Battle over insecticide pits beekeepers against big agribusiness

MINNEAPOLIS (MCT) -- Kristy Allen and Mark O'Rourke are bee ambassadors with deceptively similar messages. Allen, founder of a small business called the Beez Kneez, pedals through the Twin Cities selling honey from a bike trailer and handing out lawn signs that read, "Healthy bees, healthy lives." O'Rourke, a seed-treatment specialist for Bayer Crop Science, travels the country with sleek interactive displays to promote the company's insecticides and its views on honeybee health.

Allen wears a helmet with bobbing antennae. O'Rourke sports a bee-yellow shirt with the Bayer logo.

But behind their cheery outfits, they are polar opposites in an intensifying national conflict over what's killing the hardworking insect that has become a linchpin of the American food system.

In a struggle that echoes the scientific discord over climate change, both are striving to win public support in a fight over the pervasive use of pesticides and the alarming decline of bees. Whoever sways the public could influence the fate of the honeybee long before scientists or regulators render a verdict. "Perception becomes reality," said David Fischer, director of pollinator safety for Bayer AG, a leading manufacturer of the insecticides under debate. "We are a science-focused company. But that's not going to convince beekeepers and the public."

There is remarkably little dispute about the underlying problem: Honeybees are dying. Beekeepers across the United States are losing a fourth to a third of their hives each winter, a decline that has exposed them as a fragile link in the nation's food supply chain.

U.S. agriculture depends on bees to pollinate $15 billion worth of crops annually -- a third of the food we eat. Every year, commercial beekeepers traverse the country with millions of hives, moving them like migrant laborers through blooming fields of almonds, apples, melons and other crops. Even as the number of U.S. hives has dwindled to 2.5 million, the number of crops depending on them has quadrupled.

The adversaries even agree on some of the causes: A flowerless rural landscape dominated by monoculture cash crops, and the spread of invasive parasites and diseases.

But a decade after honeybees began their precipitous decline, they are still in trouble, and the conflict over the role of insecticides is reaching a crescendo. Bayer sponsors an annual "Bee Care Tour" of universities and community events, while its lobbyists work Washington. Kids in bee costumes protest at Home Depot stores, and gardeners have become their advocates at garden stores and nurseries where they wield considerable power on behalf of the bee.

The White House is paying attention. Last month, President Barack Obama ordered his Cabinet to come up with a strategy for protecting bees, including a mandate to "assess the effect of pesticides."

"There needs to be that public pressure," said Jennifer Sass of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "The public can change it -- even if the (government) does not act."

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Battle over insecticide pits beekeepers against big agribusiness