It's being hailed by environmental groups as "a victory for the bees."

A U.S. federal judge has ruled that the insecticide, spirotetramat, must be pulled from the shelves because it could be dangerously toxic to America's declining honey bee population.

Starting Jan. 15, 2010, it will be illegal for the insecticide, manufactured by Bayer CropScience under the trade names Movento and Ultor, to be sold in the United States.

What the federal court order does is invalidate EPA's approval of the use of the pesticide.

U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote ruled that the EPA did not properly seek comments or publicize the review process. She called for further re-evaluation of the insecticide in compliance with the law.  

Spirotetramat, which inhibits cell reproduction in insects, targets such sucking pests as aphids, whiteflies, scales, mealybugs, psylla, phylloxera, thrips, and mites.

Up to now, its registered uses, according to the 74-page EPA document, included a variety of fruits and vegetables, as well as uses in greenhouses and nurseries. A few of them: citrus, grapes, cucumbers, brussel sprouts, cabbage, potatoes, onions, strawberries,  stone fruits and livestock commodities.

The Xerces Society, an invertebrate conservation society based in Portland, Ore., and the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental organization in New York, filed the suit as a means to protect bees. 

Pesticides--along with diseases, viruses, parasites, pests, malnutrition and the changing weather--have been linked to colony collapse disorder, a mysterious malady in which adult bees abandon the colony, leaving behind the queen, brood and food stores. 

"Save the bees" is a hue-and-cry being heard about the world. And rightfully so.

Bees, our little agricultural workers, pollinate about one-third of the food we eat. In the United States, bees pollinate $15 billion worth of plants every year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Soon beekeepers from around the country will be trucking their bees to California for the annual almond pollination.

California has some 700,000 acres of almonds, with each acre requiring two hives for pollination. 

But an article in the Dec. 27th edition of the New York Post raises a serious question: How healthy are the honey bees?

Since colony collapse disorder (CCD) became the buzz word in the fall of 2006, just how healthy are the bees now?

Well, CCD is still with us, and the commercial beekeeper that sounded the alarm--Dave Hackenberg of Pennsylvania--says this winter could be the worst yet.

Hackenberg told The Post that "We had around 3000 hives at the end of the summer, but they started shrinking early, so when we came to truck them to Florida, there was only 2000 of them left." 

He said that he wouldn't be surprised if one-fifth of his bees died before spring. "We're hoping we can stop at 50 percent losses," Hackenberg told reporter Alison Benjamin. 

CCD, the mysterious malady characterized by adult bees abandoning the hive--leaving behind the queen and brood--continues to wreak havoc.

That's why honey bee research is so important.

CCD is probably caused by multiple factors, according to Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen, member of the Department of Entomology at the University of California, Davis and closely affiliated with the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis. The targeted list of suspects involved includes diseases, parasites, pesticides, pests, viruses, stress, malnutrition, and weather changes.

Bee well. 

The attempt to down an airline over Detroit, Mich., on Christmas Day with a chemical explosive strapped inside a passenger's underwear may spur new interest in honey bees as bomb-sniffing detectives.

It brings to mind scientist Robert Wingo's recent talk at UC Davis. Wingo, of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), New Mexico, spoke Oct. 21 on  "Explosives and Narcotics Detection by Monitoring of the Proboscis Extension Reflex in Apis mellifera (Honey Bee)."

Honey bees have a keen sense of smell that rivals that of dogs, Wingo told the capacity crowd in 357 Hutchison Hall.

He and his colleagues use the Pavlov reward method to train forager bees to detect explosives used in bombs.  Basically, the bees are harnessed inside a box and trained to "stick out their tongue" (proboscis) when they smell an explosive. The bees earlier associated the scent with the reward of sugar water. 

With the Pavlov dogs, it was hear the sound of the bell and salivate. With the Los Alamos bees: smell an explosive and stick out your tongue.

In a news release dated Nov. 27, 2006,  LANL news writer Todd Hanson wrote that this new technique "could become a leading tool in the fight against the use of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, which present a critical vulnerability for American military troops abroad and is an emerging danger for civilians worldwide.”

“By studying bee behavior and testing and improving on technologies already on the market,” Hanson wrote, “Los Alamos scientists developed methods to harness the honey bee's exceptional olfactory sense where the bees' natural reaction to nectar, a proboscis extension reflex (sticking out their tongue), could be used to record an unmistakable response to a scent. Using Pavlovian training techniques common to bee research, they trained bees to give a positive detection response, via the proboscis extension reflex, when they were exposed to vapors from TNT, C4, TATP explosives and propellants.”

For more information, you can also listen to Wingo's interesting talk at UC Davis (Note: in this low-cost Webcast, the audio is better than the video).

Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, bomb-sniffing bees will be commonplace in airport security?

Will they take their place alongside bomb-sniffing dogs?

Meanwhile, the research continues...

Definitely a good dose of Christmas Cheer!

In the plant world, that would be the Kniphofia “Christmas Cheer," also known as "red-hot poker."

On a visit last week to the Storer Garden, UC Davis Arboretum, we encountered a lone honey bee foraging among the Christmas Cheer. 

This one probably came from a nearby hive at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility tended by bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey, manager of the facility.

Christmas Cheer is an Arboretum All=Star.

And so is the honey bee: an all-star. 

Happy holidays, everyone!