BBKA Bought Off by Bee Killers Bayer

Britain's beekeepers are at war over their association's endorsement for money of four insecticides, all of them fatal to bees, made by major chemical companies.

The British Beekeepers' Association has been selling its logo to four European pesticide producers and is believed to have received about £175,000 in return.

The active ingredient chemicals in the four pesticides the beekeepers endorsed are synthetic pyrethroids, which are among the most powerful of modern insect-killers

An open letter signed by prominent figures in the world of the environment and agriculture condemns the British Beekeepers' Association for its commercial relationship with the German chemicals giants Bayer and BASF, the Swiss-based Syngenta and the Belgian firm Belchim – and demands that it permanently sever commercial links with agrochemical companies.

"A charity that claims to have the interests of bees and beekeeping at heart should never put itself in a position where it is under the influence of corporations whose purpose is to sell insecticides which are able to kill bees," said Philip Chandler, a Devon beekeeper and one of the organisers of the open letter, which has been signed by the botanist David Bellamy, the author and television wildlife presenter Chris Packham and Lord Melchett, policy director of the Soil Association, the organic farming body. "It is the equivalent of a cancer research charity being controlled by a tobacco company," Mr Chandler added.

The beekeepers' executive, which effectively controls all the association's affairs, has thus far fended off attempts by its membership at getting the policy reversed.

The beekeepers' association's deal with the chemical companies had been running since 2001, and it received £17,500 a year for endorsing four pesticides: Bayer's Decis, BASF's Contest (also known as Fastac), Syngenta's Hallmark and Belchim's Fury.

The British Beekeepers' Association referred to the pesticides on several occasions in the newsletter BBKA News as "bee friendly" or "bee safe". Yet a 2003 study in the Bulletin of Insectology on modelling the acute toxicity of pesticides to honey bees found that cypermethrin, the active ingredient of Fury and Contest, and deltamethrin, the active ingredient of Decis, were in the top four most toxic to bees of all the 100 substances evaluated. Cypermethrin was second most toxic, and deltamethrin was fourth. (The active ingredient of Hallmark, lambda-cyhalothrin, was not included in the test.) Other studies confirm these conclusions.

...MORE HERE...