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No Organic Bee Losses

Yet another idea on Colony Collapse Disorder in this article. An email list of 1000 organic bee growers have not reported any CCD related problems with their colonies. Also mentioned is:

“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.”

This article also goes on to explain that commercial bees are encouraged to grow large by providing them with oversized foundation cells, the cells bee keepers provide their bees when starting their colonies. This results in bees that are more susceptible to the varroa mites as well as possibly other problems.

It seems to me this might be a somewhat simplistic assement of CCD, but it may explain an important part of the problem.

The Bush Bees site has a lot of general information about bee keeping.

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Link Between Disappearing Bees and Biodiversity?

In the post I made yesterday about Bees and GM, Dr. John Blatchford left a comment with a link to some of the articles he’s published on the subject. These are not the typical sort of scientific articles you normally see, these are short, to the point and very easy for anyone to understand.

He makes a good argument for the problem of Colony Collapse Disorder being a general biodiversity issue, rather than directly related to GM crops. He also suggests the answer to the problem may not lie with scientists, but rather with the bee keepers themselves, who are the ones more likely to be able to observe changes in their hives over time.

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More on Bees and GM

I came across this article (via the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog) comparing rates of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) of bees raised organically with conventionally raised bees.

While it remains a complex issue, with little hard evidence, there continues to be a lot of reasons why we should suspect GM crops are playing a major role in CCD.

I think it’s a little interesting too that studies that might show CCD is caused by GM crops don’t seem to be getting any funding, and at the same time there are people saying we shouldn’t be so quick to blame GM crops because there’s no proof! It’s almost like someone or something out there is trying to keep us from finding out the truth…

Personally, I’m still waiting for someone to prove GM crops could not play a role in CCD.

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Linked To!

I’ve been linked to by a blog that’s obviously much more popular than mine, Michael Rivero’s What Really Happened? Thank you Michael! This has resulted in some additional places linking here, and generating even more traffic!

He linked to my recent post on the possible link between the disappearing bees and GM crops. This is causing a tenfold increase in traffic to this blog, and generating a discussion unlike any other here. Regular readers of this blog may want to go over and have a look.

To all new visitors, welcome! Please have a look around. I hope you add this blog to your bookmarks or RSS readers, and come back soon. You are just the kind of people I would like to have here, and I will try to write some more posts soon along similar lines as this one. This is not just a gardening blog!

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More on GM and Bees

The possible link between GM crops has been in the news more lately. An article in the German newspaper Der Spiegel revealed a recent study that showed an AIDS like syndrome in affected bees, and exposure to Bt caused a significantly faster progression of the disease.

Jouni Ylinen recently pointed me to a study that was done 2001-2004 which observed a similar problem, so it’s not like it’s been a secret this whole time. Note near the bottom of the page, where it says:

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.

Bt works by damaging the gut on certain insects, and causing it to rupture. Until now Bt was thought to only attack very specific insects that are susceptible to it, and be non toxic to others. Apparently the toxicity of Bt may not be fully understood.

A seeming unrelated story has emerged in South Africa, on babies with HIV. Transmission of the disease is lower in breastfed babies, and the reason they think is because infant formulas irritate the gut, which more easily allows the virus to pass into the body.

Could these two unrelated news items actually be related?