France 5: Who killed the bees?

[gavin]

Vous pouvez parler Francais bien? Alors, regardez:

http://www.france5.fr/c-dans-l-air/ (http://www.france5.fr/c-dans-l-air/index-fr.php?page=resume&id_article=6045)

Or perhaps:

This link (http://www.france5.fr/c-dans-l-air/index-fr.php?page=resume&id_rubrique=1512) (the previous one was failing to work for me now but this one seems OK)

On peut voir quelques abeilles (et apiculteurs) ecossais au milieu de l'émission.

If you can get it running and don't want to wade through the whole show, the Scottish bit is right in the middle. It was on the channel France 5 tonight.

It also features an interview with Chris Connolly. I have to say that I found his imitation of a bee supposedly affected by pesticides one of the funniest things I've ever seen on the internet! It was all very brief, but it gets funnier every time I see it. The product of an over-fertile imagination of course - anyone else see bees on oilseed rape behaving like this?! If someone has the ability to copy that to YouTube it would have the potential to be a massive internet hit.

My contribution was stripped down to a very simplistic story about Varroa, although I did make some very clear points about such things as the the concordance of exposure to sunflowers (with pesticides) and bee troubles in France whereas here the flowering of OSR and the losses of colonies could hardly be further apart in the calendar. Eliza the journalist saw the importance of that right away, but it didn't survive the cutting room floor.

best wishes

Gavin

PS

At the moment it is at the top of the page so you press 'Emission en Video'.

No doubt in a few days it will transfer to the 'Derniere Videos' further down the page, then later it will be in the Archives.

I get a choice to download a new viewer or 'Ne pas le telecharger' (ce Plug-in). The latter means it launches in Windows Media Player. Your computer may vary.

The Chris Connolly piece is around 33 mins. Do give it a spin, then when it flashes by, go back and look again. On my third or fourth viewing I was helpless.

[gavin]

I realise that getting the video to run can be a bit of a challenge, so to encourage you to persist I'll post a couple of screen shots.

Andrew Scarlett (30 min in) explained the importance of bees in the pollination of crops and wild plants, and showed some bees of his pollinating soft fruit in Tayside. He also took the film crew to a heather site where he showed his New Zealand imports and explained that he believes them to be adapted to a climate similar to ours and that these imports probably saved his business. He is on record elsewhere as saying that he lost 800 colonies overwinter/overspring which was a high proportion of his stock.

324

The Insect Pollinators Initiative was mentioned (in fact it was the main prompt for making the programme) and Chris Connolly was given airtime to show the depth of his knowledge on the role of pesticides on bee troubles. I met him when he was starting to prepare his proposal, and when I pointed out that we don't see any problems with the bees when they are exposed to and guzzle huge quantities of oilseed rape pollen and nectar (largely from seed dressed with imidacloprid), he didn't seem to want to know. In this screen shot you can see that he detected a language barrier and decided to act like a bee should act when taking pesticide-tainted crops. I've never seen any of mine close one eye (or even two). I still can't see the clip without laughing out loud :-) It is wonderful therapy, thanks Chris.

[Edited 23rd Sep 2011. This image has been removed following a complaint by Dr Connolly over a year after it was posted here. Although taken from a video in the public domain, it did convey an impression that he may find objectionable. The project under discussion here was always going to be very high profile, the scientist involved made himself available to the French TV crew making this programme, as I did, and he has also been involved in a number of other news releases. If people comment on the direction of the work or indulge in jokey comments about it on internet fora, unfortunately that simply goes with the territory. As regards the entertainment value of the clip (possibly no longer available at the France 5 site) what I said was true, I really did find it very entertaining.]

The last Scottish bit of the video is some overweight 'representative' of the national association who seems to prefer other explanations for bee problems.

G.

[gavin]

Some have wondered if a transcript or translation is available. It is a bit breezy out there this afternoon, so the bees can wait and I've done my best to translate the reportage from Scotland. Happy to be corrected, and I'm sure that this will need correction here and there.

Starting around 30 min:

He is one of the most ..(reknowned??).. bee farmers in the country: Andrew Scarlett. Here, a colony placed in the heart of the Scottish mountains.

The promise of a honey crop, 100% Scottish? Not really ...

Scarlett: what we have here are bees from New Zealand. They are working like an army in Scotland. As you can see they are perfectly adapted for here and they can make the same honey as our bees. Finally the climatic condition in New Zealand and Scotland are very close. We've had to bring bees from New Zealand because we couldn't obtain enough in the UK to replace those we lost last winter, (and we did this) right at the beginning of the season. This was something very unusual, we had no choice, and probably it saved our business this year.

Andrews Scarlett had to replace (?) half of his colonies and .??. his honey. A little lower in the valley the wild bees are also disappearing, dramatically for the farmers. Only solution, install more hives beside the cultivated fields.

Scarlett: the bees are really important for the farmers because of their pollination. Here our concern is the raspberries and strawberries and their pollination. Thanks to their work the bees ...??... for the farmers. Look around us. They pollinate the trees, the flowers, they are really indispensible for the ecology and biodiversity of the region.

The bee, a considerable angel (!). So to clarify the mystery of the disappearance of the bees it is the UK which is taking action. The country has launched an unprecedented scientific programme with a total budget of 12 million Euro.

Raine: We can fix the radio identification tags just here on the thorax. In total 6000 bees [clearly bumble bees] will be given tags like this and followed using this unique means of tracing insects.

In parallel, the strength of animal specialists will make a contribution in different fields in the investigation. Example: Christopher Connolly, neurobiologist. He is telling us that the influence of these pesticides on the behaviour of bees is considerable and these chemical products can explain the high levels of mortality.

Connolly: If a bee carries itself in an odd way in a strange manner with bizarre movements [cue some truly bizarre acting!] the other bees will say to themselves, this isn't right! They will not want this contamination in their laps. It will be necessary for them to cast out any bees with this contamination for the good of their society and this change in behaviour will pose a problem. Otherwise, the bees will lose their sense of orientation. In this case they will not be able to find their hive and what will happen is that in the most affected hives the younger bees will replace the lost older ones - and they are not very good, they may not come back.

Another aspect of this project is the study of the parasites of the bees. For this representative of the national beekeeping association of this country the main thing to blame is called Varroa, a mite.

Ramsay: The mite has been .. err ummm .. just spreading across the world and jumped from a different bee species in eastern Russian. It has been spreading progressively across the world and now is showing itself almost everywhere. In the beginning of an epidemic like this the bees have no means of defending themselves. Initially folk were able to find a very effective chemical treatment. It was a certain type of pesticide to which the bees were resistant but not their parasites however now the parasites have adapted to this effective treatment. So now we have to turn to other remedies.

These British scientists have given themselves three years to elucidate the mystery of the disappearance of the bees and above all give us some solutions.

[Jimbo]

Hi Gavin,

Just watched the clip. Next time I am in a hive I will have to look out for any bees that seem to hunch up their shoulders. Close one eye and give a bit of a twitch. I am certain there is a noble prize for the first person to interprete these strange movements.

Jimbo

[Jon]

Just watched this.
Certainly entertaining!
Took quite a while for the video to work.
I had sound and no picture for the first couple of attempts.

No prizes for becoming a media tart Gavin.

[Jimbo]

Hi Jon,

Do you no think Gavin is starting to become an international media celeb? If you want I can ask him for an autograph for you when I meet him on Saturday in Aberdeen.

Jimbo

[Jon]

Hi Jon,

Do you no think Gavin is starting to become an international media celeb? If you want I can ask him for an autograph for you when I meet him on Saturday in Aberdeen.

Jimbo

Do you think you will be able to push your way through the crowd to get close?

[gavin]

Hi Jon,

Do you no think Gavin is starting to become an international media celeb? If you want I can ask him for an autograph for you when I meet him on Saturday in Aberdeen.

Jimbo

Oi, Gavinites!! What do you mean, *starting* to become?!

[Jimbo]

You have still a bit to go to beat our TV Graham Sharp. though haven't seen him recently. Must be busy selling all that Ayrshire honey at farmers markets