The Regulatory Corner: December 2014

By Robert Leavitt and Charles Moses, Nevada Department of Agriculture
The White House recently announced the first ever honey bee
hive on White House grounds. It is located on the White House’s South Lawn. The
foraging bees help pollinate the White House’s Kitchen Garden and the honey is
used in the White House kitchens[1].
The White House beehive demonstrates the raised awareness of
the importance of honey bees and other pollinators at federal and state
government levels. The President issued a memorandum on June 20, 2014 creating
a federal Pollinator Health Task Force, which is tasked with developing a
National Pollinator Health Strategy. The Task Force is co-chaired by the
Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture and the Administrator
of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Pollinators include native bees,
birds, bats, butterflies, and, as every school kid knows, honey bees. The
memorandum summarizes the importance of pollinators to the economy of the
United States and concerns about pollinator health. The memorandum lists
a number of stressors to pollinator health, including “poor bee nutrition, loss
of forage lands, parasites, pathogens, lack of genetic diversity, and exposure
to pesticides.”
In particular, the President directed the Task Force to
identify “new methods and best practices to reduce pollinator exposure to
pesticides” and directed the EPA to “assess the effect of pesticides, including
neonicotinoids, on bee and other pollinator health and take action, as
appropriate, to protect pollinators”. Appropriate action includes encouraging
states and tribes to develop and adopt pollinator protection plans. EPA had
already taken action to strengthen pollinator protections on selected product
labels.
About a year before the Presidential memorandum, the EPA announced
it would be developing new label language for neonicotinoid insecticides
registered for outdoor sites. On August 15, 2013, the EPA announced the new
label language “intended to minimize the exposure to bees and other
pollinators”.
The label language is required on all products containing clothianidin,
dinotefuran, imidacloprid, or thiamethoxam that have Directions for Use for
outdoor foliar use. This includes both outdoor agricultural and non-agricultural
uses. It is possible that EPA will extend this label language to additional
pesticide products in the future.
The purpose of this new label language is to ensure that
applicators are aware of the potential for harming bees when using these
products and give practical measures to prevent pollinator harm. The new label
language includes a Pollinator Protection Box (Figure 1) and Directions for Use
language (Figure 2a and 2b). In addition, the bee icon in the Pollinator
Protection Box will be repeated in the label Directions for Use wherever applications
might put bees or other pollinators at risk, accompanied by specific pollinator
protective application restrictions or mitigating measures. As stated in the
Pollinator Protection Box, additional information of protecting bees can be
found at the Pesticide Stewardship website at http://pesticidestewardship.org/pollinatorprotection/Pages/default.aspx
by clicking on Pollinator Protection.
The language in the Pollinator Protection Box is mostly or
all advisory. However, the new label language in the Directions for Use is
directive. For agricultural uses, the directive label language includes
specific beekeeper notification requirements. For crops under contracted
pollinator services, the beekeeper providing the pollinator services must be
notified no less than 48 hours before the planned application (Figure 2a). For
food or feed crops, or commercially grown ornamentals crops that are attractive
to pollinators but not under contracted pollinator services, there can be
several alternatives, but all are designed to protect pollinators (Figure 2b). Not
all requirements are on all labels; it depends on the uses of the particular
product. Also, depending on the product’s persistence, some labels will inform
about the length of time after application that the product is toxic to bees
and for how long after application pollinators must be protected. For
non-agricultural uses there are no beekeeper notification requirements but
there are specific application timing requirements; for example, “Only apply
after all flower petals have fallen off.” In addition, for pesticide labels, descriptions
of bee activity, such as “visiting” or “actively visiting” plants in flower,
are replaced with the term “foraging.”
The timeframe for this label change is as follows: labels for
outdoor uses of the four neonicotinoid products were revised by adding the Pollinator
Protection Box and Directions for Use language by October 2013 and that no
product could enter the channels of trade without the new labels after February
2014. (Product in the marketplace shipped prior to February 2014 without the
new label language can be sold until existing stocks are depleted.)
In addition to the notification requirements in the new
label language for the four neonicotinoid insecticides described above, in
Nevada, for pesticide applications to agricultural crops, there are currently
requirements for licensed pesticide operators to notify beekeepers of the
intent to apply any pesticide known to be harmful to bees (Nevada Agricultural
Code section 555.470). The notice is to be given to beekeepers managing honey bees
on the land to be treated or adjacent land not more than 72 hours and not less
than 24 hours before the application is scheduled. The purpose of this
notification is to give the beekeepers time to protect their bees (move, cover,
etc.). (For certain insecticides [e.g. carbaryl] the notification requirement
is more restrictive). For notification to be made, the beekeeper must have
previously informed the pest control operator of the location of the beehives. For
products and uses to which it applies, the new Directions for Use pollinator
protective language could be more restrictive than the current regulatory
requirements.
The Nevada Department of Agriculture (NDA) fully supports
the new pollinator protective label language.
NDA Director Jim Barbee says, “We thank Nevada’s pesticide
applicators for following these new regulations. Honey bees are important to
Nevada agriculture, and proper application of pesticides can benefit both crops
and pollinators.”
NDA inspectors will be checking for compliance with the
pollinator protective language during routine announced and unannounced
inspections of pest control operators. NDA will also investigate all verified
complaints alleging pesticide harm to pollinators in both agricultural and
non-agricultural settings. To protect pollinators is to protect agriculture and
is everyone’s business.
The full text of
the memorandum can be found at the White House website www.WhiteHouse.gov/ by searching for
Presidential Memorandum on pollinators.