GM Crops to Blame for Disappearing Bees? German Study Says 'Yes'.

Many people are noting the alarming disappearance of bee populations in North America and Europe. Several threads were started here on ATS:

Honey Bees dieing by the Tens of Thousands - in Fragile Earth Forum - closed

Where are all the bees going? - in Fragile Earth Forum - closed

Mystery Illness Killing U.S. Honeybees by the Thousands - in Fragile Earth Forum - open for posting

Bees are disappearing! - in Science & Technology Forum - open for posting

This long article is making a connection between the rise of genetically modified crops and the disappearance of bees. Walter Haefeker sits on the board of directors of the German Beekeepers Association (DBIB) and is vice president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association.

Are GM Crops Killing Bees?

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.

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.

Scientists call the mysterious phenomenon "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD), and it is fast turning into a national catastrophe of sorts. A number of universities and government agencies have formed a "CCD Working Group" to search for the causes of the calamity, but have so far come up empty-handed. But, like Dennis vanEngelsdorp, an apiarist with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, they are already referring to the problem as a potential "AIDS for the bee industry."

In many cases, scientists have found evidence of almost all known bee viruses in the few surviving bees found in the hives after most have disappeared. Some had five or six infections at the same time and were infested with fungi -- a sign, experts say, that the insects' immune system may have collapsed.

..."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.

... at the CCD Working Group some data from a bee study ... shows a possible connection between genetic engineering and diseases in bees.

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."

There have long been concerns with immune effects of genetically modified food on humans (and thus then ban on them in Europe) but it seems that the first victims may be the bees.

Are GM crops causing immune system collapse in bees? This article seems to present evidence of just that.

"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." - Albert Eistein
.

[edit on 3/25/2007 by Gools]

I think there were many people who thought that GM plants would have some unpredictable and deadly results. Of course the developers say these people are paranoid and do not understand the science like they do.

Nature on earth has been working and developing the balance of life for millions of years. I think the GM business could be under estimating some of the not so desirable effects.

It is a shame that there will never be enough money so satisfy some people.

'disappearing' bees i take it to mean; the worker bees that normally
bring back pollen to the hive are not returning home for some reason.

if dead or MIA bees are a result of GM insect resistant crops, then other pollinators like humming birds and butterflys could be having some stresses on their populations also.

And the sharp bee de-population should not have been so abrupt,
as acreage of GM plantings has steadily increased in the past dozen years
and spread out to many areas....without any reported decimations in bee colonies/hives that many farmers keep.

but then this sudden notice may be the first sign of reaching the tipping point... the mono crops, the unseasonable temperature fluxuation, the GM & insect resistant plants and other factors combined to create a genocide situation for bees specifically




[edit on 24-3-2007 by St Udio]

Interesting... and St. Udio makes some interesting additional points -- are the other prime pollinators being harmed? I think that bees are decreasing everywhere, not just where GM plants are to be found. However, I'm not sure.

We could do some "citizen science" here and collect reports of areas where bee populations are shrinking and where GM plants are being grown. Bees have a limited flight range, so they would need to be fairly close to where those crops are being grown.

The major problem I see with this whole thing is corn is wind-pollinated. I don't believe bees have anything to do with corn, GM or otherwise.

So I'm still not seeing the link .. Is there something I'm missing?

What about all these specialty bulbs and flowers I can buy now-a-days at the local china-mart?
Arent those GMOs?

Oh yeah, and the specialty tomato hybrids that are all the rage here locally.

[edit on 25-3-2007 by 11Bravo]

Originally posted by djohnsto77
The major problem I see with this whole thing is corn is wind-pollinated. I don't believe bees have anything to do with corn, GM or otherwise.

So I'm still not seeing the link .. Is there something I'm missing?

This is from an excellent article on Genetic Engineering and how it applies to India's agricultural infrastructure. It's very lengthy but I think this answers your question.

"Genetic engineering is an imperfect technology. It is a cell invasion technology through which inter-specie barrier is transcended. For instance, nature has devised mechanisms that make a fish work as fish and a tomato work as tomato. What GE technology does is transfer the selected traits of one specie [for example ability to withstand low temperature in a fish] to another [say for example tomato] so that the engineered specie [tomato] withstands cold temperature. However, in the complex world of nature, this type of invasion of cell and gene manipulation can wreak havoc. For example Bt cotton seed contains the genes of bacillus thuringiensis [Bt] that makes a cotton plant behave like pesticide because it kills certain pests that attack cotton plants. Exactly the same transformation takes place when a farmer uses Bt rice or Bt Okra, or any seeds containing Bacillus thuringiensis. Effectively, the plant itself behaves like a pesticide whether cotton [cash crop] or any food crop."

Silent War.





[edit on 25-3-2007 by Seeker PI]
Mod Edit: to apply external quote code, please review this link

[edit on 26-3-2007 by DontTreadOnMe]

Originally posted by djohnsto77
I don't believe bees have anything to do with corn, GM or otherwise.
.. Is there something I'm missing?

Pollination is a by-product of bee behaviour it's not their reason for living.

They collect nectar to make honey and reproduce and in the process carry pollen from one flower to another (lucky for us). They can collect nectar in corn fields just like any other.

As for the other pollinators perhaps they have a difference in their immune systems?

The other problem with nailing the cause down is the practice of beekeepers moving their entire colonies of hives from field to field accross the country. The bees could collect nectar in one field and a delayed effect could have them dying in the next fieldf, or the one after that, without knowing exactly where the problem started.

I find it very interesting that the bees are being found with up to six different parasites and infections. Somewhere, somehow, the immune system or natural protection against the parasites/diseases have been compromised and eventually they die en-masse. A delayed reaction making the cause hard to find.

Just another reason to stop messing around with DNA in nature IMO. We just don't now what we are playing with and it's only a matter of time before something goes terribly wrong.

Maybe it's already too late.
.

Originally posted by Gools
Pollination is a by-product of bee behaviour it's not their reason for living.

They collect nectar to make honey and reproduce and in the process carry pollen from one flower to another (lucky for us). They can collect nectar in corn fields just like any other.

Yes, I realize that, but corn doesn't produce nectar. Of course corn pollen could spread to other plants by the wind where it could be accidently eaten by bees, but this effect has largely been discounted in other species (such as the Monarch Butterfly) that would seem to be even more susceptible to accidental injestion.

Both cotton and soybeans, the other major GM crops are self pollinators, so bees aren't brought to those fields.

Commercial honey bee hives are regularly transported in large trucks around the country as needed to pollinate crops that do need insect pollination and thereby generate honey, a win-win situation for both the farmers and beekeepers. The decline of honey bees seems to be affecting these commercial bees just as much, if not more, than wild bees, so I still don't think GM crops have much to do with the problem.

Originally posted by djohnsto77
so I still don't think GM crops have much to do with the problem.

I gotta ask, what fields are these bees trucked to?
Couldnt it be some fields of the GMOs I mentioned in my prior post, or are those out of the question?

Hybrids aren't considered GM-foods, they've been produced by selective breeding for centuries, or more.

There was a GM tomato, the Flavr-Savr, but it was a commercial failure and is no longer grown. Plus, it had nothing to do with insect control, only retardation of spoilage.

Bees are generally taken to fruit and vegetable farms. Citrus, melons, pumpkins, almonds, cucumbers, apples, stuff like that.

[edit on 3/26/2007 by djohnsto77]

Uh huh, and what fields are these bees trucked around to?

Duh, I see now.
Its time for bed.
Have a good week man.


[edit on 26-3-2007 by 11Bravo]

How does a queen be breed, is it possible for them to be in-breed causing a genetic weakness to some disease? I have seen alot of bees in my area(west michigan) in the past few weeks as it warmed up, does that mean the "wild" bees don't have this trouble?

There does seem to be a problem going on, but I wonder if it is not something else which is creating these problems.

Remember that birds, frogs, and even turtles among some other species are experiencing the same problems the bees are showing.

I do wonder if perhaps it has something to do with the magnetic field of the Earth which has been weakening since 1845.

Bees, like birds, frogs and turtles, rely on the magnetic field of the Earth to navigate. Birds have been confused and have even died inexplicably alongside some other species.

If bees are subjected to a magnetic field ten times more powerful than the terrestrial one, they are completely disoriented, and the combs get unusual forms and orientations. Scientists discovered that these insects possess tinny magnetite crystals, of 300 angstroms (one angstrom means a tenth billionth part of a millimeter).

news.softpedia.com...

Could the weakening of the Earth's magnetic field have anything to do with what is happening not only to bees but many other species?

Perturbations in the magnetic field provoked by space factors (like Sun eruptions) can impair the organisms' activity. Magnetic storms deteriorate radio communications but, at the same time, influence brain size and that of the physiological liquids from the organism.

[edit on 26-3-2007 by Muaddib]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that bees navigate more by the polarized light of the sun than anything else. They have the ability to detect this polarization even on cloudy days.

I have no idea what is killing them enmass, but the problem is getting serious in California and Florida as well as in the Rio Grande valley region of Texas. And yes, wild bees are being affected as well.

For some odd reason, I have had an interest in bees for quite some time now...

I first started personally noticing their disappearance back in 2005. I made reference to it in this post:

Originally posted by loam
Bees can recognize human faces

I have been thinking a lot about bees lately. I can remember as a child seeing them every year in great numbers.

In the past few years, I have also noticed their significant decline. In the last two, I never saw a single honey bee.

Originally posted by Byrd
I think that bees are decreasing everywhere, not just where GM plants are to be found. However, I'm not sure.

For now, I tend to agree. I looked several weeks ago for similar reports of CCD in Australia, Asia, and South America with little success.

Here, however, is an interesting description of the distribution of GM crops:

Abundance of GM crops

Between 1996 and 2005, the total surface area of land cultivated with GMOs had increased by a factor of 50, from 17,000 km² (4.2 million acres) to 900,000 km² (222 million acres), of which 55% were in the United States.

Although most GM crops are grown in North America, in recent years there has been rapid growth in the area sown in developing countries. For instance in 2005 the largest increase in crop area planted to GM crops (soybeans) was in Brazil (94,000 km² in 2005 versus 50,000 km² in 2004.[17] There has also been rapid and continuing expansion of GM cotton varieties in India since 2002. (Cotton is a major source of vegetable cooking oil and animal feed.) It is predicted that in 2006/7 32,000 km² of GM cotton will be harvested in India (up more than 100% from the previous season). Indian national average cotton yields have been boosted to close 50% above the long term average yield during this period. The publicity given to transgenic trait Bt insect resistance has encouraged the adoption of better performing hybrid cotton varieties, and the Bt trait has substantially reduced losses to insect predation. Economic and environmental benefits of GM cotton in India to the individual farmer have been documented.[18][19]

Four countries represent 99% of total GM surface in 2001: United States (68%), Argentina (22%), Canada (6%) and China (3%). It is estimated that 70% of products on U.S. grocery shelves include GM-derived ingredients. In particular, Bt corn, which produces the pesticide within the plant itself is widely grown, as are soybeans genetically designed to tolerate glyphosate herbicides. These constitute "input-traits" that financially benefit the producers, yet have only indirect environmental and marginal cost benefits to consumers.

In the US, by 2006 89% of the planted area of soybeans, 83% of cotton, and 61% maize was genetically modified varieties. Genetically modified soybeans carried herbicide tolerant traits only, but maize and cotton carried both herbicide tolerance and insect protection traits (the latter largely the Bacillus thuringiensus Bt insecticidal protein). In the period 2002 to 2006, there were significant increases in the area planted to Bt protected cotton and maize, and herbicide tolerant maize also increased in sown area.[20] The Grocery Manufacturers of America estimate that 75% of all processed foods in the U.S. contain a GM ingredient.

Note that Europe is absent to a large extent, and yet the problem of CCD appears quite pronounced there. That makes me suspect BT Corn a little less.

Incidentally, here are some interesting facts on bee pollination:

Pollination in agriculture

The largest managed pollination event in the world is in Californian almond orchards, where nearly half (about one million hives) of the US honey bees are trucked to the almond orchards each spring. New York's apple crop requires about 30,000 hives; Maine's blueberry crop uses about 50,000 hives each year.

Bees are also brought to commercial plantings of cucumbers, squash, melons, strawberries, and many other crops. Honey bees are not the only managed pollinators: other species of bees are also raised as pollinators. The alfalfa leafcutter bee is an important pollinator for alfalfa seed in western United States and Canada. Bumblebees are increasingly raised and used extensively for greenhouse tomatoes and other crops.

Apparently, bees are responsible for 1/3 of the food we eat.

On the issue of magnetic navigation:

Magnetic Bees

In the 60s, other scientists discovered that dancing honeybees emitted a sound from their wings, vibrating at 220 beats per second. They were singing a song with their wings. And honeybees do have a sort-of-ear on the second joint of their antennae. It seemed reasonable that bees could hear this song, but how do you prove it?

In the late 80s, Wolfgang H. Kirchner and William F. Towne proved it with a robot honeybee. It had razor blades for wings, and tiny computer-controlled motors to make it dance. It could sing the song with its razor blade wings, and dance the dance via its electric motors.

A real honeybees would ignore their robot razor blade honeybee, if it just danced the dance, or just sang the song. But when it did both the song and the dance, the real honeybee would obey it. The scientists could actually talk to the animals! They could get their robot honeybee to send the real honeybees out of the nest in any direction they wanted!

So by using a song-and-dance routine, the bees can tell each other the best place to eat out.

But once they've picked up their nectar and pollen, how do they find their way back to the hive? Honeybees have another trick - tiny compasses, in their tummies, that sense the Earth's magnetic field.

So it might be possible that changes in the magnetic field could affect bees. But in this case, I do not think that is a reasonable conclusion. At worst, I would think the bees would get lost and die out, unable to reliably find food or their hives. But as Gools mentions:

Originally posted by Gools
I find it very interesting that the bees are being found with up to six different parasites and infections. Somewhere, somehow, the immune system or natural protection against the parasites/diseases have been compromised and eventually they die en-masse. A delayed reaction making the cause hard to find.

Something else seems clearly in play here...

Originally posted by Byrd
We could do some "citizen science" here and collect reports of areas where bee populations are shrinking and where GM plants are being grown. Bees have a limited flight range, so they would need to be fairly close to where those crops are being grown.

An excellent idea!!!


[edit on 26-3-2007 by loam]

Originally posted by djohnsto77

Yes, I realize that, but corn doesn't produce nectar. Of course corn pollen could spread to other plants by the wind where it could be accidently eaten by bees, but this effect has largely been discounted in other species (such as the Monarch Butterfly) that would seem to be even more susceptible to accidental injestion.

Naturally, Bt. toxin needs to be spliced by digestion, ie. it's only effective when ingested.


Bt. GM crops, otoh, produce an active variant, which is toxic on contact.

Source

Active Bt toxin leaks from plant roots into the soil where it is not biodegradable and accumulates over time. This will have major impacts on soil health, with knock-on effects on all other trophic levels of the ecosystem. The recent report that a GM gene has transferred from GM pollen to microbes in the gut of bee larvae underlines the fact that Bt toxin genes, like all other GM genes, will spread out of control

empahsis mine, article is from 2000


i think a serious investigation is in order, if this link is conclusively proven, sue Monsanto et al. out of business. better late than never.

When I was but a child, or I would say ten years and more living here in Tampa, wiled bees were all over. I culd go out on any sunny day and see these bees buzzing around. It was the same in Tallahassee where I stayed for a few years, as here in Tampa where I have been for now for fourteen years. t must have been within the last 5-7 years where I can now recall seeing less and less bees.

Today, I may find a bee in my backyard every other week or so. I have a nice size backyard for an inner city hom, and usually spend some relaxation time everyday just sitting out there enjoying it, and I almost never see those bees.

Wasps are still a plenty though. Perhaps we should start Genetically modifying bees with the wasps to make them stronger?

Originally posted by Byrd
We could do some "citizen science" here and collect reports of areas where bee populations are shrinking and where GM plants are being grown.

Inspired by Byrd, I went into our backyard to look for bees. We live next to the Victorian wine region of the Yarra Valley in Australia. I do recall seeing swarms of bees recently whilst at University, but I did not see a single one today in our backyard. It's a sunny and warm day today but perhaps it being Autumn means the bees are just not as active as the amount of flowers in bloom is considerably lesser than during spring/summer.

I noticed one today -- of all places -- at the beach in southern Florida! It landed on my arm, so I was fairly certain it was a honeybee.

Frankly, I didn't know honeybees could be found on the beach, but there it was...

Odd...



[edit on 8-4-2007 by loam]