Are GM Crops Killing Bees?

[Sid Walker]

The following article, if accurate, suggests there may already be a way out of this particular crisis...

No Organic Bee Losses

"Sharon Labchuk is a longtime environmental activist and part-time organic beekeeper from Prince Edward Island. She has twice run for a seat in Ottawa's House of Commons, making strong showings around 5% for Canada's fledgling Green Party. She is also leader of the provincial wing of her party. In a widely circulated email, she wrote:

I'm on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse on this list. The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies.

Her email recommends a visit to the Bush Bees Web site at Here, Michael Bush felt compelled to put a message to the beekeeping world right on the top page:

Most of us beekeepers are fighting with the Varroa mites. I'm happy to say my biggest problems are things like trying to get nucs through the winter and coming up with hives that won't hurt my back from lifting or better ways to feed the bees.

This change from fighting the mites is mostly because I've gone to natural sized cells. In case you weren't aware, and I wasn't for a long time, the foundation in common usage results in much larger bees than what you would find in a natural hive. I've measured sections of natural worker brood comb that are 4.6mm in diameter. What most people use for worker brood is foundation that is 5.4mm in diameter. If you translate that into three dimensions instead of one, it produces a bee that is about half as large again as is natural. By letting the bees build natural sized cells, I have virtually eliminated my Varroa and Tracheal mite problems. One cause of this is shorter capping times by one day, and shorter post-capping times by one day. This means less Varroa get into the cells, and less Varroa reproduce in the cells.

Who should be surprised that the major media reports forget to tell us that the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties that we coax into a larger than normal body size? It sounds just like the beef industry. And, have we here a solution to the vanishing bee problem? Is it one that the CCD Working Group, or indeed, the scientific world at large, will support? Will media coverage affect government action in dealing with this issue?

These are important questions to ask. It is not an uncommonly held opinion that, although this new pattern of bee colony collapse seems to have struck from out of the blue (which suggests a triggering agent), it is likely that some biological limit in the bees has been crossed. There is no shortage of evidence that we have been fast approaching this limit for some time.

We've been pushing them too hard, Dr. Peter Kevan, an associate professor of environmental biology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, told the CBC. And we're starving them out by feeding them artificially and moving them great distances. Given the stress commercial bees are under, Kevan suggests CCD might be caused by parasitic mites, or long cold winters, or long wet springs, or pesticides, or genetically modified crops. Maybe it's all of the above...

[Douglas Caddy]

That's quite interesting; I hope further research goes into discovering the cause. I generally support GM agriculture, but we have to make sure that we have not unintentionally tampered with a delicate process.

I'd be grateful if you keep us up to date on this Doug, and I'll repost it at a science forum I belong to.

An interesting and impressive research effort:

http://www.enterprisemission.com/Bees/thebeesneeds.htm

[Douglas Caddy]

That's quite interesting; I hope further research goes into discovering the cause. I generally support GM agriculture, but we have to make sure that we have not unintentionally tampered with a delicate process.

I'd be grateful if you keep us up to date on this Doug, and I'll repost it at a science forum I belong to.

Suddenly, the bees are simply vanishing

Scientists are at a loss to pinpoint the cause. The die-off in 35 states has crippled beekeepers and threatened many crops.By Jia-Rui Chong and Thomas H. Maugh II

Los Angeles Times

June 10, 2007

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci...=la-home-center

The dead bees under Dennis vanEngelsdorp's microscope were like none he had ever seen.

He had expected to see mites or amoebas, perennial pests of bees. Instead, he found internal organs swollen with debris and strangely blackened. The bees' intestinal tracts were scarred, and their rectums were abnormally full of what appeared to be partly digested pollen. Dark marks on the sting glands were telltale signs of infection.

"The more you looked, the more you found," said VanEngelsdorp, the acting apiarist for the state of Pennsylvania. "Each thing was a surprise."

VanEngelsdorp's examination of the bees in November was one of the first scientific glimpses of a mysterious honeybee die-off that has launched an intense search for a cure.

The puzzling phenomenon, known as Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, has been reported in 35 states, five Canadian provinces and several European countries. The die-off has cost U.S. beekeepers about $150 million in losses and an uncertain amount for farmers scrambling to find bees to pollinate their crops.

Scientists have scoured the country, finding eerily abandoned hives in which the bees seem to have simply left their honey and broods of baby bees.

"We've never experienced bees going off and leaving brood behind," said Pennsylvania-based beekeeper Dave Hackenberg. "It was like a mother going off and leaving her kids."

Researchers have picked through the abandoned hives, dissected thousands of bees, and tested for viruses, bacteria, pesticides and mites.

So far, they are stumped.

According to the Apiary Inspectors of America, 24% of 384 beekeeping operations across the country lost more than 50% of their colonies from September to March. Some have lost 90%.

"I'm worried about the bees," said Dan Boyer, 52, owner of Ridgetop Orchards in Fishertown, Pa., which grows apples. "The more I learn about it, the more I think it is a national tragedy."

At Boyer's orchard, 400 acres of apple trees — McIntosh, Honey Crisp, Red Delicious and 11 other varieties — have just begun to bud white flowers.

Boyer's trees need to be pollinated. Incompletely pollinated blooms would still grow apples, he said, but the fruit would be small and misshapen, suitable only for low-profit juice.

This year, he will pay dearly for the precious bees — $13,000 for 200 hives, the same price that 300 hives cost him last year.

The scene is being repeated throughout the country, where honeybees, scientifically known as Apis mellifera, are required to pollinate a third of the nation's food crops, including almonds, cherries, blueberries, pears, strawberries and pumpkins.

Vanishing colonies

One of the earliest alarms was sounded by Hackenberg, who used to keep about 3,000 hives in dandelion-covered fields near the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania.

In November, Hackenberg, 58, was at his winter base in Florida. He peeked in on a group of 400 beehives he had driven down from his home in West Milton, Pa., a month before. He went from empty box to empty box. Only about 40 had bees in them.

"It was just the most phenomenal thing I thought I'd ever seen," he said.

The next morning, Hackenberg called Jerry Hayes, the chief of apiary inspection at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and president of the Apiary Inspectors of America.

Hayes mentioned some bee die-offs in Georgia that, until then, hadn't seemed significant.

Hackenberg drove back to West Milton with a couple of dead beehives and live colonies that had survived. He handed them over to researchers at Pennsylvania State University.

With amazing speed, the bees vanished from his other hives, more than 70% of which were abandoned by February.

Hackenberg, a talkative, wiry man with a deeply lined face, figured he lost more than $460,000 this winter for replacement bees, lost honey and missed pollination opportunities.

"If that happens again, we're out of business," he said.

It didn't take researchers long to figure out they were dealing with something new.

VanEngelsdorp, 37, quickly eliminated the most obvious suspects: Varroa and tracheal mites, which have occasionally wrought damage on hives since the 1980s.

At the state lab in Harrisburg, Pa., VanEngelsdorp checked bee samples from Pennsylvania and Georgia. He washed bees with soapy water to dislodge Varroa mites and cut the thorax of the bees to look for tracheal mites; he found that the number of mites was not unusually high.

His next guess was amoebic infection. He scanned the bees' kidneys for cysts and found a handful, but not enough to explain the population decline.

VanEngelsdorp dug through scientific literature looking for other mass disappearances.

He found the first reference in a 1869 federal report, detailing a mysterious bee disappearance. There was only speculation as to the cause — possibly poisonous honey or maybe a hot summer.

A 1923 handbook on bee culture noted that a "disappearing disease" went away in a short time without treatment. There was a reference to "fall dwindle" in a 1965 scientific article to describe sudden disappearances in Texas and Louisiana.

He found other references but no explanations.

VanEngelsdorp traveled to Florida and California at the beginning of the year to collect adult bees, brood, nectar, pollen and comb for a more systematic study. He went to 11 apiaries, both sick and healthy, and collected 102 colonies.

A number of the pollen samples went to Maryann Frazier, a honeybee specialist at Penn State who has been coordinating the pesticide investigation. Her group has been testing for 106 chemicals used to kill mites, funguses or other pests.

Scientists have focused on a new group of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, which have spiked in popularity because they are safe for people, Frazier said. Studies have shown that these pesticides can kill bees and throw off their ability to learn and navigate, she said.

Researchers have yet to collect enough data to come to any conclusions, but the experience of French beekeepers casts doubt on the theory. France banned the most commonly used neonicotinoid in 1999 after complaints from beekeepers that it was killing their colonies. French hives, however, are doing no better now, experts said.

Sniffing out the culprit

Entomologist Jerry J. Bromenshenk of the University of Montana launched his own search for poisons, relying on the enhanced odor sensitivity of bees — about 40 times better than that of humans.

When a colony is exposed to a new chemical odor, he said, its sound changes in volume and frequency, producing a unique audio signature.

Bromenshenk has been visiting beekeepers across the country, recording hive sounds and taking them back to his lab for analysis. To date, no good candidates have surfaced.

If the cause is not a poison, it is most likely a parasite.

UC San Francisco researchers announced in April that they had found a single-celled protozoan called Nosema ceranae in bees from colonies with the collapse disorder.

Unfortunately, Bromenshenk said, "we see equal levels of Nosema in CCD colonies and healthy colonies."

Infected swarms?

Several researchers, including entomologist Diana Cox-Foster of Penn State and Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, a virologist at Columbia University, have been sifting through bees that have been ground up, looking for viruses and bacteria.

"We were shocked by the huge number of pathogens present in each adult bee," Cox-Foster said at a recent meeting of bee researchers convened by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The large number of pathogens suggested, she said, that the bees' immune systems had been suppressed, allowing the proliferation of infections.

The idea that a pathogen is involved is supported by recent experiments conducted by VanEngelsdorp and USDA entomologist Jeffrey S. Pettis.

One of the unusual features of the disorder is that the predators of abandoned beehives, such as hive beetles and wax moths, refuse to venture into infected hives for weeks or longer.

"It's as if there is something repellent or toxic about the colony," said Hayes, the Florida inspector.

To test this idea, VanEngelsdorp and Pettis set up 200 beehive boxes with new, healthy bees from Australia and placed them in the care of Hackenberg.

Fifty of the hives were irradiated to kill potential pathogens. Fifty were fumigated with concentrated acetic acid, a hive cleanser commonly used in Canada. Fifty were filled with honey frames that had been taken from Hackenberg's colonies before the collapse, and the last 50 were hives that had been abandoned that winter.

When VanEngelsdorp visited the colonies at the beginning of May, bees in the untouched hive were clearly struggling, filling only about a quarter of a frame. Bees living on the reused honeycomb were alive but not thriving. A hive that had been fumigated with acetic acid was better.

When he popped open an irradiated hive, bees were crawling everywhere. "This does imply there is something biological," he said.

If it is a pathogen or a parasite, honeybees are poorly equipped to deal with it, said entomologist May Berenbaum of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The honeybee genome has only half as many genes to detoxify poisons and to fight off infections as do other insects.

"There is something about the life of the honeybee that has led to the loss of a lot of genes associated with detoxification, associated with the immune system," she said.

In the absence of knowledge, theories have proliferated, including one that Osama bin Laden has engineered the die-off to disrupt American agriculture.

One of the most pervasive theories is that cellphone transmissions are causing the disappearances — an idea that originated with a recent German study. Berenbaum called the theory "a complete figment of the imagination."

The German physicist who conducted the tiny study "disclaimed the connection to cellphones," she said. "What they put in the colony was a cordless phone. Whoever translated the story didn't know the difference."

Another popular theory is that the bees have been harmed by corn genetically engineered to contain the pesticide B.t.

Berenbaum shot down the idea: "Here in Illinois, we're surrounded by an ocean of B.t. pollen, and the bees are not afflicted."

And so the search continues.

Many beekeepers have few options but to start rebuilding. Gene Brandi, a veteran beekeeper based in Los Banos, Calif., lost 40% of his 2,000 colonies this winter.

Brandi knows plenty of beekeepers who sold their equipment at bargain prices.

Scurrying around a blackberry farm near Watsonville, Brandi, 55, was restocking his bees. In a white jumpsuit and yellow bee veil, he pulled out a frame of honeycomb from a hive that had so many bees they were spilling out the front entrance.

"When it's going good like this, you forget CCD," he said.

Hackenberg, who has spent his whole life in the business, isn't giving up either. He borrowed money and restocked with bees from Australia.

In April, the normally hale Hackenberg started feeling short of breath. His doctor said he was suffering from stress and suggested he slow down.

Not now, Hackenberg thought. "I'm going to go down fighting."

[Steve Ulman]

Doug-

Thanks for keeping up with this - Not only is it important, but as the saying goes - "truth is stranger than fiction". Not cell phones, not GM corn, not pesticides, not ....

I can't wait until we find out what is actually happening - that way I'll be able to read just how the research was done, the blind alleys pursued and the final Eureka! moment. - More interesting than a good mystery novel. I just hope the final outcome is a good one.

In reality, my guess is that mother nature will figure out the fix before we ever know what is really happening - we humans tend to be arrogant and forget that the earth was successfully dealing with problems like this long before we climbed down from the trees.

[Evan Burton]

A thread is available here:

http://www2b.abc.net.au/science/k2/stn/new...pic2859579.shtm

[Douglas Caddy]

That's quite interesting; I hope further research goes into discovering the cause. I generally support GM agriculture, but we have to make sure that we have not unintentionally tampered with a delicate process.

I'd be grateful if you keep us up to date on this Doug, and I'll repost it at a science forum I belong to.

Asian Parasite Killing Western Bees - Scientist

July 19, 2007 - Reuters

MADRID - A parasite common in Asian bees has spread to Europe and the Americas and is behind the mass disappearance of honeybees in many countries, says a Spanish scientist who has been studying the phenomenon for years.

The culprit is a microscopic parasite called nosema ceranae said Mariano Higes, who leads a team of researchers at a government-funded apiculture centre in Guadalajara, the province east of Madrid that is the heartland of Spain's honey industry.

He and his colleagues have analysed thousands of samples from stricken hives in many countries.

"We started in 2000 with the hypothesis that it was pesticides, but soon ruled it out," he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

Pesticide traces were present only in a tiny proportion of samples and bee colonies were also dying in areas many miles from cultivated land, he said.

They then ruled out the varroa mite, which is easy to see and which was not present in most of the affected hives.

For a long time Higes and his colleagues thought a parasite called nosema apis, common in wet weather, was killing the bees.

"We saw the spores, but the symptoms were very different and it was happening in dry weather too."

Then he decided to sequence the parasite's DNA and discovered it was an Asian variant, nosema ceranae. Asian honeybees are less vulnerable to it, but it can kill European bees in a matter of days in laboratory conditions.

"Nosema ceranae is far more dangerous and lives in heat and cold. A hive can become infected in two months and the whole colony can collapse in six to 18 months," said Higes, whose team has published a number of papers on the subject.

"We've no doubt at all it's nosema ceranae and we think 50 percent of Spanish hives are infected," he said.

Spain, with 2.3 million hives, is home to a quarter of the European Union's bees.

His team have also identified this parasite in bees from Austria, Slovenia and other parts of Eastern Europe and assume it has invaded from Asia over a number of years.

Now it seems to have crossed the Atlantic and is present in Canada and Argentina, he said. The Spanish researchers have not tested samples from the United States, where bees have also gone missing.

Treatment for nosema ceranae is effective and cheap -- 1 euro (US$1.4) a hive twice a year -- but beekeepers first have to be convinced the parasite is the problem.

Another theory points a finger at mobile phone aerials, but Higes notes bees use the angle of the sun to navigate and not electromagnetic frequencies.

Other elements, such as drought or misapplied treatments, may play a part in lowering bees' resistance, but Higes is convinced the Asian parasite is the chief assassin.

Story by Julia Hayley

Story Date: 19/7/2007

----------

Posted on Fri, Jul. 13, 2007

USDA buzzing with new plan to fight collapse of bee colonies

Michael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: July 14, 2007 09:50:15 AM

WASHINGTON — Agriculture Department scientists are mobilizing to fight the puzzling and potentially catastrophic collapse of the nation's honey bee colonies.

Citing a "perfect storm for beekeepers," alarmed officials admitted Friday they still don't know why bees are dying in large numbers in more than 22 states. But prodded by Congress and farmers alike, the scientists will be devoting new resources to protecting the diligent pollinators some call six-legged livestock.

"There were enough honey bees to provide pollination for U.S. agriculture this year, but beekeepers could face a serious problem next year and beyond," Agriculture Undersecretary Gale Buchanan warned Friday.

Nationwide, honey bees pollinate more than 130 crops. They are particularly dutiful in some areas, such as California's nearly $3 billion-a-year almond industry. Of the nation's 2.4 million commercial bee colonies, 1.3 million pollinate almond orchards.

"The bee industry is facing difficulty meeting the demand for pollination in almonds because of bee production shortages in California," the Agricultural Research Service noted.

Prepared with the help of scientists at North Carolina State University and Pennsylvania State University, among others, the 28-page action plan issued Friday proposes:

• Spending more money. The Agricultural Research Service has a bee research budget of $7.4 million this year. Officials will redirect new funds to the cause, including an additional $1 million annually for work on honey bee health.

• Conducting new surveys. Officials cautioned Friday that current colony surveys have been either "limited in scope (or) fundamentally flawed." Agriculture Department agencies will collaborate with university researchers to obtain "an accurate picture of bee numbers," as well as a better understanding of the pesticides, pests and environmental stresses plaguing the bees.

• Finding fixes. This is particularly hard, since no one really knows why the bee colonies are collapsing. But officials say they will focus on "developing general best management practices" and distributing information through the Internet.

The new work will focus on so-called "colony collapse disorder." This is when the colony's adult bee population abruptly dies, leaving only the queen and a few attendants alive. Typically, there is no sign of mite or beetle damage. Some think toxic exposure or nutritional deficits might be undermining the bees' immune systems.

Gene Brandi, a beekeeper in California's San Joaquin Valley, told lawmakers that 800 of his 2,000 bee colonies collapsed inexplicably last winter. Brandi lost an estimated $60,000 in pollination income from his Los Banos-based operation, and he's spent an additional $48,000 to restock his lost colonies.

"This is the greatest winter colony mortality I have ever experienced in 30 years of beekeeping," Brandi testified earlier this year.

A draft farm bill scheduled for House Agriculture Committee approval next week includes new funding to study colony collapse disorder. Separately, Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., has introduced legislation to authorize an additional $7.25 million annually for related research.

"Colony collapse disorder is a looming disaster on the horizon," Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif., said Friday. "We must continue to devote significant resources to understanding and treating the disorder."

Earlier this year, as chair of the House horticulture and organic agriculture subcommittee, Cardoza convened the first congressional hearing into the colony collapses. Spokesman Jamie McInerney said Friday that Cardoza and other lawmakers might seek additional honey bee funding as part of the fiscal 2008 Agriculture Department appropriations package.

The Agriculture Department plan sets out goals for both the short and long term. Immediately, for instance, scientists will "refine" symptoms to define what colony collapse disorder "is and what it is not." Longer term, the National Agricultural Statistics Service will develop a more reliable annual survey on honey bee colony production and health.

At the same time, officials are ruling out some theories.

"Based on misleading news reports, the public has become concerned that cell-phone use may be causing bee die-offs," the Agricultural Research Service noted Friday. "However, scientists have largely dismissed this theory, because exposure of bees to high levels of electromagnetic fields is unlikely."

McClatchy Newspapers 2007

[Michael Hogan]

Virus may cause mass honeybee deaths

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/disco...bee-virus_N.htm

[Jack White]

A few of the negative affects of these (chemtrail) programs are listed below;

(A) A wide variety of trees and other vegetation are showing signs of declining health or have died out;

( Honey bee and wild pollinator populations are in steep decline; tree and plant decline is creating a serious fire hazard in many areas across the United States and which may adversely impact local weather, rainfall totals, and local water supplies;

© Global dimming, climate change, Ultra-violet (UV) Radiation, man-made clouds, and air pollution are increasing while reducing the amount of direct sunlight reaching the earth which lowers crop production.

D) Persistent jet contrails and the man-made clouds and haze they are producing are changing our weather, reducing photosynthesis, and jet fuel emissions are polluting our air while depleting beneficial atmospheric ozone levels;

E) NOAA lists over fifty known experimental weather modification programs currently being used across the United States without any studies to determine the synergistic effects of those programs or their affect upon, regional micro-climates, agricultural crops and water supplies.

[Guest Stephen Turner]

A few of the negative affects of these (chemtrail) programs are listed below;

(A) A wide variety of trees and other vegetation are showing signs of declining health or have died out;

( Honey bee and wild pollinator populations are in steep decline; tree and plant decline is creating a serious fire hazard in many areas across the United States and which may adversely impact local weather, rainfall totals, and local water supplies;

© Global dimming, climate change, Ultra-violet (UV) Radiation, man-made clouds, and air pollution are increasing while reducing the amount of direct sunlight reaching the earth which lowers crop production.

D) Persistent jet contrails and the man-made clouds and haze they are producing are changing our weather, reducing photosynthesis, and jet fuel emissions are polluting our air while depleting beneficial atmospheric ozone levels;

E) NOAA lists over fifty known experimental weather modification programs currently being used across the United States without any studies to determine the synergistic effects of those programs or their affect upon, regional micro-climates, agricultural crops and water supplies.

Lets not forget hamsters. Seriously though Jack, is there any hard scientific data to back these claims up? Some links would help.

Edited January 11, 2008 by Stephen Turner

[Michael Hogan]

.... is there any hard scientific data to back these claims up? Some links would help.

Different claims, but still alarming....

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2010-...ring-bees_N.htm

Edited March 24, 2010 by Michael Hogan

[John Dolva]

Much of what Jack says here makes sense. Aeroplane emissions are a major contributor to the composition of the atmosphere. This is indisputable. Some might be astounded by the volumes.

Cleaner fuels and greener engines are being adopted.

There is a change in the air.

(I just wouldn't start off with chemtrail ''programs'', tho). Sure economics is involved at the expense of the environment. The intransigence of some major countries and companies are not acting in the interests of our world. Thay can, but they choose not to.

edit:typo

Edited March 24, 2010 by John Dolva

[Greg Burnham]

I saw a fascinating news program about 6 months ago that claimed that scientists had discovered the cause of the decline in honey bee population to a certainty. According to the study, the cause is a virus. They originally had been dealing with the idea that cell phone "cells" (or something related thereto) were interfering with the navigation systems of the bees! Eventually, they found that all of the bees that were coming from declining populations--and only those bees--all had this virus. I wonder how they re dealing with it?

Much of what Jack says here makes sense. Aeroplane emissions are a major contributor to the composition of the atmosphere. This is indisputable. Some might be astounded by the volumes.

Cleaner fuels and greener engines are being adopted.

There is a change in the air.

(I just wouldn't start off with chemtrail ''programs'', tho). Sure economics is involved at the expense of the environment. The intransigence of some major countries and companies are not acting in the interests of our world. Thay can, but they choose not to.

edit:typo

[Matthew Lewis]

A few of the negative affects of these (chemtrail) programs are listed below;

(A) A wide variety of trees and other vegetation are showing signs of declining health or have died out;

( Honey bee and wild pollinator populations are in steep decline; tree and plant decline is creating a serious fire hazard in many areas across the United States and which may adversely impact local weather, rainfall totals, and local water supplies;

© Global dimming, climate change, Ultra-violet (UV) Radiation, man-made clouds, and air pollution are increasing while reducing the amount of direct sunlight reaching the earth which lowers crop production.

D) Persistent jet contrails and the man-made clouds and haze they are producing are changing our weather, reducing photosynthesis, and jet fuel emissions are polluting our air while depleting beneficial atmospheric ozone levels;

E) NOAA lists over fifty known experimental weather modification programs currently being used across the United States without any studies to determine the synergistic effects of those programs or their affect upon, regional micro-climates, agricultural crops and water supplies.

Persistent contrails, sure. Pollution from engine emissions, fine, although you'd be hard pressed to actually find anything measurable at ground level from flights 30,000 feet in the air. But around an airport, sure. Airliners still emit far less pollution per passenger mile than cars or buses though. Making the illogical jump to the myth of "chemtrails"? You're reaching Jack.

[Evan Burton]

Seems it is not the fictional chemtrails but a mite:

It is the migrant we cannot live without. The wild European honey bee helps to create one in every three mouthfuls we eat by pollinating plants, but some of our favourite foods are at risk because of a bee-killing mite which is ''more than likely'' to reach Australia, a new report says.

http://www.smh.com.a...0817-128ls.html

Varroa mites have killed millions of honeybees across the world. Dr Stephen Martin , a University of Sheffield expert on the varroa mite, spoke to BBC Radio Sheffield in August 2010.

http://news.bbc.co.u...000/8886387.stm

http://en.wikipedia....llapse_disorder

[Steven Gaal]

Bees

By Jon Queally, staff writer

Common Dreams

Sunday, May 11, 2014

(Credit: Greenpeace / Fred Dott)
Two new reports this week provide key evidence that back a growing call that the destructive use of large-scale chemical agriculture must be halted in order to give the global bee population a fighting chance to regain their strength as the world's most prolific and effective pollinating species.

The first, a scientific study (pdf) conducted by researchers at Harvard University, found further proof that the wide-scale agricultural use of neonicotinoids—a volatile class of insecticide (neonics for short)—is a leading contributor to what has become known as Colony Collapse Disorder (or CCD).

“The only solution for the global bees decline and the current agriculture crisis is a change towards ecological farming."

—Matthias Wüthrich, Greenpeace

The second report (pdf), issued by Greenpeace International, focuses on solutions to the bee crisis by releasing its report that shows how the widespread expansion and re-introduction of ecological farming practices--as opposed to the chemically-intensive agriculture that now dominates—is the most efficient and surfire way to save the world's bee population and the food system they support.

For the Harvard researchers, their study specifically looked at how exposure to various kinds of neonics impacted the ability of colonies to survive winter hybernations and found that "Bees from six of the 12 neonicotinoid-treated colonies had abandoned their hives and were eventually dead with symptoms resembling CCD," while those not exposed to the chemicals survived with inverse rates.

"It is striking and perplexing to observe the empty neonicotinoid-treated colonies because honey bees normally do not abandon their hives during the winter," the report continued. "This observation may suggest the impairment of honey bee neurological functions, specifically memory, cognition, or behavior, as the results from the chronic sub-lethal neonicotinoid exposure."

The Greenpeace report—titled "Plan Bee--Living without Pesticides: Moving Towards Ecological Farming"—picks up where the science against chemical herbicides and pesticides leaves off by showing that the implementation of "ecological farming is feasible and in fact the only solution to the ever increasing problems associated with industrial agriculture" that is destroying both natural systems and proven, non-toxic farming practices.

Ecological farming, according to the report, includes "organic agricultural methods, promotes biodiversity on farmland and supports the restoration of semi-natural habitat on farms as ecological compensation areas for bees and other wildlife. Ecological farming does not rely on the use of synthetic chemical pesticides and herbicides and, thereby, safeguards bees from toxic effects of these agrochemicals."

And Matthias Wüthrich, ecological farming campaigner and European bees project leader at Greenpeace Switzerland, adds: “The only solution for the global bees decline and the current agriculture crisis is a change towards ecological farming."

The Greenpeace report supports the environmental group's ongoing campaign to fight bee decline in Europe, North America, and elsewhere by highlighting farmers and others who are showing that these alternatives exist and are working.

By applying and promoting ecological and bee-friendly farming methods, argues Wüthrich, forward-thinking farmers, experts and entrepreneurs in the food industry "are ensuring healthy food for today and tomorrow, are protecting soil, water and climate, promote biodiversity and do not contaminate the environment with chemicals or genetically engineered organisms. Policy makers need to hear these experts who live by and champion the solution."

As part of their "S.O.S Bees" campaign last month, Greenpeace released this video to show that if people don't rapidly deploy solutions to the crisis, the bees will have no other choice but to rise up themselves against humanity's neglect: SEE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaE7XIlZ2Ao&feature=player_embedded

Edited May 11, 2014 by Steven Gaal