University of Lethbridge researcher Shelley Hoover recently explained how these tiny creatures contribute billions to the Canadian economy and why their well-being is crucial for crop yields.

A variety of bees are used in pollination, and they play an important role in the food production system.

“It turns out that animal pollinators are either required or enhance the seed set of most of the flowering plants,” Hoover, an associate professor in the department of biological studies at the University of Lethbridge, said during a recent Living Labs webinar.

Flowering plants need to set seed before they can reproduce, and pollinators play an important role in structuring the habitat and ecosystems in which flowering plants live.

Pollinators increase the output of numerous species of crops by 75 per cent.

“Obviously, increasing the yield of crops is important economically, but it’s also important in terms of human health. Adequate nutrition is directly linked to the cost of food. And by adequate nutrition, I just really mean having enough and adequate quantities of vitamins and minerals and calories to maintain an active, healthy lifestyle on an ongoing basis,” Hoover says.

As yields decrease, the cost of food rises, and malnutrition increases, she says.

Pollinators play an important role in pollinating some fruits and vegetables, coffee, chocolate and forages, for example.

Bees are the primary pollinators. Many of them are quite hairy and use their hair to collect pollen.

“The pollen is kind of sticky, and it sticks to all those hairs on the bee,” Hoover says.

The hairs have an electrostatic charge. “The pollen will basically jump on the bee when a bee visits a flower,” she adds.

Plants can be male or female, or can have individual flowers that are male or female. Depending on how the plants reproduce, it often takes a bee to move the pollen, also known as the male gamete, to the female flowers, she said.

There are more than 20,000 species of bees, but most people in Alberta are only familiar with honeybees and bumblebees.

Other types of bees can be red, green, black, iridescent or multi-coloured. Bees can be all different shapes and sizes. Honeybees and bumblebees are social, but most of the others are solitary.

Some other animals mimic bees, including flies, wasps and moths.

“None of these animals are bees, even though they’re yellow and stripey and maybe furry, but they meet our sort of mental image of what a bee is. But none of them are bees, although they can be pollinators of all types,” she says.

Canada has more than 900 species of bees. Within Alberta alone, there are about 400 species; southern Alberta has the highest amount of bee diversity.

The best known of those, honeybees, are not a native species to Canada. They were introduced by Europeans and now fill an important role in pollination and honey production.

Bumblebee colonies can be used to pollinate greenhouse crops such as tomatoes and peppers or field crops such as blueberries. Commercially-managed bumblebees come in large file boxes with the bees inside.

The leafcutter bee was introduced from Europe, is managed commercially and is used for alfalfa, canola seed and low-bush blueberry production. Leafcutter bees are kept in small tents or shelters in blooming crops. Nesting materials, such as Styrofoam or wooden blocks, are kept inside the tent. The nest block has holes in which the bees live. The female will cut a piece of leaf or petal and construct a cocoon, lay her egg on top of it and seal it up until the developing larvae emerge.

Thus, producers produce two crops: the seed from alfalfa or canola, and more bees.

The honeybee is a generalist pollinator, Hoover says. “They can pollinate virtually any crop. They’re used in Canada primarily for canola seed production but also blueberries, tree fruits, raspberries, pumpkins and several different minor crops.”

Honeybees’ products, such as honey, wax, pollen, propolis and royal jelly, are valuable to humans. The bees are kept in colonies consisting of stacks of boxes.

There are three types of different bees in the colony:

• The queen, which lays eggs to produce more brood to produce more bees.

• The male drone, which exists to mate with queens from other colonies.

• Worker bees, which are all female. The workers forage, collect pollen and provide the colony with food. They also rear the other workers.

Honeybees have a large economic impact.

“The total value of what honeybees bring to the economy in Canada in terms of pollination is estimated to be about $3 (billion) to $7 billion, while the value of honey is probably less than $300 million. Honey is a very important and wonderful food crop, but in terms of food production, the value is dwarfed by what they bring to pollinating other crops,” said Hoover.

Alberta has about 40 per cent of the colonies in Canada.

Bees feed on pollen as their protein source. It contains all the nutrients they need to them to rear larvae and new bees. Nectar and honey are both important food sources for honeybees.

The honeybee’s pollen diet in Canada is affected by the change of seasons. In April, there is not a lot of pollen, but in May, June and July, there is a lot of pollen available. In April, pollen comes mainly from trees, including willows, shrubs and fruit trees. In May, pollen is available from dandelions and other flowering plants. In June and July, bees collect their pollen from crops. In September and October, honeybees collect pollen from late-blooming flowers, such as goldenrod.

On the Prairies, honeybees often feed on canola.

Particulars on pollinators

For those interested in learning more about pollinators and how to contribute to the pollinator population in Western Canada, Shelley Hoover recommends a handful of resources:

• Pollinator Partnership Canada, which has several different guides for selecting plants for pollinators, depending on the region.

• Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has a guidebook called Native Pollinators and and Agriculture in Canada.

• The Alberta Native Bee Council is an excellent resource for learning about native bees.

• The Alberta Beekeepers Commission is a good resource for all things honeybee.

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When honeybees forage, they collect nectar, pollen and water from nearby flowers. These flowers contain traces of the chemicals in the soil and water where they grow.

As honeybees fly, they also pick up dust and other tiny particles from the air and any surfaces they touch. Some of these particles include metals from human activities like burning fossil fuels or industrial pollution.

By the time the bee has returned to its nest it is covered, inside and out, with the chemicals found in its local area. In this way, the honey in a beehive is a mix of everything the bees gather within about a three-kilometer area. Learning how to read the composition of honey will allow us to understand the chemical makeup of any given environment.

The honey produced by the tireless work of the honeybee is nothing short of an untapped goldmine of environmental data that could help us better understand the spread of environmental pollutants.

Bees can help map pollution

Our research — focusing on the Manchester area in the U.K. — proposes using honey as a window into the chemical make-up of a local area. Our team comprised of researchers from Dalhousie University in Canada and the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. We measured metal concentrations in honey collected by citizen scientist beekeepers in northwest England.

Greater Manchester was a major industrial powerhouse. Unfortunately, historical industrial activities often leave behind a legacy of pollution and have been linked to environmental contamination.

Metal contaminants in soil and water from historical industrial activities do not easily disappear. They can be remobilized as dust during activities like building and road construction, or farming. Likewise, metals in surface water and groundwater may also be transferred into flowers via plant roots.

Honey samples were collected by local citizen scientist beekeepers to help determine the distribution of metal pollution across Greater Manchester. Honey samples were gathered over a single season to establish baseline metal concentrations from urban, industrial, residential and agricultural zoning districts. This baseline data can be used in future studies to monitor long-term trends and changes in metal concentrations in the environment.

Average arsenic and cadmium concentrations in Manchester were higher than global averages. Cadmium and lead concentrations were also higher than the recommended World Health Organization and United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization guidelines.

These high metal concentrations reflect Manchester’s heavy industrial past. They also reveal pollution patterns from current human activities like transportation and construction.

Natural biomonitors

Rapid urbanization, transportation, industrialization and other human activities has resulted in increased global water, air and soil pollution. Interest in measuring local and global pollution is also increasing.

Current pollution monitoring and reporting in Canada is expensive and focuses on air pollution monitoring under the National Air Pollution Surveillance program. This program was established in 1969 to monitor and assess the long-term air quality in populated regions of Canada and the dataset can be used by governments to assess air pollution trends.

The National Air Pollution Surveillance network comprises 286 sites in 203 communities located in every province and territory across Canada and is managed by the provinces, territories and some municipal governments.

Pollutant releases to air and water from industrial facilities are self-reported by the industries themselves under the National Pollutant Release Inventory. However, this inventory has been criticized for under-reporting of pollutants, and a lack of information related to how toxic the pollution can be.

Because these traditional methods can be expensive and time-consuming, government agencies and researchers need cost-effective monitoring tools to holistically track environmental pollutants such as heavy metals. Our research suggests that honey could be just the cost-effective monitoring tool governments are looking for.

Researchers in Vancouver have already run studies to measure metals like lead and cadmium in honey from hives in Vancouver’s downtown core. Analysis in 2019 found that the honey was clean, well below global averages for heavy metals like lead.

Although the honey in downtown Vancouver was perfectly safe to eat, they also discovered higher levels of metals in honey collected from nearby industries or densely populated areas. Efforts to map pollution using honey in Australia and Italy have also been effective.

Biomonitoring pollution in Canada

Because bees collect nectar, pollen and water from flowers within a three-kilometer area, they offer a seasonal snapshot of local environmental pollution.

Although there are nearly 300 National Air Pollution Surveillance sites across Canada, there are nearly one million bee hives offering even greater national coverage. These cost-effective pollution monitoring sites would complement existing pollution monitoring networks.

With beekeeping rising in popularity, this allows for community participation in biomonitoring studies like ours. Canada’s more than 13,000 beekeepers are a critical untapped resource of citizen scientists that could be vital to measuring long-term trends of harmful metals and other contaminants across Canada.

—Tony Robert Walker is a professor at the School for Resource and Environmental Studies at Dalhousie University. Simon Harper is a professor of computer science at the University of Manchester.

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Forage and seed producers heard about the benefits of night spraying for red clover crops during the Saskatchewan Forage Seed Development Commission’s recent annual meeting. The SFSDC had conducted two on-farm experiments of night spraying in the province’s northeast in June 2021.

During the meeting, Graham Parsons, pollinator biosecurity specialist with the Saskatchewan agriculture department, identified the pollinators that benefit from nighttime pesticide application as farmers manage certain pests.

The lesser clover leaf weevil “is more active in the night, in the canopy and stuff, so the spray actually for that pest was more effective during the night time as well,” he told the meeting at White Fox, north of Nipawin.

“So it’s kind of a win-win both ways: better for the pollinators and better for spraying for the pest as well.”

READ MORE: When a crop pest isn’t a crop pest

Producers are seeking ways to control the lesser clover leaf weevil. Management practices range from spring burning to encouraging parasitoids, but chemical application of pesticides has been the most effective.

Northeastern growers are under more pressure from the weevil, which lays eggs from May and into June and July when the crop starts to flower, according to a University of Saskatchewan study.

The commission said day and night spraying was done in June 2021 before clover flowering. Traps were set to identify the beneficial pollinators present in the field 24 hours before and after the spraying applications.

“Success then would be measured as ‘no decrease’ in trap catches for the 24 hours post-spray in relation to pre-spray samples, night spray compared to UTC (unsprayed treatment control)… there is no indication that night spraying was more deleterious to commercial or natural pollinators than day spraying,” the report said.

Parsons identified an abundance of bees in the traps. Bees of any kind are the gold standard of pollinators, he said. As for other pollinators, some moths fly at night but most require light and heat they can only get during the day.

“If you can spray at night or early in the morning, just as the sun comes up, or in the evening as the sun’s going down or after it’s gone down, then all the pollinators, they’re home for the night so they’re not going to be exposed to anything when you’re spraying,” Parsons says.

Protective predators

Hoverflies as pollinators have the added benefit of predatory larvae that attack various in-crop pests. However, hoverflies, wasps and some moths and butterflies are not as effective as bees at pollinating. The high number of hoverflies makes up for their lack of performance individually, he adds.

As a field crop entomologist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Tyler Wist has been an ardent supporter of predatory bugs through his Field Heroes program.

Farmers get both good pollinators and pest management with hoverflies, he said.

“When they’re in there pollinating the crop, they say ‘Hey, there’s some aphids here. I’m gonna lay some eggs and then have these little slug-like offspring that go around and stab aphids to death from their mouth parts, and then suck them dry.’ So super cool that they’re both.”

Bee flies and blister beetles are also predatory. Their larvae feast on grasshopper eggs, Wist says, so supporting their growth is beneficial.

Blister beetle adults can potentially eat leaves, so they’re not as beneficial as some other insect helpers. When they do get into the flower canopy, they are good cross pollinators and their damage is minimal compared to other harmful bugs, Wist says.

If farmers want to attract more beneficial insects, including different bee species, supporting their habitat is just as important as proper pesticide management, he says.

“Wild bees will nest in wooded areas and down in the ground too, so undisturbed ground areas are important for some of those ground nesting wild bees.”

Parsons has focused his research on pollinator habitat.

In a canola field without any wetlands, woodlands or edges, there is no habitat for pollinators, no matter how many flowers and forages there are.

“Most of our pollinators are nesting in the ground, about 70 per cent of them,” Parsons says. “So if there’s no (nearby) area that’s uncultivated … there’s no area for those bees to be nesting.”

Without wetland habitat, including willows, wildflowers or weeds, there is no food or places for insects to overwinter. By leaving the natural environment or planting permanent wildflower patches, producers can see benefits for a long time, Parsons says.

Depending on the crop and type of insects farmers are trying to keep in their fields, spray application timing and type can differ from crop to crop, Wist says.

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Stuart Lawrence, Dean Hubbard and Ian Steppler are three Prairie crop producers who have integrated beneficial insects into their farm management practices. Here’s how insects help and hinder their crop production efforts.

Dean Hubbard

Claresholm, Alta.

Wheat stem sawfly is a crop pest that lives in and attacks the stems of crops like wheat, rye, triticale and some varieties of barley. Dean Hubbard, who farms near the southern Alberta town of Claresholm, had fewer problems with the pest once he started using a stripper header for harvesting wheat.

By doing so, Hubbard left a habitat for Bracon cephi — a parasite that acts as a predator for wheat stem sawfly — to survive and thrive.

Adult sawfly females lay eggs in the plant stems. The larvae feed within the stems of plants, affecting both crop yield and grain quality. The larvae also girdle plant stems, causing the stems to break in the wind and the plants to fall over, making the crop difficult to harvest.

But Bracon cephi is on to its game. The native wasp is one of a handful of insect parasites able to move from grass to crops with the sawfly. “It’s a tiny wasp that also lays an egg in the wheat stem. It travels down until it finds the sawfly larvae and then eats it,” says Hubbard.

Scouting for wheat stem sawfly can be time-consuming work. Fortunately, a few years ago, a master’s degree student from the University of Saskatchewan tracked population increases in Bracon cephi in Hubbard’s fields by monitoring sawfly populations.

“At our place the one year, about 50 per cent of the plants actually had sawfly larvae in them and half of them had been parasitized. And I think it was just two years later there was 85 per cent parasitism. That was since I started using the stripper header.”

Stripper headers, of course, leave standing stubble in the field where the parasites take shelter over the winter.

“As long as you don’t mechanically damage the wheat stems, they will overwinter themselves. It’s a natural population, so there are always some around. It’s just a matter of providing them with an environment they can thrive in. We don’t harrow in the spring; we seed right in with the disk drill. We try to minimize any of the damage to that stem.”

Hubbard avoids spraying insecticides as much as he can to provide habitats for the parasite and other beneficial insects.

“I’ll never say never, but we are very hesitant to spray an insecticide. We actually haven’t had to use an insecticide as a spray for a long time although we have used some on seed treatments.”

Stuart Lawrence

Rosetown, Sask.

Stuart Lawrence doesn’t know why he gets aphids in his lentil crops when he sprays foliar fungicide on his crop. What he does know is lady beetles help when he gets those aphid populations.

“Whenever we have a leaf disease in lentils and we have to spray a foliar fungicide, I know, probably, within two weeks, I will have to spray an insecticide for aphids. I’m not exactly sure why that is,” says the producer from Rosetown, which is about 115 kilometres southwest of Saskatoon.

However, he has a theory.

“An agronomist I talk to thinks the fungicide kills a fungus that also kills aphids. That allows an aphid population to spike. What I will do is hire an agronomist with a sweep net to come out and continuously check my lentils and monitor aphid and ladybug populations.”

Why lady beetles? “The aphids are lunch for the ladybugs,” says Lawrence. “I’ve read how many aphids a ladybug eats in a day … it’s a lot. The trick is to get the ladybug population growing as the aphid population is growing.”

Lawrence is the first to admit it’s not a perfect system. He’s rarely had a situation where there have been enough lady beetles to completely keep the aphids in check.

“But in years where I don’t spray a foliar fungicide, I never seem to have an aphid problem and at the same time, I have quite a few ladybugs. Maybe in a normal year the ladybugs keep the aphids down and I don’t have a problem.”

Encouraging lady beetle populations is an extension of Lawrence’s determination to minimize chemical crop protection on his farm.

“I wish I could spray the fungicide and not worry about insects and the ladybugs could take care of things but, unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to always work out that way,” he says.

“I try to do the best I can to not immediately go and grab the jug of whatever to make my problems go away. You kind of hope and wait to see if nature’s going to step up and help a guy out.”

Ian Steppler

Carman, Man.

Like many producers in the early 2000s, Ian Steppler was looking for a profitable enterprise to help him weather the twin storms of BSE and low commodity prices. The mixed producer, who farms near the southern Manitoba town of Carman, found it in beekeeping. Over 22 years, the four-hive operation grew to include 1,500 honey bees and 1,200 colonies and became a symbiotic aid to Steppler’s wheat, oats, barley, canola, sunflower and cattle operation.

It’s a win-win situation for all parties involved — the bees pollinate the crops and improve seed set (the number of seeds on a pollinated flower). They also collect nectar-producing honey, bringing it to the hives that Steppler keeps. In exchange, Steppler retains foliage-rich habitats such as sloughs and bushes that both bees and cattle benefit from.

If there’s a drawback, it’s that it can be difficult to quantify just how much Steppler’s honey bees improve yield in a plant like canola. Canola is open-pollinated, meaning it can be pollinated by any number of natural mechanisms including birds and wind. But going on observation, he’s certain the honey bee activity increases seed set in his canola, ultimately increasing yield.

“There are studies that show (yield in canola) can go up two to five per cent depending on conditions, so there’s benefit directly to the canola fields,” says Steppler, who serves as chairman of the Manitoba Beekeepers’ Association.

Taking an ecosystem management approach has caused him to be more mindful of how he uses crop protection products. He takes pains to ensure bees and other beneficial insects are not affected by his spraying activity.

“We try to manage our pesticide use by spraying in the evening when the bees are away or the bugs are all tucked away out of harm’s way,” he says.

“We also look at different products on the market that are very specific and more targeted. There are products on the market right now that are very specific at killing grasshoppers and worms within crops. It’s a little more expensive, but by using these products it completely relieves the cost of killing off beneficial insects.”

If you’re looking for information on beneficial insects, visit the Field Heroes website at fieldheroes.ca. There you can find tips on how to scout for and identify crop pests as well as learn how beneficials can help you and how you can help them.

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The so-called stinging “murder hornets,” the world’s largest hornets, can grow to five centimetres in length and prey on native bee and wasp populations, consuming honeybee hives and threatening agriculture.

The hornets are not native to North America. They were first detected in the U.S. in 2019, when a hornet was reported in Washington’s Whatcom County, near the Canadian border, according to the WSDA.

This latest nest was uncovered in the base of a dead alder tree in Whatcom County and was eradicated on Wednesday.

“They did actually attempt to sting us this time,” said Sven Spichiger, the department’s managing entomologist, during a virtual news conference Thursday.

“We are all very happy to say that our hornet suits worked very well and no injuries were sustained. We responded to this by blocking off the second entrance, which stopped them from coming out,” he said.

In addition to the 113 worker hornets vacuumed out, staff netted another 67 other hornets in the area. The nest itself had nearly 1,500 hornets in various stages of development, the WSDA said in a statement.

Some of the live hornets were sent to USDA for research. The others will be destroyed, the agency said.

WSDA said it will continue to trap for Asian giant hornets through the end of November.

Once spotted and captured, hornets are fitted with a radio transmitter and released in the hope they can be followed back to the nest.

After a nest is confirmed to be in a tree by thermal imaging, the tree is wrapped in plastic while its trunk is hit with a piece of wood to get the hornets out so they can be vacuumed up and eradicated.

According to the Invasive Species Council of B.C., Asian giant hornet nests have yet to be found in mainland British Columbia — except for one nest Washington state officials found and destroyed directly over the border line at Blaine in Whatcom County last October.

That said, several dead Asian giant hornets were found in B.C.’s southern Fraser Valley in 2020, the council said. The lone nest seen on the Canadian side of the border was found and destroyed at Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island, in 2019.

— Reporting for Reuters by Alexandra Ulmer. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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The Pest Management Regulatory Agency on Tuesday issued proposed decisions on clothianidin and thiamethoxam that would extend the products’ existing conditional registrations as seed treatments and foliar- and soil-applied pesticides in field crops, to the end of 2019.

Clothianidin, under its current conditional registration, is marketed in Canada as insecticides and seed treatments under brand names including Poncho, Prosper, Nipsit, Titan and Sepresto. Thiamethoxam’s conditional registration covers products such as Cruiser and Helix.

The agency’s proposed decision stems from the re-evaluations of neonic pesticides it announced in 2012, with an eye on the chemicals’ “potential risk to pollinators in light of international updates to the pollinator risk assessment framework.”

PMRA on Tuesday also announced proposed re-evaluation decisions for clothianidin and thiamethoxam based on its pollinator risk assessments.

For clothianidin, the proposed pollinator re-evaluation calls for the phase-out of its foliar application to orchard trees and strawberries and to municipal, industrial and residential turf sites. It also proposes to reduce pre-bloom applications for cucurbit vegetables (cucumbers, squash, et cetera) from two down to one.

The re-evaluation also calls for added “protective label instructions” for cereal crop uses of clothianidin.

For thiamethoxam, the proposed pollinator re-evaluation calls for the phase-out of foliar and soil applications to ornamental crops that would result in pollinator exposure; of soil application to berry crops, cucurbit crops and fruiting vegetables; and of foliar application to orchard trees.

Foliar application of thiamethoxam to legumes, outdoor fruiting vegetables and berry crops would no longer be permitted before or during bloom, PMRA said.

PMRA’s proposals are now up for a 90-day public comment period, running to March 19, 2018. The agency’s final decisions on the products are due to be published in late 2018.

Recent separate assessments of a third neonic, imidacloprid, found it to be turning up in waterways at levels harmful to aquatic insects, leading PMRA to propose a three- to five-year phase-out of all agricultural uses and a “majority of other outdoor uses” of the product.

The proposal for imidacloprid went through a 120-day public comment period ending in March this year, to be followed by a final PMRA decision on the use of imidacloprid in Canada late next year. PMRA said it also expects to publish a proposed decision on imidacloprid pollinator safety in March 2018.

Clothianidin and thiamethoxam have also been found to occur “frequently and at comparable levels to imidacloprid” in certain waterbodies in areas of intensive agriculture, PMRA said Tuesday.

Consultation is expected in July on proposed measures for clothianidin and thiamethoxam to protect aquatic life. Final decisions on such measures are expected to follow in January 2020.

“Decade of overuse”

The Ontario Beekeepers’ Association on Thursday ripped PMRA’s proposal to continue registration for clothianidin and thiamethoxam “against overwhelming scientific evidence showing acute and chronic effects on bees.”

PMRA’s decision, OBA said, also flies in the face of “the experience of Ontario beekeepers whose bees continue to suffer from a decade of overuse of neonicotinoids on soy, corn and winter wheat.”

Noting PMRA’s plans to call for new labelling on field crop seed treatments, related to reducing dust at planting, OBA said dust from planters represents “less than five per cent of the pesticide applied to seed.”

By focusing its attention to crop dust, OBA said, PMRA “perpetuates the myth that neonicotinoids could be safe for bees if applied properly at planting time.”

Ontario in 2015 moved to limit access to neonic-treated seed only to farmers “who can demonstrate they need protection from the pests targeted” by the products in question, OBA noted.

“Ontario beekeepers are hopeful that Ontario’s Class 12 legislation will allow farmers access to crop protection in a way that also protects our vital insect pollinators,” OBA president Jim Coneybeare said in the association’s release Thursday.

“The only group that could possibly benefit from PMRA’s decision are the manufacturers of these pesticides.” — AGCanada.com Network

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It’s estimated that 84,430 hives were lost to the disorder in the first quarter this year. That’s down 27 per cent from a year earlier.

Year-over-year losses also fell 27 per cent from April through June, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s honeybee health survey.

Overall, the number of U.S. hives increased by three per cent to 2.89 million. The study attributed the overall increase in bee numbers to due mainly to the replacement of losses.

Varroa mites, thought to be one of the key causes behind colony losses, continue to plague beekeepers with more than two-fifths saying the mites were doing damage.

Mites were reported in 42 per cent of commercial hives, down from 53 per cent in the same April-to-June period a year ago.

Beekeepers also reported that 13 per cent of colonies were being harmed by pesticides, 12 per cent by non-varroa pests and 4.3 per cent by diseases.

Starvation, bad weather and lack of forage were also listed as problems.

The annual colony loss report normally carried out by the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists has not yet been released for 2017.

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ALUS Canada, working with the Monteregie branch of Quebec’s Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA), formally launched the program Wednesday at its first Quebec location, a farm near St-Jean-Baptiste, south of St-Hyacinthe.

ALUS, in its initial year in the province, is expected to develop six hectares of habitat for wildlife and native pollinators and help to improve water quality.

The project, at Jules Malouin’s farm southeast of St-Jean-Baptiste, is also expected to help stabilize the riverbank, reduce erosion and provide “cooling shade” over a nearby watercourse, thus improving water quality for an endangered fish species, the copper redhorse.

According to the federal fisheries department, the copper redhorse is the only fish species with a distribution range entirely in Quebec, around islands in the St. Lawrence River and its lakes.

The species, found nowhere else in the world and protected in Canada since 2007, faces habitat pressure from riverbank erosion, “increased suspended matter owing to agriculture, deforestation and urbanization” and the “premature aging” of the rivers, the fisheries department said.

ALUS Canada, the not-for-profit body that now operates ALUS in six provinces, said the Monteregie program will focus on a 420-square km area made up of two watersheds, those of the riviere des Hurons and the ruisseaux (creeks) Hazen-Bleury and a la Barbotte.

“The UPA has always recognized the importance of ecological services, and now this partnership with ALUS Canada will allow us to act on it,” Christian Saint Jacques, president of the Federation de l’UPA de la Monteregie and of the ALUS-Monteregie partnership advisory committee, said in a release.

“ALUS provides the mechanism to put projects on the ground, and the funding to make annual payments to our participants” such as Malouin, he said.

The ALUS program, which first launched in Manitoba in 2006 and now runs also in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Prince Edward Island, relaunched earlier this year under the ALUS Canada not-for-profit body, with backing from the Toronto-based W. Garfield Weston Foundation.

ALUS Canada has so far invested nearly $2.8 million with over 700 participants on almost 18,400 ALUS acres across the country. — AGCanada.com Network

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Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday released their preliminary assessments, both of which show some situations where imidacloprid — one of the neonicotinoid group of pesticides — poses risk to pollinators.

Imidacloprid is marketed in Canada in seed treatments — such as Bayer’s Admire, Gaucho and Stress Shield and Adama’s Alias and Sombrero — and in other insecticides such as Bayer’s Concept and Cheminova’s Grapple.

“No potential risk to bees was indicated for seed treatment use,” PMRA said in its preliminary assessment, which will be released in its full version with appendices on Jan. 18 for a 60-day public comment period.

Past that, “additional data is expected” this year on imidacloprid’s effects on pollinators, to be available well ahead of PMRA’s final pollinator risk assessment, due out sometime in December.

Residue levels in crop pollen and nectar from imidacloprid seed treatments are “typically below levels expected to pose a risk to bees at both the individual bee and colony levels,” the agency said.

Exposure via dust kicked up during planting of treated seed was also considered, the agency said, noting new risk-reduction rules were put in place in 2014 for planting of corn and soybean seed treated with neonics.

“Dust generation is related to multiple factors including the planting equipment and seed types, and at this time planting of other seed types in Canada is not associated with dust generation or harm to pollinators.”

For some soil treatments, meanwhile, PMRA said a “potential risk to bees was identified” with imidacloprid, noting higher application rates and timing closer to blooming “appears to result in higher residue levels.” Also, crops grown in coarser soils “tended to have higher residues than those grown in medium or fine soils.”

No potential risk from soil treatment was identified for crops such as melon, pumpkin and blueberry, and “minimal risk is expected for bee-attractive crops in other registered crop groups” such as legumes and herbs, PMRA said. Also, the products’ current label “adequately minimizes risk for use on turf.”

However, “potential risk was identified (in soil treatments) for tomato and strawberry with certain application rates and soil types.” Overall, PMRA said, field studies for soil treatment applications, expected to be done this year, “will help further inform the pollinator risk assessment.”

In foliar applications of imidacloprid, meanwhile, the potental risk “varies with application timing,” the agency said, noting current label restrictions help cut down that risk.

Specifically, PMRA said, foliar applications made during bloom “are expected to pose a risk to bees” but those products’ current labels “prohibit or reduce application during bloom for most bee-attractive crops.”

Residue information for pre-bloom applications was only available on crops not grown in Canada, PMRA said, but also noted pre-bloom applications are already prohibited for some uses, such as in orchard crops that are “highly attractive” to bees.

Post-bloom foliar applications to farm crops harvested at the end of the season “are not expected to pose a risk to bees, as pollen and nectar are no longer available for forage.”

Citrus, cotton

The U.S. EPA and California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation, in a joint preliminary study, found imidacloprid “potentially poses risk to hives when the pesticide comes in contact with certain crops that attract pollinators.”

EPA data show citrus and cotton “may have residues of the pesticide in pollen and nectar above the threshold level” of 25 parts per billion, above which effects on pollinator hives were likely to be seen.

Other crops such as corn and leafy vegetables “either do not produce nectar or have residues below the EPA-identified level,” the U.S. agency said.

Like PMRA, the EPA noted “additional data is being generated on these and other crops to help EPA evaluate whether imidacloprid poses a risk to hives.” The EPA’s assessment also now goes to a 60-day public comment period.

Both PMRA and the EPA plan to run similar risk assessments this year on the other neonicotinoids, clothianidin and thiamethoxam.

The two agencies’ preliminary risk assessments for those products are due out in December this year, with final risk assessments to follow in December 2017. (The EPA will also assess another neonicotinoid, dinotefuran, in the same time frame.)

The EPA last year proposed to prohibit use of the neonics, and other pesticides considered toxic to bees, when crops are in bloom and bees are under contract for pollination services. The EPA has also temporarily halted approvals for new outdoor neonic uses until its pollinator risk assessments are complete.

In Canada, where use of neonic seed treatments in corn and soybeans is now restricted in Ontario and new limits are planned in Quebec, imidacloprid has “very little reported use” on corn or soybean seed.

Value assessment

Use of the two other neonics, thiamethoxam and clothianidin, has been widespread on corn and soybean seed in Canada. In 2013, “virtually all” field corn planted in Canada had been treated with one of the two, and over half of Canada’s soybean seed that year was treated with thiamethoxam, PMRA said.

PMRA’s related preliminary value assessment for corn seed treatment, also released Wednesday, suggests a national economic benefit for the corn industry of about $74.2 to $83.3 million, or about 3.2 to 3.6 per cent of the national farm gate value for corn, in 2013.

Neonic seed treatments on soybeans yielded an estimated economic benefit of about 1.5 to 2.1 per cent of the crop’s national farm gate value for 2013, or about $37.3 million to $51 million, the agency said.

In both corn and soybeans, PMRA said, those economic benefits appeared to accrue mostly in Ontario and Manitoba. In Quebec, for both corn and soybeans, growers’ expenses on treated seeds were “estimated to exceed the yield returns.”

PMRA’s preliminary value assessment is also now up for a 60-day public comment period. The agency said it’s now “seeking additional information to finalize the value assessment for both the corn and soybean seed treatments’ uses.” — AGCanada.com Network

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The researchers on Monday cited 139 counties as especially worrisome, with wild bee numbers decreasing while farmland for crops dependent on such pollinators is increasing.

The counties included agricultural regions of California such as the Central Valley, the Pacific Northwest, the upper Midwest and Great Plains, west Texas and the southern Mississippi River valley.

The counties grew crops such as almonds, pumpkins, squashes, blueberries, watermelons, peaches and apples that are highly dependent on pollinators, or had large amounts of less-pollinator-dependent crops including soybeans, canola and cotton.

Taylor Ricketts, director of the University of Vermont’s Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, said the 139 counties represent 39 per cent of the pollinator-dependent crop area of the U.S. and most likely will face inadequate pollination in the future.

“Wild bee declines may increase costs for farmers and, over time, could even destabilize crop production,” Ricketts said.

Some crops such as corn and wheat do not need pollinators.

The study estimated that wild bee numbers diminished in 23 per cent of the continental U.S. between 2008 and 2013 in a trend driven by conversion of their natural habitat into farmland including corn for biofuel production.

Pesticides and diseases were cited as other factors behind the declines among the roughly 4,000 U.S. species of wild bees.

“Wild bees help pollinate many of our most nutritious crops, support natural ecosystems and contribute over US$3 billion to the U.S. economy each year,” Ricketts said.

Their decline may prompt greater dependence on commercial honeybee colonies for pollinating crops, but honeybee numbers also are falling, added Gund Institute researcher Insu Koh, the lead author of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Our results highlight the need for strategies to maintain pollinator populations in farmland, and the importance of conservation programs that provide flowering habitat that can support wild bees and other pollinators,” said Michigan State University entomologist Rufus Isaacs, who heads the U.S. Department of Agriculture-funded Integrated Crop Pollination Project.

The study followed a 2014 memorandum by President Barack Obama creating a task force to study pollinator losses. The task force in May called for preserving wide swathes of pollinator habitats.

— Reporting for Reuters by Will Dunham in Washington, D.C.

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