French Beekeepers Warn of Losses Because of New Bayer Pesticide

Date:02-26-2010

France’s beekeepers union forecast “massive” losses of bees this spring as the country’s farmers apply Bayer CropScience AG’s insecticide Proteus for the first time after the product received French approval last year.

“We’re very concerned,” said Sophie Dugue, a professional beekeeper and a member of the National Union of French Apiculture, or UNAF, at a press conference in Paris today. “We’ll see massive poisoning starting this spring.”

France is the world’s third-largest market for crop- protection products after the U.S. and Brazil, with a value of 1.9 billion euros ($2.6 billion) in 2008, according to data from Bayer. The country approved Proteus in September.

Dugue said beekeepers are worried because the Bayer insecticide will be sprayed on rapeseed, whose yellow flowers attract bees, while other insecticides with similar chemicals have been used to coat seeds. France is the European Union’s second-biggest producer of the oilseed crop after Germany.

“We’re aware of the concern of the beekeepers,” said Gilles Delanoe, a spokesman for Bayer CropScience in France. “If the product is applied according to the instructions, using good practices, it doesn’t present a risk for the bees.”

Proteus accounts for less than 1 percent of Bayer CropScience’s sales in France, according to Delanoe.

France had about 1.25 million beehives in 2008, about half of them owned by professional beekeepers, and the economic value of bees’ role as pollinators in France is about 2 billion euros, UNAF said in documents handed out at the meeting.

Fighting Insects

Proteus is used to fight a “broad spectrum” of sucking and chewing insects and has been registered in more than 50 countries including the U.S. and Brazil, according to Bayer CropScience’s Web site.

The pesticide combines the ingredients deltamethrin and thiacloprid, a systemic neurotoxin in a chemical class called neonicotinoids that also include the active ingredients of Bayer’s Gaucho and Syngenta AG’s Cruiser insecticides.

“The problem with Proteus is the mix of products,” Henri Clement, the president of UNAF, told reporters. “Beekeepers have every reason to be worried about the approval of this product.”

According to the UNAF, Italy has banned all neonicotinoids dangerous to bees.

Cruiser’s active ingredient thiamethoxam doesn’t pose a risk to foraging bees or the survival of colonies when used according to label instructions, Syngenta spokesman Médard Schoenmaeckers said in an e-mailed comment.

“Syngenta supports thorough research on the causes of bee health problems,” Schoenmaeckers said. It monitors farmers “to ensure the safe use of thiametoxam by growers,” he said.

Health Problems

Bayer’s Gaucho causes health problems to bees despite a French ban on using the pesticide on corn and sunflowers, according to UNAF. Beekeepers are finding bees are poisoned by feeding on sunflowers and cover crops planted following a Gaucho-treated crop such as wheat, UNAF said.

“We need new substances that respond to the needs of farmers so they don’t have harvest losses,” Delanoe said. Bayer works “closely” with beekeepers in Germany and the U.K., “we regret that’s not the case for France,” he said.