If honeybees are critical to the production of countless varieties of fruits, vegetables and other plants, why haven't I seen a red flag raised on this issue? I found an interesting article which I think leads credance to the idea that pesticide-charged GMOs are poisoning and killing the defense-challenged honeybees.

see http://boulerbelt.blogspot.com/2007/03/gmos-killing-bees.html

Not that these constitute the red flags you are looking for but there was recently a one page piece in Smithsonian.

 

http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2007/june/interview.php

 

I recently heard something about the possible impact on the migrant bee keepers – a subculture I didn’t even realize existed.  I believe that was on NPR.  I believe there was a hearing on this in the House of Representatives.  Also a quick Lexis-Nexis Academic search at the library for “honeybee decline” brought back a number of hits.  

 

Maybe it is becoming an issue…hope it isn’t too late.

Thanks for the suggestion to do a search on Lexis-Nexis. Unfortunately, my apricot tree had no fruit this year - so my immediate fear was realized in a small way. On the other hand, I found an article written by a bee person with an interesting take on the fate of honeybees..

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/10/HOG5FOH9VQ1.DTL

Godspeed! 

 

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pink lotus

Yes, this article was referenced in the Colorado blog. 

 

Maybee (sorry, I couldn’t resist) the problem is that the queens need to get out more often…

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070719185521.htm

 

I wonder if honeybees being affected in other countries too?  If so, do those other countries use GMOs?  If not, maybe that would provide some evidence against GMOs being the culprits.

 

Regardless of the ultimate reason, we should probably be doing more research to find out what the cause is because bees (and other pollinators) are enormously important to our modern agricultural processes.

 

Not to mention they are really amazing creatures.

Apparently, there was a lot of public discussion by the scientist's community regarding bees earlier this year. What I took away was that Europe is having similar problems with bees. And right now Germany is conducting research. Some EU areas have GMO crops in the same space as disappearing bee colonies. The consensus from most of the articles I've read is that the pesticides embedded in the GMO crops has not been shown to kill the bees directly but rather weaken the bees wee little systems. The modified structure of the pollen has changed the environment in the bees intestinal tracts to the extent that any virus or bacteria introduced to the bees will kill them.

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pink lotus