Environment: Bee's Killer

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An unexpected sting

The Pedigree of Honey Does not concern the Bee— A Clover, any time, to him, Is Aristocracy.

—Emily Dickinson

That, alas, is precisely the problem. Now roughly a century after that flight of poetic fancy, clover and, indeed, a host of other crops have been laced with a chemical pesticide that may threaten the blissful honeybee with extinction. The culprit is methyl parathion, which has been used to combat pests like the boll weevil, scourge of the cotton fields. But methyl parathion is highly dangerous stuff. Only a dab will penetrate the skin, attack the nervous system and kill humans as well as insects.

In 1974 the Environmental Protection Agency permitted a new, less dangerous form of the pesticide. Marketed commercially as Penncap-M by the Pennwalt Corp. of Philadelphia, it is contained in microscopic plastic capsules about the size of pollen grains. These effectively protect humans but gradually release the still potent pesticide onto crops. What scientists did not realize was that honeybees would innocently pick up the capsules as they flew from blossom to blossom gathering pollen and nectar.

Because of the chemical's shell, the bee is at first unaffected and blithely returns to the hive to make honey. But the following spring, or even two years later, disaster strikes. Larvae and young bees eat the stored pollen that has been poisoned by the chemical and die. By Entomologist Roy Barker's reckoning, just a few capsules may be enough to devastate a colony of 50,000 bees.

Other experts share Barker's concern. According to Washington State University Entomologist Carl Johansen, some 20,000 bee colonies have already been affected by the capsules. If some city folk regard that as a minor nuisance, they are sadly mistaken. Loss of the bees and the honey they produce (a $125 million-a-year industry) is not the only danger. More than 50 different crops grown in the U.S. depend on bees for pollination. Alfalfa alone requires two or three hives per acre. Bees also play a pivotal role in such favorites as almonds, apples, squash, melons, cherries and avocados; all told, bee-pollinated crops ring up $2 billion a year. One possible solution: restricted spraying of the capsules within four miles of hives, usually about as far as the bees ever buzz from home.