotinoids and Pollinators.” May 23. Available at http://cues.cfans.umn.edu/old/pollinators/pdf-­HBfor/ 2012Heintzelman.pdf (accessed March 2013). Henneberry, Thomas J. 2008. “Federal Entomology: Beginnings and Organizational Entities in the United States Department of Agriculture, 1854–­2006, with Selected

References

145

Research Highlights.” Agriculture Information Bulletin, no. 802 ( July), Agricultural Research Service: U.S. Department of Agriculture. Henry, Mickaël, Maxime Beguin, Fabrice Requier, Orianne Rollin, Jean-­Francois Odoux, Pierrick Aupinel, Jean Aptel, Sylvie Tchamitchian, and Axel Decourtye. 2012. “A Common Pesticide Decreases Foraging Success and Survival in Honey Bees.” Science 336: 348–­50. Henry, Mickaël, Nicolas Cerrutti, Pierrick Aupinel, Axel Decourtye, Mélanie Gayrard, Jean-­Francois Odoux, Aurélien Pissard, Charlotte Rüger, and Vincent Bretagnolle. 2015. “Reconciling Laboratory and Field Assessments of Neonicotinoid Toxicity to Honeybees.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 282: 20152110. Hess, David J. 2007. Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry: Activism, Innovation, and the Environment in an Era of Globalization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hightower, Jim. 1978. Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times. Rochester, VT: Schenkman Books. Hoberg Jr., George. 1990. “Reaganism, Pluralism, and the Politics of Pesticide Regulation.” Policy Sciences 23, no. 4: 257–­89. Honey Bee Genome Sequencing Consortium. 2006. “Insights into Social Insects from the Genome of the Honeybee Apis mellifera.” Nature 443: 931–­49. Horn, Tammy. 2005. Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Hunt, Greg, and Christian Krupke. 2013. “Neonicotinoid Seed Treatments and Honey Bee Health.” Available at http://www.extension.org/pages/65034/neonicotinoid -­seed-­treatments-­and-­honey-­bee-­health#.VUJISpNUzSc (accessed November 2013). Hurley, Terry, and Paul Mitchell. 2014. The Value of Neonicotinoids in North American Agriculture: Value of Insect Pest Management to U.S. and Canadian Corn, Soybean, and Canola Farmers. AgInformatics, LLC. Available at http://growingmatters.org/ studies/ (accessed January 2015). Huseth, Anders S., and Russell L. Groves. 2014. “Environmental Fate of Soil Applied Neonicotinoid Insecticides in an Irrigated Potato Agroecosystem.” PLoS ONE 9, no. 5: e97081. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0097081. Iwasa, Takao, Naoki Motoyama, John T. Ambrose, and Michael Roe. 2004. “Mechanism for the Differential Toxicity Neonicotinoid Insecticides in the Honey Bee, Apis mellifera.” Crop Protection 23: 371–­78. Jasanoff, Sheila. 1990. The Fifth Branch: Science Advisors as Policy Makers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2005. Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jeschke, Peter, and Ralf Nauen. 2008. “Neonicotinoids—­From Zero to Hero in Insecticide Chemistry.” Pest Management Science 64: 1084–­98. Jeschke, Peter, Ralf Nauen, Michael Schindler, and Alfred Elbert. 2011. “Overview of the Status and Global Strategy for Neonicotinoids.” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 59: 2897–­2908.

146 References

Johnson, Reed M., Jay D. Evans, Gene E. Robinson, and May R. Berenbaum. 2009. “Changes in Transcript Abundance Relating to Colony Collapse Disorder in Honey Bees (Apis mellifera).” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106: 14790–­95. Johnson, Reed M., Marion D. Ellis, Christopher A. Mullin, and Maryann Frazier. 2010. “Pesticides and Honey Bee Toxicity-­USA.” Apidologie 41, no. 3: 312–­31. Keller, Evelyn F. 1983. A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock. New York: W. H. Freeman. Kirk, Stuart A., and Herb Kutchins. 1992. The Selling of the DSM: The Rhetoric of Science in Psychiatry. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Kleinman, Daniel Lee. 1998. “Understanding a University Laboratory in a Commercial World.” Science Technology and Human Values 23, no. 3: 285–­14. ———. 2000. “Democratizations of Science and Technology.” In Daniel L. Kleinman, ed., Science, Technology and Democracy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 139–­65. ———. 2003. Impure Cultures: University Biology and the World of Commerce. University of Wisconsin Press. Kleinman, Daniel Lee, Jason A. Delborne, and Ashley A. Anderson. 2011. “Engaging Citizens: The High Cost of Citizen Participation in High Technology.” Public Understanding of Science 20, no. 2: 221–­40. Kleinman, Daniel Lee, and Abby Kinchy. 2003. “Why Ban Bovine Growth Hormone?: Science, Social Welfare, and the Divergent Biotech Policy Landscapes in Europe and the United States.” Science as Culture 12, no. 3: 375–­414. Kleinman, Daniel Lee, and Sainath Suryanarayanan. 2013. “Dying Bees and the Social Production of Ignorance.” Science, Technology, and Human Values 38, no. 4: 492–­517. ———. 2015. “Ignorance and Industry: Agrichemicals and Honey Bee Deaths.” In Matthias Gross and Linsey McGoey, eds., Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies. Routledge, 183–­91. Kloppenburg, Jack R. 2004 [1988]. First the Seed, 2nd ed. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Kohl, Patrice. Personal communication. November 2013. Krohn, J., and E. Hellpointner. 2002. “Environmental Fate of Imidacloprid.” Pflanzenshutz-­Nachrichten Bayer 55: 1–­26. Krupke, Christian H., Greg J. Hunt, Brian D. Eitzer, Gladys Andino, and Krispn Given. 2012. “Multiple Routes of Pesticide Exposure for Honey Bees Living Near Agricultural Fields.” PLoS ONE 7, no. 1: e29268. doi: 10.1371/journal. pone.0029268. La Coordination des Apiculteurs de France. 2000a. “Composite Document of Present Position Relating to Gaucho, Sunflower, and Bees.” Available at http://www .beekeeping.com/articles/us/gaucho/manifestation_paris_us.htm (accessed February 2012).

References

147

———. 2000b. “A Stricken Sector of Production in Apiculture: Beekeeping, Hit in Full Flight.” Available at http://www.beekeeping.com/articles/us/gaucho/gaucho _france.htm (accessed February 2012). Law, John, and Anne Marie Mol, eds. 2002. Complexities: Social Studies of Knowledge. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Lobao, Linda, and Katherine Meyer. 2001. “The Great Agricultural Transition.” Annual Review of Sociology 27: 103–­24. Lowe, Victor H., and Percival J. Parrott. 1902. San José Scale Investigations. Geneva, NY: New York Agricultural Experimental Station, Bulletin No. 228. Luhmann, Niklas. 1995. Social Systems. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Lund, Lisa. 2013. “Transmittal of Guidance for Inspecting Alleged Cases of Pesticide-­ Related Bee Incidents.” May 9, Director, Office of Compliance, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Available at http://www2.epa.gov/compliance/guidance -­inspecting-­alleged-­cases-­pesticide-­related-­bee-­incidents (accessed June 2014). Lydy, Michael, Jason Belden, Craig Wheelock, Bruce Hammock, and Debra Denton. 2004. “Challenges in Regulating Pesticide Mixtures.” Ecology and Society 9, no. 6: 1. Main, Anson R., John V. Headley, Kerry M. Peru, Nicole L. Michel, Allan J. Cessna, et al. 2014. “Widespread Use and Frequent Detection of Neonicotinoid Insecticides in Wetlands of Canada’s Prairie Pothole Region.” PLoS ONE 9, no. 3: e92821. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0092821. Maini, Stefano, Piotr Medrzycki, and Claudio Porrini. 2010. “The Puzzle of Honey Bee Losses: A Brief Review.” Bulletin of Insectology 63, no. 1: 153–­60. Marcus, Alan. 1985. Agricultural Science and the Quest for Legitimacy. Ames: Iowa State University Press. Martin, Ethelbert C., and Samuel E. McGregor. 1973. “Changing Trends in Insect Pollination of Commercial Crops.” Annual Review of Entomology 18: 207–­26. Maus, Christian, Gaelle Curé, and Richard Schmuck. 2003. “Safety of Imidacloprid Seed Dressings to Honey Bees: A Comprehensive Review and Compilation of the Current State of Knowledge.” Bulletin of Insectology 56, no. 1: 51–­57. Maxim, Laura, and Jeroen P. van der Sluijs. 2007. “Uncertainty: Cause or Effect of Stakeholders’ Debates? Analysis of a Case Study: The Risk for Honeybees of the Insecticide Gaucho®.” Science of the Total Environment 36: 1–­17. ———. 2013. “Seed-­dressing Systemic Insecticides and Honeybees.” In David Gee et al., eds., Late Lessons from Early Warnings: Science, Precaution, Innovation. Volume II, European Environment Agency Report No. 1, 401–­38. Mazurek, Maureen (Monsanto). 2013. “The Honey Bee Forage Project: Monsanto’s Collaboration with PAm.” Available at http://www.beeologics.com/maureen -­mazurek-­the-­honey-­bee-­forage-­project/ (accessed November 2013). McCormick, Ronald J., Amanda J. Zellmer, and Timothy F. H. Allen. 2004. “Type, Scale, and Adaptive Narrative: Keeping Models of Salmon, Toxicology, and Risk Alive to the World.” In Lawrence A. Kapustka, Hector Gilbraith, Matthew Luxon, and Gregory R. Biddinger, eds., Landscape Ecology and Wildlife Habitat Evaluation:

148 References

Critical Information for Ecological Risk Assessment, Land-­Use Management Activities, and Biodiversity Enhancement Practices. West Conshohocken, PA: ASTM International, 69–­83. Melathopoulos, Andony P., Christopher G. Cutler, and Peter Tyedmers. 2015. “Where Is the Value in Valuing Pollination Ecosystem Services to Agriculture?” Ecological Economics 109: 59–­70. Mendes, David. 2011. American Beekeeping Federation Newsletter, March. Miller, Robert A. 2013. “Pesticide Incident Reporting.” Available at http:// scientificbeekeeping.com/pesticide-­incident-­reporting/ (accessed June 2014). Milum, Vern G. 1964. Our National Beekeeping Organizations, 1860–­1964. Urbana, IL: American Beekeeping Federation. Ministère de l’Agriculture. 2001. Press Release. February 2. Http://www.beekeeping .com/intoxications/communique_ma_02_02_2001.htm (accessed February 7 2012). Mitchell, Sandra. 2009. Unsimple Truths: Science, Complexity, and Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Moffat, Christopher, Joao G. Pacheco, Sheila Sharp, Andrew J. Samson, Karen A. Bollan, Jeffrey Huang, Stephen T. Buckland, and Christopher N. Connolly. 2015. “Chronic Exposure to Neonicotinoids Increases Neuronal Vulnerability to Mitochondrial Dysfunction in the Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris).” FASEB Journal doi: 10.1096/fj.14–­267179 (published online). Morandin, Laura, Rachael F. Long, Corin Pease, and Claire Kremen. 2011. “Hedgerows Enhance Beneficial Insects on Farms in California’s Central Valley.” California Agriculture 65, no. 4: 197–­201. Morandin, Laura, and Claire Kremen. 2013. “Hedgerow Restoration Promotes Pollinator Populations and Exports Native Bees to Adjacent Fields.” Ecological Applications 23, no. 4: 829–­39. Mullin, Christopher A., Maryann Frazier, James L. Frazier, Sarah Ashcroft, Roger Simonds, Dennis vanEngelsdorp, and Jeffery S. Pettis. 2010. “High Levels of Miticides and Agrochemicals in North American Apiaries: Implications for Honey Bee Health.” PloS ONE 5, no. 3: e9754. National Cotton Council. 2009. “Pesticide Registration Review; New Dockets Opened for Review and Comment; Closure of the Mevinphos and Azinphos Methyl (AZM) Registration Review Cases.” March 16. Available at http://www .regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=EPA-­HQ-­OPP-­2008–­0844–­0081 (accessed April 2012). ———. 2012. “Clothianidan: Denial of Emergency Suspension Petition.” September 10. Available at http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=EPA-­HQ -­OPP-­2012–­0334–­0943 (accessed July 2014).

References

149

National Flower Association. 2009. “Imidacloprid Registration Review.” February 26. Available at http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=EPA-­HQ-­OPP -­2008–­0844–­0014 (accessed April 2012). National Pollinator Defense Fund. 2013. “Unified Beekeeping Industry Organizations File Appeal Against EPA for the Full Registration of the Pesticide Sulfoxaflor.” July 9. Available at http://pollinatorstewardship.org/?p=1435 (accessed July 2013). National Potato Council. 2009. “EPA–­HQ–­OPP–­2008–­0844.” March 17. Available at http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=EPA-­HQ-­OPP-­2008 –­0844–­0103 (accessed April 2012). Nauen, Ralf, Ulrich Ebbinghaus-­Kintscher, and Richard Schmuck. 2001. “Toxicity and Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor Interaction of Imidacloprid and Its Metabolites in Apis mellifera (Hymenoptera: Apidae).” Pest Management Science 57: 577–­86. NCGA (National Corn Growers Association). 2012. “Comments on Clothianidin Registration Review.” February 21. Available at http://www.ncga.com/upload/ files/documents/pdf/clothianidin_2–­21–­12.pdf (accessed April 2015). News Notes. 2001. “French Beekeepers Demonstrate.” American Bee Journal 141, no. 2: 85. NHBAB (National Honey Bee Advisory Board). 2009. “To: Bayer Crop Science—­ David Fischer, Alison Chalmers, Jack Boyne, and Veldon Sorenson.” July 22 letter. ———. 2010. “Comment Submitted by National Honey Bee Advisory Board.” Available at http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=EPA-­HQ-­OPP-­2010 –­0130–­0070 (accessed June 2014). ———. 2011. Pollinators and Pesticides 2011: Fundamental Flaws of Pesticide Policy in the United States. Opinion paper of the National Honey Bee Advisory Board distributed at the 2011 North American Beekeeping Conference in Galveston, TX. Available at http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/wp-­content/ uploads/2011/02/NHBAB_Jan2011_PollinatorsPesticides.pdf (accessed January 2011). Nikolakis, Alexander, Andrew Chapple, Reinhard Friessleben, Paul Neumann, Thorsten Schad, Richard Schmuck, Heinz-­Friedrich Schnier, Hans-­Jürgen Schnorbach, Ralf Schöning, and Christian Maus. 2008. “An Effective Risk Management Approach to Prevent Bee Damage Due to the Emission of Abraded Seed Treatment Particles During Sowing of Seeds Treated with Bee Toxic Insecticides.” In Pieter A. Oomen and Helen M. Thompson, eds., Hazards of Pesticides to Bees. Tenth International Symposium of the ICP-­BR Bee Protection Group, Bucharest (Romania), October 8–­­10, 2008. Available at http://www.cdpr.ca.gov/docs/emon/surfwtr/ presentations/icp_br.pdf (accessed January 2010). Oliver, Randy. 2009a. “CCD.” August 25, e-mail to BEE-­L Listserve Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology. Available at http://community .lsoft.com/scripts/wa-­LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A1=ind0908D&L=BEE-­L#2 (accessed August 2009).

150 References

———. 2009b. “Re: The Limitations of Science.” July 11, e-mail to BEE-­L Listserve Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology. Available at http:// community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-­LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2= ind0907B&L=BEE-­L&F=&S=&P=41482 (accessed July 2009). ———. 2010a. Interview. North American Beekeeping Conference, Orlando, Florida, January 13. ———. 2010b. “Proposed Clothianidin Experiment (Was Neonics in France).” December 22, e-mail to BEE-­L Listserve Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology. Available at http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/ wa-­LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2=ind1012&L=BEE-­L&F=&S=&P=293674 (accessed December 2010). ———. 2010c. “Sick Bees, Part 1.” American Bee Journal 150, no. 8: 767–­72. ———. 2010d. “Sick Bees, Part 2.” American Bee Journal 150, no. 9: 865–­72. ———. 2011. “Forum: Response to Suryanarayanan and Kleinman’s Disappearing Bees and Reluctant Regulators.” Issues in Science and Technology. Available at http:// www.issues.org/28.1/forum.html (accessed April 2012). ———. 2012a. “Neonicotinoids: Trying to Make Sense of the Science—­Part 2.” Available at http://scientificbeekeeping.com/neonicotinoids-­trying-­to-­make-­sense-­of -­the-­science-­part-­2/ (accessed April 2015). ———. 2012b. “Re: Press Release: Are Neonicotinoids Killing Bees.” March 28, e-mail to BEE-­L Listserve Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology. Available at http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-­LSOFTDONATIONS .exe?A2=ind1203&L=BEE-­L&F=&S=&P=339006 (accessed March 2012). Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. 2011. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. New York: Bloomsbury Press. Ottinger, Gwen. 2010. “Buckets of Resistance: Standards and the Effectiveness of Citizen Science.” Science, Technology, and Human Values 35, no. 2: 244–­70. Paldi, Nitzan, Eitan Glick, Maayan Oliva, Yaron Zilberberg, Lucie Aubin, Jeffery S. Pettis, Yanping Chen, and Jay D. Evans. 2010. “Effective Gene Silencing in a Microsporidian Parasite Associated with Honeybee (Apis mellifera) Colony Declines.” Applied and Environmental Microbiology 76, no. 17: 5960–­64. Palladino, Paolo. 1996. Entomology, Ecology, and Agriculture: The Making of Scientific Careers in North America. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers. Palmer, Mary J., Christopher Moffat, Nastja Saranzewa, Jenni Harvey, Geraldine A. Wright, and Christopher N. Connolly. 2013. “Cholinergic Pesticides Cause Mushroom Body Neuronal Inactivation in Honeybees.” Nature Communications 4: 1634. doi: 10.1038/ncomms2648. Paramount Farming Company. 2012. “Docket No. EPA-­HQ-­OPP-­2012–­0344.” September 17. Available at http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=EPA-­H Q-­OPP-­2012–­0334–­1189 (accessed July 2014). Perkins, John H. 1982. Insects, Experts and the Insecticide Crisis. New York: Plenum.

References

151

Pettis, Jeffery S., Dennis vanEngelsdorp, Josephine Johnson, and Galen Dively. 2012. “Pesticide Exposure in Honey Bees Results in Increased Levels of the Gut Pathogen Nosema.” Naturwissenschaften 99, no. 2: 153–­58. Phillips, Everett F. 1908. “Bee Diseases: A Problem in Economic Entomology.” Journal of Economic Entomology 1: 102–­6. ———. 1909. “Means Whereby the Economic Entomologist Can Advance Apiculture.” Journal of Economic Entomology 2: 115–­17. ———. 1951. “The Langstroth Centennial—­A History of American Beekeeping Address at Dedication of the Beekeeping Building, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, June 16, 1951.” Minnesota Beekeeper 4, no. 4: 5–­14. PMRA (Pest Management Regulatory Agency). 2001. “Imidacloprid.” Regulatory note, September 7, REG2001–­11, Ottawa: Health Canada. Available at http://publications .gc.ca/collections/Collection/H113–­7-­2001–­11E.pdf (accessed August 2013). Proctor, Robert N. 1995. How Politics Shapes What We Know and Don’t Know about Cancer, 1st ed. New York: Basic Books. Ratnieks, Francis L. W., and Norman L. Carreck. 2010. “Clarity on Honey Bee Collapse?” Science 327: 151–­53. Retschnig, Gina, Geoffrey R. Williams, Richard Odemer, Janina Boltin, Cornelia Di Poto, Marion M. Mehmann, Peter Retschnig, Pius Winiger, Peter Rosenkranz, and Peter Neumann. 2015. “Effects, but No Interactions, of Ubiquitous Pesticide and Parasite Stressors on Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) Lifespan and Behaviour in a Colony Environment.” Environmental Microbiology. doi: 10.1111/1462–­2920.12825. Rogers, Michael E., Phillip A. Stansly, and Lucasz L. Stelinski. 2014. “2014 Florida Citrus Pest Management Guide: Asian Citrus Psyllid and Citrus Leafminer.” University of Florida Extension Service. Available at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/ IN/IN68600.pdf (accessed April 2015). Rogers, Richard E. L., and James R. Kemp. 2003. “Imidacloprid, Potatoes, and Honey Bees in Atlantic Canada: Is There a Connection?” Bulletin of Insectology 56, no. 1: 83–­88. Rogers, Richard E. L., Geoffrey R. Williams, Chung Lam, David Fischer, and David Hackenberg. 2010. “Movento®, Citrus, and Honey Bees: Results of a Successful Cooperative Study.” Available at http://www.honeybeeworld.com/diary/articles/ Rogers_Movento%202010.pdf (accessed January 2010). Root, Amos I., and Ernest R. Root. 1920. The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture. Medina, OH: A. I. Root Company. Rucker, Randal R., Walter N. Thurman, and Michael Burgett. 2012. “Honey Bee Pollination Markets and the Internalization of Reciprocal Benefits.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 94, no. 4: 956–­77. Rundlöf, Maj, Georg K. S. Andersson, Riccardo Bommarco, Ingemar Fries, Veronica Hederström, Lina Herbertsson, Ove Jonsson, Bjorn K. Klatt, Thorsten R. Pedersen, Johanna Yourstone, and Henrik G. Smith. 2015. “Seed Coating with a Neonicotinoid Insecticide Negatively Affects Wild Bees.” Nature 521: 77–­80.

152 References

Russell, Edmund. 2001. War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Salisbury, Susan. 2013. “Ben Hill Griffin Inc. Accused of Killing Honeybees, Faces Fine.” Palm Beach Post, August 28. Available at http://www.theledger.com/article/ 20130828/NEWS/130829261?template (accessed October 2013). Sandler, Stan. 2001. “News on Imidacloprid.” March 28, e-mails to BEE-­L Listserve Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology. Available at http:// community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-­LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2= ind0103D&L=BEE-­L&F=&S=&P=32278 (accessed March 2013). Sandrock, Christoph, Matteo Tanadini, Lorenzo G. Tanadini, Aline Fauser-­Misslin, Simon G. Potts, and Peter Neumann. 2014. “Impact of Chronic Neonicotinoid Exposure on Honeybee Colony Performance and Queen Supersedure.” PLoS ONE, e103592. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0103592 Sanford, Malcolm. 2003. “Pollination of Citrus by Honey Bees.” University of Florida Extension Service. Available at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/aa092 (accessed August 2013). Sawyer, Richard C. 1996. To Make a Spotless Orange: Biological Control in California. Ames: Iowa State University Press. Schacker, Michael. 2008. A Spring Without Bees: How Colony Collapse Disorder Has Endangered Our Food Supply. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press. Schkade, David, Cass R. Sunstein, and Daniel Kahneman. 2000. “Deliberating about Dollars: The Severity Shift.” Columbia Law Review 100: 1139–­75. Schmuck, Richard. 1999. “No Causal Relationship Between Gaucho® Seed Dressing in Sunflowers and the French Bee Symptoms.” Pflanzenschutz Nachrichten Bayer 52: 257–­99. Schmuck, Richard, and Jürgen Keppler. 2003. “Clothianidin-­Ecotoxicological Profile and Risk Assessment.” Pflanzenschutz-­Nachrichten Bayer 56, no. 1: 26–­58. Scientific and Technical Committee for the Multifactor Study of the Honeybee Apiaries Decline. 2003. “Imidaclopride Utilisé en Enrobage de Semences (Gaucho®) et Troubles des Abeilles, Rapport Final.” Paris: Ministère de l’Agriculture, de la Pêche et des Affaires Rurales. Available at http://agriculture.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/rapportfin.pdf (accessed January 2010). Sclove, Richard E. 2000. “Town Meetings on Technology: Consensus Conferences as Democratic Participation.” In Daniel L. Kleinman, ed., Science, Technology, and Democracy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 33–­48. Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Shand, Hope. 2012. “The Big Six: A Profile of Corporate Power in Seeds, Agrchemicals, and Biotech.” Heritage Farm Companion, Summer. Available at http://www .seedsavers.org/site/pdf/HeritageFarmCompanion_BigSix.pdf (accessed October 2013).

References

153

Shi, Guanming, Jean-­Paul Chavas, and Joseph Lauer. 2013. “Commercialized Transgenic Traits, Maize Productivity and Yield Risk.” Nature Biotechnology 31, no. 2: 111–­14. Simon, Michele. 2014. Follow the Honey: Seven Ways Pesticide Companies Are Spinning the Bee Crisis to Protect Profits. Friends of the Earth. Available at http://libcloud .s3.amazonaws.com/93/f0/f/4656/FollowTheHoneyReport.pdf (accessed April 2014). Sleigh, Charlotte. 2007. Six Legs Better: A Cultural History of Myrmecology. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Smithson, Michael. 1985. “Toward a Social Theory of Ignorance.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 15: 151–­72. Sollenberger, T. Lee. 2004. “Bee Tree Philosophy: A Look at Walker Honey Company in Rodgers, Texas.” American Bee Journal 144, no. 3: 188–­91. Spivak, Marla. 2010. “The Status of the European Honey Bee in the U.S.” In Eric Mader, Marla Spivak, and Elaine Evans, eds., Managing Alternative Pollinators: A Handbook for Growers, Beekeepers and Conservationists. Ithaca, NY: Natural Resource, Agriculture, and Engineering Service, 15–­24. Spivak, Marla, and Eric Mader. 2010. “The Business of Pollination.” In Eric Mader, Marla Spivak, and Elaine Evans, eds., Managing Alternative Pollinators: A Handbook for Growers, Beekeepers and Conservationists. Ithaca, NY: Natural Resource, Agriculture, and Engineering Service Press, 1–­14. Steeger, Thomas. 2013. “Pesticide Incident Reporting.” Available at http:// scientificbeekeeping.com/pesticide-­incident-­reporting/ (accessed June 2014) Steinhauer, Nathalie A., Karen Rennich, Michael E. Wilson, Dewey M. Caron, Eugene J. Lengerich, Jeff S. Pettis, et al. 2014. “A National Survey of Managed Honey Bee 2012–­2013 Annual Colony Losses in the USA: Results from the Bee Informed Partnership.” Journal of Apicultural Research 53: 1–­18. Sumner, Daniel A., and Hayley Boriss. 2006. “Bee-­conomics and the Leap in Pollination Fees.” Agricultural and Resource Economics Update 9: 9–­11. Available at http:// aic.ucdavis.edu/research/bee-­conomics-­1.pdf (accessed August 2013). Sunstein, Cass R. 2002. “The Law of Group Polarization.” Journal of Political Philosophy 10, no. 2: 175–­95. Suryanarayanan, Sainath. 2013. “Balancing Control and Complexity in Field Studies of Neonicotinoids and Honey Bee Health.” Insects 4, no. 1: 153–­67. ———. 2014. “On an Economic Treadmill of Agriculture: Efforts to Resolve Pollinator Decline.” In Daniel L. Kleinman, Karen Cloud-­Hansen, and Jo Handelsman, eds., Controversies in Science and Technology: From Sustainability to Surveillance, vol. 4. New York: Oxford University Press, 259–­68. ———. 2015. “Pesticides and Pollinators: A Context-­Sensitive Policy Approach.” In Christina Grozinger and Jay Evans, eds., “Bee Health at the Intersection of Society and Science.” Current Opinion in Insect Science 10: 149–­55.

154 References

Suryanarayanan, Sainath, and Daniel Lee Kleinman. 2013. “Be(e)coming Experts: The Controversy of Insecticides in the Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder.” Social Studies of Science 43, no. 2: 215–­40. ———. 2014. “Beekeepers’ Collective Resistance and the Politics of Pesticide Regulation in France and the United States.” In Scott Frickel and David J. Hess, eds., “Fields of Knowledge: Science, Politics, and Publics in the Neoliberal Age.” Political Power and Social Theory 27: 89–­122. Taylor, Jean M., and Gary C. Stein. 2003. “Historical Perspective.” In Good Laboratory Practice Regulations, 3rd ed., ed. S. Weinberg. New York: Marcel Dekker. Available at http://image.sciencenet.cn/olddata/kexue.com.cn/upload/blog/ file/2009/4/2009410182239424798.pdf (accessed April 2015). Theobald, Tom. 2010. “Do We Have a Pesticide Blowout?” Bee Culture ( July): 66–­69. ———. 2014. “Neonic Contamination of Prairie Wetlands in Canada.” Available at http://www.bouldercountybeekeepers.org/neonic-­contamination-­of-­prairie -­wetlands-­in-­canada/ (accessed April 2015). USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture). 1907. Miscellaneous Papers on Apiculture. Washington, DC: USDA, Bureau of Entomology, 1907–­1909): Bulletin No. 75. ———. 2005. The Twentieth-­Century Transformation of U.S. Agriculture and Farm Policy. Economic Information Bulletin No. 3, 2005. Available at http://www .ers.usda.gov/media/259572/eib3_1_.pdf (accessed August 2012). ———. 2013. Report on the National Stakeholders Conference on Honey Bee Health. Washington, DC: Agricultural Research Service. USDA Economic Research Service [ERS]. 2013. “Table F-7—­Almonds: Acreage, Yield per Acre, Production (Shelled Basis), Season-­Average Grower Price, and Value, California, 1980 to Date.” Available at http://www.ers.usda.gov/data -­products/fruit-­and-­tree-­nut-­data/yearbook-­tables.aspx (accessed January 2014). USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. 2014. “2014 California Almond Forecast.” Available at http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/California/ Publications/Fruits_and_Nuts/201405almpd.pdf (accessed March 2015). van der Sluijs, Jeroen P., Noa Simon-­Delso, Dave Goulson, Laura Maxim, Jean-­Marc Bonmatin, and Luc P. Belzunces. 2013. “Neonicotinoids, Bee Disorders, and the Sustainability of Pollinator Services.” Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 5: 293–­305. van Dijk, Tessa C., Marja A. van Staalduinen, and Jeroen P. van der Sluijs. 2013. “Macro-­Invertebrate Decline in Surface Water Polluted with Imidacloprid.” PLoS ONE 8, no. 5: e62374. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0062374. vanEngelsdorp, Dennis, Jay D. Evans, Claude Saegerman, Christopher A. Mullin, Eric Haubruge, et al. 2009. “Colony Collapse Disorder: A Descriptive Study.” PLoS ONE 4: e6481. vanEngelsdorp, Dennis, Jerry Hayes Jr., Robyn M. Underwood, Dewey M. Caron, and Jeffrey S. Pettis. 2011. “A Survey of Managed Honey Bee Colony Losses in the USA, Fall 2009 to Winter 2010.” Journal of Apicultural Research 50: 1–­10.

References

155

vanEngelsdorp, Dennis, and Marina D. Meixner. 2010. “A Historical Review of Managed Honey Bee Populations in Europe and the United States and the Factors That May Affect Them.” Journal of Invertebrate Pathology 103, no. 1: S80-­S95. vanEngelsdorp, Dennis, David R. Tarpy, Kathy Baylis, Marla Spivak, Dewey M. Caron, Joseph Connell, Keith S. Delaplane, Susan Donohue, Wayne Esaias, Brian Gross, et al. 2012. “The Bee Informed Partnership: Using Beekeeper’s Real-­World Experience to Solve Beekeepers’ Real-­World Problems.” American Entomologist 58: 116–­18. Vidau, Cyril, Marie Diogon, Julie Aufauvre, Regis Fontbonne, Bernard Viguès, et al. 2011. “Exposure to Sublethal Doses of Fipronil and Thiacloprid Highly Increases Mortality of Honeybees Previously Infected by Nosema ceranae.” PLoS ONE 6, no. 6: e21550. Walker, Clint. 2010. Interview. January 14, North American Beekeeping Conference, Orlando, Florida. Ward, Neil, and Richard Munton. 1992. “Conceptualizing Agriculture-­Environment Relations: Combining Political Economy and Socio-­Cultural Approaches to Pesticide Pollution.” Sociologia Ruralis 32, no. 1: 127–­45. Weaver, Nevin. 1951. “Toxicity of Organic Insecticides: Contact Spray and Field Tests.” Journal of Economic Entomology 44, no. 3: 393–­97. Williams, Geoffrey R., Aline Troxler, Gina Retschnig, Kaspar Roth, Orlando Yañez, Dave Shutler, Peter Neumann, and Laurent Gauthier. 2015. “Neonicotinoid Pesticides Severely Affect Honey Bee Queens.” Scientific Reports 5:14621. DOI: 10.1038/srep14621. Wittenbaum, Gwen M., Anne P. Hubbell, and Cynthia Zuckerman. 1999. “Mutual Enhancement Toward an Understanding of the Collective Preference for Shared Information.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77: 967–­78. Wolf, Steven. 1995. “Cropping Systems and Conservation Policy: The Roles of Agrichemical Dealers and Independent Crop Consultants.” Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 50, no. 3: 263–­70. Wynne, Brian. 1992. “Misunderstood Misunderstandings: Social Identities and Public Update of Science.” Public Understanding of Science 1: 281–­304. ———. 1996. “May the Sheep Safely Graze? A Reflexive View of the Expert-­Lay Knowledge Divide.” In Scott Lash, Bronislaw Szerszynski, and Brian Wynne, eds., Risk, Environment, and Modernity: Towards a New Ecology. London: Sage, 44–­83. ———. 2003. “Seasick on the Third Wave? Subverting the Hegemony of Propositionalism: Response to Collins and Evans (2002).” Social Studies of Science 33, no. 4: 401–­17. ———. 2005. “Reflexing Complexity: Post-­genomic Knowledge and Reductionist Returns in Public Science.” Theory, Culture, and Society 22, no. 5: 67–­94. Yates, Diana. 2013. “A Minute with Gene Robinson.” May 19. Available at http:// illinois.edu/lb/article/72/73513 (accessed July 2014).

index

academic standards, 47, 77. See also false negative acquired immuno-­deficiency syndrome (AIDS), 114–­115, 117, 122 agriculture: chemically dependent, 11, 56; industrial, 55–­57, 70–­71; monocropping (or monoculture), 25, 55, 58, 69, 120; pollinator-­friendly, 63–­64, 69; simplification of, 55; sustainable, 68 Almond Board of California, 85 almonds, 2, 28, 57–­58 American Bee Journal, 16, 22–­23, 45, 134n11 American Beekeeping Federation, 52, 83, 131n2 anti-­statist, 29 Atkins, Laurence, 43–­46, 130n4 Bayer: Bauer v. Bayer, 79, 133n5; Bayer CropScience, 3, 11, 78, 80, 85, 132n11, 133n1, 134n11; Fischer, David, 3, 78–­80, 82–­86, 97, 133n1; Rogers, Richard, 53, 72, 78–­79, 86; and uncertainty, 82–­84 Bayer-­beekeeper dialogue, 85–­87 Bee Informed Partnership, 120 beekeeper: approach (in situ, informal), 20–­21, 30; commercial, 1, 3, 7–­8, 17, 113–­ 114, 119, 123, 126, 129n6, 131n2; piss-­poor (PPBer), 27–­30; scientific, 8, 17, 24–­27, 31 beekeeper-­scientist exchanges, 28–­30, 130n13 beekeeping practices: brood pattern, 15, 20, 25, 49, 126; cotton-­pollinating, 18–­19; feed supplements, 130n14; frames of bees, 18, 20, 25, 126; grading, 18; informal, 20, 30; in situ, 20, 30; miticide, 25, 40–­41, 48, 62, 84 bee kill, 43, 83, 106 best management practices (BMP), 62–­63, 67, 69

Borst, Peter, 24, 26, 129n6, 130n9 boundary-­work, 61, 132n7. See also Gieryn, Thomas Bradbury, Steven, 36–­37, 81, 100–­101 Bromenshenk, Jerry, 83, 85–­86 brood pattern. See beekeeping practices Cale, G.H., 71 Canada: non-­precautionary, 77–­79; University of Guelph, 38. See also canola; Prince Edward Island canola, 34, 38, 40, 50, 75, 79 Carson, Rachel, ix, 11, 46 causal analysis/evidence, 37, 50, 81–­82, 84, 88, 99, 114. See also experimental design citrus greening, 52–­53 clothianidin. See neonicotinoids; Scott-­ Dupree, Cynthia Collins, Harry, 6, 88–­89. See also experimenter’s regress complexity: complexity-­oriented, 14, 120–­ 121, 123, 135n1; context-­sensitive, 120; environmental exclusion of, 94–­98; and uncertainty, 82–­83. See also deliberation control-­oriented approach, 39, 41–­42, 47, 65, 118–­119, 130n5. See also experimental design corn, 66, 74–­76, 79, 83, 134n6 Crop Dust Consortium, 133n4 Cutler, Chris, 31, 38, 40, 71, 80, 81, 102, 119, 135n7. See also Scott-­Dupree, Cynthia deliberation: and honey bees, 123–­126, 135n3; and science policy, 122. See also complexity; nonscientist Dively, Galen, 35, 37–­40, 88, 97 Ecological Incident Information System (EIIS), 106

157

158

Index

effects: acute, 110; chronic, 34, 86, 97; direct, indirect, 41, 58, 78, 95, 98, 108, 118; interactive, 80, 88, 94–­96, 98, 100, 105, 124; lethal, 13, 35, 43–­44, 95–­97, 105–­106; sublethal, 109–­110; synergistic (interactions), 10, 37, 62, 84. See also LD50; sublethal entomology: academic (or university), 8, 13, 42, 45, 50, 88, 113, 119, 133n7; economic, 38, 44, 45–­46; history of, 42–­48 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): Edwards, Debra, 37, 95, 99–­100, 130n1; genesis of, 92; good laboratory practice (GLP), 12, 80, 94, 102–­105, 109, 114; Moriarty, Tom, 3, 97; pollinator protection team, 3; Steeger, Tom, 98, 107. See also sound science European Union, 60, 76-­77. See also precaution experimental design: citizen (or non-­ scientist) engagement with, 5; double-­ blind randomized, 115; exploratory, 124–­125; field studies (or field toxicological), 35–­42, 48–­51, 74–­76, 130n5; semi-­ field, 31, 75–­76, 101. See also complexity; control-­oriented approach experimenter’s regress, 88–­89 expertise, sociology of, 4, 6, 112–­114, 119 false knowledge, 119. See also ignorance, sociology of false negative, 13, 27, 30–­32, 47, 98–­99, 116, 118–­119, 121. See also type II error false positive, 13, 22, 27, 30–­32, 76, 99, 101, 116, 121. See also type I error Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), 80, 93, 103, 105–­107, 134n1 field-­realistic. See experimental design; low dose field season, 49, 127 Food and Drug Administration, US, 102 food safety, 66–­67 France: and beekeeping, 22–­23, 74, 76; and protest, 22–­23, 76. See also mad bee

disease; precaution Frazier, James, 107–­108, 130n10 fungicide, 25, 37, 59, 62, 84 Gaucho, 74–­79, 101, 134n6. See also neonicotinoids; seed treatment geo-­spatial, 120 Gieryn, Thomas, 61, 129n2, 132n7 Hackenberg, David, 1–­2, 16, 67 Hatch Act, 43 Hayes, Jerry, 132n9 Henderson, Colin, 83 Honey Bee Health Summit, 63, 132n10. See also Monsanto Horn, Tammy, 43, 71, 132n4 ignorance, sociology of, 4, 112 imidacloprid: Admire, 77–­78, 133nn4,7; Admire Pro, 38; Montana 2F, 53. See also Gaucho; neonicotinoids imminent harm, 35, 100 incident reporting, 106–­108 Industrial Bio-­Test Laboratories (IBT), 102 Jasanoff, Sheila, 93, 98–­99, 134n1 Journal of Economic Entomology, 38, 45 Kemp, Roger, 78 knowledge gaps, 5 knowledge-­ignorance dynamics, 111 Krupke, Christian, 27, 65, 83, 104 LD50, 43–­44, 75, 105–­106, 109 low dose (or low level), 3, 9, 34, 37, 40–­41, 47, 75–­76, 79–­80, 93, 108, 119, 132n8. See also experimental design mad bee disease, 22–­23, 75, 77 Mendes, Dave, 52, 132n10 miticide. See beekeeping practices Monsanto, 24, 63, 84, 132nn9–­10 Movento (or spirotetramat), 72, 85–­87. See also systemic insecticide Mullin, Christopher, 40–­41, 83–­84

Index 159

National Corn Growers Association (NCGA), 60–­61 National Honey Bee Advisory Board (NHBAB), 23–­24, 26–­29, 31–­33, 86–­87, 106–­107, 130nn8,10 National Institutes of Health, 115 National Portal for Incident Reporting (NPIC), 107 neonicotinoids (or neonicotinyl insecticides), 8, 22–­23, 27–­28, 32, 35, 60–­62, 64–­65, 94, 98, 111–­113, 135n10. See also imidacloprid; systemic insecticide nonknowledge, 5, 119 nonscientist, 119, 122, 124, 126, 159 nontarget, 43, 130n4. See also target North American Beekeeping Conference, 72, 98, 133n6 Nosema (or bee gut pathogen), 39, 52, 126, 158 Oliver, Randy, 8, 16–­17, 24–­26, 47, 81, 129nn7–­8 organism, feeling for the, 26 Pettis, Jeff, 27, 35, 39, 41–­42, 80, 94, 97, 110 Phillips, E.F., 44–­45, 56–­57 pollen traps, 40, 49–­50 pollination: business of, 1, 8, 16–­17, 54, 57, 59; contracts, 20–­21, 63; history of, 9–­10, 54–­59, 131nn1–­2 pollinator: native, 10; wild, 58, 124 precaution: lack of, 99; precautionary orientation, 30, 78, 119; uncertainty, 22. See also false positive; France Prince Edward Island (PEI), 77–­78, 133n7. See also Canada Project Apis m (PAm), 28, 62 Règent TS (or fipronil), 101, 134n6

Robinson, Gene, 81 Root, A.I. and Root, E.R., 22, 131n1 Science to Achieve Results (STAR), 109 Scott-­Dupree, Cynthia, 31, 38–­39, 71, 79–­81, 102, 119, 135n7 seed treatment, 65–­66, 132n11. See also neonicotinoids Sierra Club, 95 Silent Spring (Carson), 11, 92 Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 97 sound science, 3, 12, 33, 61, 90, 98–­99 soybean, 2, 65, 81, 132n11 Spivak, Marla, ix, 21, 40, 55, 135n2 sublethal, 35, 97–­98, 104. See also effects Syngenta, 11, 76, 84, 96, 132n11 systemic insecticide, 3, 129n1, 134n10. See also Movento; neonicotinoids; seed treatment target, 43–­44, 63, 77, 85, 105, 106. See also nontarget Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), 103 type I error, 22, 121. See also false positive type II error, 121. See also false negative undone science, 5, 119 United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), 1–­2, 42–­45, 56, 58, 62, 83, 79, 97 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), 134nn8–­9 van Engelsdorp, Dennis, 1–­2, 22, 41, 43, 52, 120, 132n10 Varroa (or mite), 24–­25, 82–­83, 134n11 Walker, Clint, 3, 17–­23, 129nn1–­2 Woburn, MA, 115–­118 Wynne, Brian, 6, 104, 122, 135n1

About the Authors

Sainath Suryanar ayanan is assistant scientist of biology and society at the University of Wisconsin–­Madison and at the Morgridge Institute for Research. With a background in social insect biology, for the past several years Suryanarayanan has been publishing historically grounded STS scholarship on phenomena associated with honeybee health in collaboration with Daniel Lee Kleinman. Supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and by Germany’s Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Suryanarayanan’s work has appeared in multiple refereed journals including Social Studies of Science, Science, Technology and Human Values, and Political Power and Social Theory, as well as in edited volumes such as the Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies. Daniel Lee Kleinman  is senior associate dean in the Graduate School at the University of Wisconsin–­Madison, where he is also a professor in the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology. He is inaugural editor of Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, the open access journal of the Society for the Social Studies of Science. He is the author of three other books, including Impure Cultures: University Biology and the World of Commerce (2003). Kleinman has also edited and co-­edited several books, including (with Kelly Moore) Routledge Handbook of Science, Technology, and Society (2014).