European Bees Also in Major Die Off -- GM Crops to blame?
Pastor Dale Morgan
European Bees Also in Major Die Off -- GM Crops to blame?*
Apr 1st, 2007 8:09 AM
by Craig Mackintosh
We’ve had significant interest in our recent posts on Colony Collapse
Disorder in the U.S. (here, and here). The latter of the two stories
intimated that European bees are also being affected. Spiegel have just
released an article giving more info on this mysterious phenomenon - now
hitting Germany’s bees hard - and experts are concerned that GM crops
may be the root of the problem.
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.
… 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.
… 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.
… 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.”
… 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.” - Spiegel
That’s one of the upside-down aspects of our modern society - funding is
only there if there is a profit to be made. There is no (direct) profit
to be made from proving a link between the GM ‘products’ of big
agribusiness and damage to ecosystems, and, of course, certainly no
motivation to do so - so critical studies are left incomplete.
Many in the U.S. are also pondering the same questions:
That there is Bt in beehives is not a question. Beekeepers spray Bt
under hive lids sometimes to control the wax moth, an insect whose
larval forms produce messy webs on honey. Canadian beekeepers have
detected the disappearance of the wax moth in untreated hives,
apparently a result of worker bees foraging in fields of transgenic
canola plants.
Bees forage heavily on corn flowers to obtain pollen for the rearing of
young broods, and these pollen grains also contain the Bt gene of the
parent plant, because they are present in the cells from which pollen forms.
Is it not possible that while there is no lethal effect directly to the
new bees, there might be some sublethal effect, such as immune
suppression, acting as a slow killer?
The planting of transgenic corn and soybean has increased exponentially,
according to statistics from farm states. Tens of millions of acres of
transgenic crops are allowing Bt genes to move off crop fields.
A quick and easy way to get an approximate answer would be to make a
comparison of colony losses of bees from regions where no genetically
modified crops are grown, and to put test hives in areas where modern
farming practices are so distant from the hives that the foraging worker
bees would have no exposure to them.
Given that nearly every bite of food that we eat has a pollinator, the
seriousness of this emerging problem could dwarf all previous food
disruptions. - San Francisco Chronicle