[Pollinator] Mystery of the disappearing bees: Solved!

[Ladadams at aol.com]

>From Reuters
Mystery of the disappearing bees: Solved!
 
By Richard Schiffman
April 9, 2012

 
    *    Email   
    *    Print   
    *   _inShare_ (javascript:void(0);)   










_bees_ (http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/tag/bees)  | _environment_ 
(http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/tag/environment)  |  _food supply_ 
(http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/tag/food-supply)   | _pesticides_ 
(http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/tag/pesticides)  
 
If it were a novel, people would criticize the plot for being too 
far-fetched  – thriving colonies disappear overnight without leaving a trace, the 
bodies of  the victims are never found. Only in this case, it’s not fiction: It’
s what’s  happening to fully a third of commercial beehives, over a million 
colonies every  year. Seemingly healthy communities fly off never to 
return. The queen bee and  mother of the hive is abandoned to starve and die. 
 (http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/files/2012/04/RTR3000M_Comp.jpg) 
Thousands of scientific sleuths have been on this case  for the last 15 years 
trying to determine why our honey bees are disappearing in  such alarming 
numbers. _“This  is the biggest general threat to our food supply,”_ 
(http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/10/are-bees-the-ne.html)  according to 
Kevin  Hackett, the national program leader for the U.S. Department of 
Agriculture’s  bee and pollination program. 
Until recently, the evidence was inconclusive on the cause of the 
mysterious  “colony collapse disorder” (CCD) that threatens the future of beekeeping 
 worldwide. But three new studies point an accusing finger at a culprit 
that many  have suspected all along, _a  class of pesticides known as 
neonicotinoids_ 
(http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/03/bayer-pesticide-bees-studies) . 
In the U.S. alone, these pesticides, produced primarily by the German  
chemical giant Bayer and known as “neonics” for short, coat a massive 142  
million acres of corn, wheat, soy and cotton seeds. They are also a common  
ingredient in home gardening products. 
_Research published last  month_ 
(http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/recent)  in the prestigious journal Science shows that neonics  are absorbed 
by the plants’ vascular system and contaminate the pollen and  nectar that 
bees encounter on their rounds. They are a nerve poison that  disorient their 
insect victims and appear to damage the homing ability of bees,  which may 
help to account for their mysterious failure to make it back to the  hive. 
_Another study_ (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22292570)   published 
in the American Chemical Society’s Environmental Science and  Technology 
journal implicated neonic-containing dust released into the air  at planting 
time with “lethal effects compatible with colony losses phenomena  observed by 
beekeepers.” 
Purdue University entomologists observed bees at infected hives exhibiting  
tremors, uncoordinated movement and convulsions, all signs of acute 
insecticide  poisoning. And _yet  another study_ 
(http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0405-hance_colonycollapse_pesticides.html)  conducted by scientists at the 
Harvard School of Public Health  actually re-created colony collapse disorder in 
several honeybee hives simply by  administering small doses of a popular 
neonic, imidacloprid. 
But scientists believe that exposure to toxic pesticides is only one factor 
 that has led to the decline of honey bees in recent years. The destruction 
and  fragmentation of bee habitats, as a result of land development and the 
spread of  monoculture agriculture, deprives pollinators of their diverse 
natural food  supply. This has already led to the extinction of a number of 
wild bee species.  The planting of genetically modified organism (GMO) crops –
 some of which now  contain toxic insecticides within their genetic 
structure – may also be  responsible for _poisoning  bees and weakening their 
immune systems_ 
(http://non-gmoreport.com/articles/apr07/gm_crops_killing_bees.php) . 
Every spring millions of bee colonies are trucked to the Central Valley of  
California and other agricultural areas to replace the wild pollinators, 
which  have all but disappeared in many parts of the country. These bees are 
routinely  fed high-fructose corn syrup instead of their own nutritious 
honey. And in an  effort to boost productivity, the queens are now artificially 
inseminated, which  has led to a disturbing decline in bee genetic diversity. 
Bees are also dusted  with chemical poisons to control mites and other 
pathogens that have flourished  in the overcrowded commercial colonies. 
In 1923, Rudolph Steiner, the German founder of biodynamic agriculture, a  
precursor of the modern organic movement, predicted that within a hundred 
years  artificial industrial techniques used to breed honey bees _would lead 
to the species’  collapse_ (http://curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=1032682) . 
His prophecy was right on target! 
Honey bees have been likened to the canaries in the coal mine. Their  
vanishing is nature’s way of telling us that conditions have deteriorated in the  
world around us. Bees won’t survive for long if we don’t change our 
commercial  breeding practices and remove deadly toxins from their environment. A 
massive  pollinator die-off would imperil world food supplies and devastate 
ecosystems  that depend on them. The loss of these creatures might rival 
climate change in  its impact on life on earth. 
Still, this is a disaster that does not need to happen. Germany and France 
_have  already banned pesticides_ 
(http://www.greenrightnow.com/wabc/2008/06/23/germany-and-france-ban-pesticides-linked-to-bee-deaths-geneticist-urges-u
s-ban-would-save-the-bees/)  that have been implicated in the deaths of 
bees.  There is still time to save the bees by working with nature rather than 
against  it, according to environmentalist and author Bill McKibben: 
“Past a certain point, we can’t make nature conform to our industrial 
model.  The collapse of beehives is a warning – and the cleverness of a few 
beekeepers  in figuring out how to work with bees not as masters but as partners 
offers a  clear-eyed kind of hope for many of our ecological dilemmas.” 
PHOTO: A bumblebee sits on a rhododendron bloom on a sunny spring day in  
Dortmund, Germany, March 28, 2012. REUTERS/Ina  Fassbender
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sonic.net/pipermail/pollinator/attachments/20120409/a3f268ed/attachment.html>