Company links manganese to bee population decline

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

by SUSAN MANN

A process that makes manganese available to bees may be causing their decline, according to a new theory by researchers from a Netherlands-based company.

But Dan Davidson, president of the Ontario Beekeepers Association, says he hasn’t heard of the new theory proposed by the company, Science in Water B.V.  “One thing I do know is there’s all kinds of stuff coming out of the woodwork right now about bees and one side is trying to say their demise is being caused by everything except the very toxic insecticides. The truth of the matter is they’re just grasping at straws.”

The association has requested the province ban neonicotinoid seed treatments effective for the spring of 2014.

In an Aug. 29 press release posted on its website, the company says excess manganese may be the culprit in the high bee colony losses and the worldwide bee decline. The company says it reached that conclusion after intensive studies and practical experiments among beekeepers.

“Since winter mortality also occurs in remote areas far away from agricultural activities and in nature conservational areas with a large quantity of flora, the root of the problem must be a general environmental factor,” the release says. “That factor might be manganese.”

Maarten van Hoorn, research team leader and owner of Science in Water, says by email 16 beekeepers, all in The Netherlands, participated in the study in 2011 and about 70 beekeepers from three different countries took part last year. The participants and their locations were: three in the United States, one in France, five in The Netherlands and the remainder in Belgium. This year, there are a lot of small tests already running but he didn’t give a figure for the number of participants.

It’s the process that makes manganese available to the bees’ system that causes the declines and not the manganese itself, researchers say. A bacterium inside varroa mites transports manganese to the bees.

Excess manganese leads to increased reproduction resulting in too many young bees that worker bees can’t sufficiently feed. An excess of manganese also stimulates bees to leave the hive.

“The bee decline problem is therefore a general environmental issue brought about by an excess of manganese,” the release says.

Researchers also found that iron counteracts the effects of manganese. Their work is now focused on applying iron to bee colonies on a much larger scale and in finding beekeepers willing to put the finding to the test.

Asked if the results could apply to Canada, van Hoorn says there’s no reason it should not work here.

The study was funded by Science in Water, van Hoorn says. BF