For some time now bee keepers in the US have noticed their bees have been disappearing, the so called Colony Collapse Disorder.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of this problem. The vast majority of our food crops are pollinated by insects, and quite simply without the insects there can be no harvest. Bees are among the most important pollinating insects.
A Pennsylvania bee farmer has a theory why this is happening. He thinks it’s because of GM crops engineered to produce Bt, a naturally occurring pesticide.
I say naturally occurring, because it’s present in small quantities in the environment. In these GM crops however, it’s another story. Crops engineered to produce Bt do so in very large quantities. It’s produced by every cell in the plant including roots, stems, leaves and flowers. It’s also present in the pollen of these plants. The amount of Bt in these plants is enough to trigger allergies in some people, and irritate the skin and eyes of farmers who handle the crops. In India, when sheep were used to clear a field of left over Bt cotton, several sheep died after eating it.
Even if this farmer’s theory turns out not to be true, it should really serve as a wake up call. The genetic contamination from these GM crops has long ago left the fields where they were grown, and if it is necessary to clean it up, it could prove to be enormously difficult. GM contamination is after all the only self-replicating contamination human beings have ever released into the environment.
I remember hearing (years back) that they were thinking of putting spider venom in plant cells… and I was thinking, that would be a really bad idea. I hope that they are wrong and fear that they are right.
I have wondered if the introduction of exotic bee species might be reducing the honeybee. These days I am happy when I see a honeybee, as more often the bees I see are large aggressive bees I’m not familiar with. I’ve ID’d some to find that they are relatively newly introduced exotics. (Actually the honeybee was also introduced to the US from Europe at one point too.) Of course the weather patterns are changing too. With new pesticides and GM, its probably very hard to be a beekeeper trying to figure this one out.
We had today this news in Finnish newspaper. This same finding has been made in smaller extent also in Canada and parts of Europe…
I found this study
2001-2004
Jena University
A chance infestation by parasites (microsporidia) resulted in more significant damage to the Bt-fed colonies. The underlying mechanism which causes this effect is unknown.
http://www.gmo-safety.eu/en/oilseed_rape/honey_bees/339.docu.html
Honey bees are exotic, as are many of the food crops we grow. Thousands of varieties of bees, wasps, moths, birds, and other bugs and creatures are needed to pollinate the worlds plant population… if just happens that honey bees are the most easily manipulated by man. People need to think about the decline of native pollinators in conjunction with the decline of exotic pollinators and how that all ties into crop production methodologies.
We have GM crops because big business makes money from GM crops. The gov’t will not step in because they receive large tax receipts from the businesses. After all, corporations and gov’t are merely quid-pro-quo whorehouses sold to the highest bidder. When the gov’t needs illegal wire-taps, Verizon and Sprint allow them secret rooms to listen in on calls. When Haliburton (and KBR) need more revenue, the gov’t hands out no-bid contracts. When the gov’t dislikes literature, Amazon and Wikipedia ban the book “America Deceived”. We The People had our gov’t (and our health) sold out from beneath us.
Final link (before Google Books caves to pressure and drops the title):
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-38523-0
Too many companies are messing with our food without understanding the impact it has. The good old butterfly effect in weather (e.g. the flapping of the wings causing a hurricane on the other side of the planet) sure seems to apply to GM crops.
Just cruising around on the http://gmo.worldwidewarning.net that I found and I’m convinced that this level of messing around could ultimately be disasterous.
We’re reaping what the greed of the corporations has sown. When man believes he’s as smart as the Father, we’re doomed.
The Bees will all vanish, the BT pollen is to blame. This will be one of the biggest changes in the last 5 Million years on Earth. For the next 5 million years, there will be no bees, and no vegetables.
But good news. Humans will eat powdered slime (spirulina), seaweed, and fungii like mushrooms . It will be a different planet in the future.
No more flowers. Trees could vanish too.
No more nuts and few berries.
Earth could support millions of people without vegetables, but will not support billions of people anymore without bees.
BT Pollen was the biggest change in a Billion years.
BT Pollen is bigger than the greenhouse effect or nuclear war.
BT pollen is bigger than terrorism or anything else.
Stop buying from large companies that produce and offer so called GM foods. That is the only course of action to stop this insane philosophy.
Before people conclude that genetically modified crops are responsible for the so-called, “Colony Collapse Disoder,” I would like to advise them to read this article from GMO Pundit Blog. Science is not like politics where you can bend facts to suit your interests. A responsible debate about GMOs requires always referencing peer-reviewed scientifc literature. Engaging in shouting matches will not help anybody.
With only 4 years to live why conclude anything anymore. I don’t want debate, I want my bees back.
GM was never meant to feed the world. It was a method to keep farmers paying for new seed every planting season and to patent life, something that was unheard of until recently.
Simple selfish greed is fueling this genetic disaster.
Our problems with GM go far deeper than just bees.
I read the article James included a link to. The interesting thing about such an article is that it makes underlying assumptions, such as, that we can study the effects of introducing GM crops by looking at their actions on things in minute detail. As important as details can be, stepping back and looking at the possibilities from a larger perspective is important, too. It seems obvious to me that introducing GM crops that target individual pests could easily have inadvertent effects. One of these effects could be an impact on bees immune systems. These is not bending facts, this is common sense. Our problem is that we study a thing in most minute detail that we are capable of, then make the erroneous assumption that we totally understand it. This folly has been repeated throughout history so often that we really ought to know better by now.
To mister Wachai:
The indication of harm, not the proof of harm is the call to action. I believe this is known as The Precautionary Principle.
The thought occurs with GM crops, that inevitably there is the normal process of decomposition; which produces (in case of GM crops) one imagines, new mutant forms of bacteria; a predictable linear (if unintended & undesired) spin-off from GM crops.
WHAT effect these mutant forms of bacteria’ which might switch on or off only one gene in a bacillus, that in the normal case of bacteriological mutation would NOT develop (with devastating consequances), I am sure nobody has bothered amidst the corporate hyperbole (promoting same) bothered to research. Especially not on the basis of the precautionary principle.
THIS might impact the bee population in all manner of highly randomised indirect forms.
The powers that be can fool most of the people most of the time, but it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.
This discussion is starting to sound like a margarine commercial.
Thanks for the comments everyone!
Thanks for stopping by, and for caring about this very important subject.
ITz coming. Pack your rice, because the worldwide super famine is just around the corner and that’s a fact.
If you wanna be sure, investigate. Try to isolate this Bt Gene from Bees and/or their offspring. It should be easy. What you need is the DNAmarker. If this is available to independant investigators? I do not know.
It is just like two populations of rats. Both populations were fed with corn. The X population with transgenic corn. The Y population with natural corn.
What did happen with the X population? Ask Monsanto…
Repeat it a few times until the difference is significant.
Robert McG has a valid point. Read a article in a local agriculturalmagazine, a researcher who has worked with tadpoles and frogs for close on 30 years has found that tadpoles exposed to fertilizers and other chemicals are more prone to other diseases as their immune systems are weaker. It is just the tip of the iceburg.
Everyone has a point! The point is that Monsanto has an agenda to control the world’s food supply. To do this they have purchase 90+% of the seed in this world. Bayer Advanced, also, came out with a nicotinic pesticide “Marathon” a new generation of pesticide and the introduction of this pesticide coincides with CCD. Using the Precautionary Principle, the government of France banned this pesticide immediately and they do not have a problem with their bees. EU has also banned GM crops. If our immune system is in our gut and we eat these crops, and the bee ingests these pesticides, and the Bt, GM crops etc., it makes sense that the little guys do not have a chance to stand up to Monsanto. Remember Einstein said that when the bees go, humanity has about 4 years…coincidently this all began in earnest 4 years before 2012..makes you wonder and can scare you…..we destroyed ourselves for GREED.