[Pollinator] Are GM Crops Killing Bees? Article from Germany

[David Inouye]

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Beekeepers Stung by Mysteriously Vanishing Colonies    •

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      Are GM Crops Killing Bees?
      By Gunther Latsch
      Der Spiegel

      Thursday 22 March 2007
A mysterious decimation of bee populations has
German beekeepers worried, while a similar
phenomenon in the United States is gradually
assuming catastrophic proportions. The
consequences for agriculture and the economy could be enormous.

      Walter Haefeker is a man who is used to
painting grim scenarios. He sits on the board of
directors of the German Beekeepers Association
(DBIB) and is vice president of the European
Professional Beekeepers Association. And because
griping is part of a lobbyist's trade, it is
practically his professional duty to warn that
"the very existence of beekeeping is at stake."

      The problem, says Haefeker, has a number of
causes, one being the varroa mite, introduced
from Asia, and another is the widespread practice
in agriculture of spraying wildflowers with
herbicides and practicing monoculture. Another
possible cause, according to Haefeker, is the
controversial and growing use of genetic engineering in agriculture.

      As far back as 2005, Haefeker ended an
article he contributed to the journal Der
Kritischer Agrarbericht (Critical Agricultural
Report) with an Albert Einstein quote: "If the
bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then
man would only have four years of life left. No
more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."

      Mysterious events in recent months have
suddenly made Einstein's apocalyptic vision seem
all the more topical. For unknown reasons, bee
populations throughout Germany are disappearing -
something that is so far only harming beekeepers.
But the situation is different in the United
States, where bees are dying in such dramatic
numbers that the economic consequences could soon
be dire. No one knows what is causing the bees to
perish, but some experts believe that the
large-scale use of genetically modified plants in the US could be a factor.

      Felix Kriechbaum, an official with a
regional beekeepers' association in Bavaria,
recently reported a decline of almost 12 percent
in local bee populations. When "bee populations
disappear without a trace," says Kriechbaum, it
is difficult to investigate the causes, because
"most bees don't die in the beehive." There are
many diseases that can cause bees to lose their
sense of orientation so they can no longer find their way back to their hives.

      Manfred Hederer, the president of the German
Beekeepers Association, almost simultaneously
reported a 25 percent drop in bee populations
throughout Germany. In isolated cases, says
Hederer, declines of up to 80 percent have been
reported. He speculates that "a particular toxin,
some agent with which we are not familiar," is killing the bees.

      Politicians, until now, have shown little
concern for such warnings or the woes of
beekeepers. Although apiarists have been given a
chance to make their case - for example in the
run-up to the German cabinet's approval of a
genetic engineering policy document by Minister
of Agriculture Horst Seehofer in February - their
complaints are still largely ignored.

      Even when beekeepers actually go to court,
as they recently did in a joint effort with the
German chapter of the organic farming
organization Demeter International and other
groups to oppose the use of genetically modified
corn plants, they can only dream of the sort of
media attention environmental organizations like
Greenpeace attract with their protests at test sites.

      But that could soon change. Since last
November, the US has seen a decline in bee
populations so dramatic that it eclipses all
previous incidences of mass mortality. Beekeepers
on the east coast of the United States complain
that they have lost more than 70 percent of their
stock since late last year, while the west coast
has seen a decline of up to 60 percent.

      In an article in its business section in
late February, the New York Times calculated the
damage US agriculture would suffer if bees died
out. Experts at Cornell University in upstate New
York have estimated the value bees generate - by
pollinating fruit and vegetable plants, almond
trees and animal feed like clover - at more than $14 billion.

      Scientists call the mysterious phenomenon
"Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD), and it is fast
turning into a national catastrophe of sorts. A
number of universities and government agencies
have formed a "CCD Working Group" to search for
the causes of the calamity, but have so far come
up empty-handed. But, like Dennis vanEngelsdorp,
an apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of
Agriculture, they are already referring to the
problem as a potential "AIDS for the bee industry."

      One thing is certain: Millions of bees have
simply vanished. In most cases, all that's left
in the hives are the doomed offspring. But dead
bees are nowhere to be found - neither in nor
anywhere close to the hives. Diana Cox-Foster, a
member of the CCD Working Group, told The
Independent that researchers were "extremely
alarmed," adding that the crisis "has the
potential to devastate the US beekeeping industry."

      It is particularly worrisome, she said, that
the bees' death is accompanied by a set of
symptoms "which does not seem to match anything in the literature."

      In many cases, scientists have found
evidence of almost all known bee viruses in the
few surviving bees found in the hives after most
have disappeared. Some had five or six infections
at the same time and were infested with fungi - a
sign, experts say, that the insects' immune system may have collapsed.

      The scientists are also surprised that bees
and other insects usually leave the abandoned
hives untouched. Nearby bee populations or
parasites would normally raid the honey and
pollen stores of colonies that have died for
other reasons, such as excessive winter cold.
"This suggests that there is something toxic in
the colony itself which is repelling them," says Cox-Foster.

      Walter Haefeker, the German beekeeping
official, speculates that "besides a number of
other factors," the fact that genetically
modified, insect-resistant plants are now used in
40 percent of cornfields in the United States
could be playing a role. The figure is much lower
in Germany - only 0.06 percent - and most of that
occurs in the eastern states of
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg.
Haefeker recently sent a researcher at the CCD
Working Group some data from a bee study that he
has long felt shows a possible connection between
genetic engineering and diseases in bees.

      The study in question is a small research
project conducted at the University of Jena from
2001 to 2004. The researchers examined the
effects of pollen from a genetically modified
maize variant called "Bt corn" on bees. A gene
from a soil bacterium had been inserted into the
corn that enabled the plant to produce an agent
that is toxic to insect pests. The study
concluded that there was no evidence of a "toxic
effect of Bt corn on healthy honeybee
populations." But when, by sheer chance, the bees
used in the experiments were infested with a
parasite, something eerie happened. According to
the Jena study, a "significantly stronger decline
in the number of bees" occurred among the insects
that had been fed a highly concentrated Bt poison feed.

      According to Hans-Hinrich Kaatz, a professor
at the University of Halle in eastern Germany and
the director of the study, the bacterial toxin in
the genetically modified corn may have "altered
the surface of the bee's intestines, sufficiently
weakening the bees to allow the parasites to gain
entry - or perhaps it was the other way around. We don't know."

      Of course, the concentration of the toxin
was ten times higher in the experiments than in
normal Bt corn pollen. In addition, the bee feed
was administered over a relatively lengthy six-week period.

      Kaatz would have preferred to continue
studying the phenomenon but lacked the necessary
funding. "Those who have the money are not
interested in this sort of research," says the
professor, "and those who are interested don't have the money."


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      Translated from German by Christopher Sultan.