[getsmart-l] COLLAPSING COLONIES Are GM Crops Killing Bees?

[23skidoo]

If we collapse the bee colonies by some chance fatal error we will be witnesses to the collapse of  agriculture as we know it.

Many environmentalists have aggressively opposed research and development of these 'franken foods' for some time now. 
While protesting against the sale of Genetically Modified Products outside of a Loblaws store here in Brampton with the WildGreens, we were prohibited from distributing our information pamphlets on GM products to customers. We were later accosted and forced to leave the mall area entirely by their store manager and accompanying security staff. Service with a smile ;)

Quite clearly our good friends at Loblaws allegedly one of the biggest allies of GM foods didn't want any attention being brought to this little secret of theirs. 
To be fair...,
there are many grocery stores out there hiding the fact that they are selling GM products without proper notification on their excess packaging.

Hmmmm...
There are many roads to the end of suburbia. 
This is but one of them.

Film at 11:00
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SPIEGEL ONLINE - March 22, 2007, 06:21 PM 
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,473166,00.html 


COLLAPSING COLONIES 
Are GM Crops Killing Bees? 


By Gunther Latsch 
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. 


Is the mysterous decimation of bee populations in the US and Germany 
a result of GM crops? 


Walter Haefeker is a man who is used to painting grim scenarios. He 
sits on the board of directors of the German Beekeepers Association 
(DBIB) and is vice president of the European Professional Beekeepers 
Association. And because griping is part of a lobbyist's trade, it is 
practically his professional duty to warn that "the very existence of 
beekeeping is at stake." 


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. 


Felix Kriechbaum, an official with a regional beekeepers' association 
in Bavaria, recently reported a decline of almost 12 percent in local 
bee populations. When "bee populations disappear without a trace," 
says Kriechbaum, it is difficult to investigate the causes, because 
"most bees don't die in the beehive." There are many diseases that 
can cause bees to lose their sense of orientation so they can no 
longer find their way back to their hives. 


Manfred Hederer, the president of the German Beekeepers Association, 
almost simultaneously reported a 25 percent drop in bee populations 
throughout Germany. In isolated cases, says Hederer, declines of up 
to 80 percent have been reported. He speculates that "a particular 
toxin, some agent with which we are not familiar," is killing the bees. 


Politicians, until now, have shown little concern for such warnings 
or the woes of beekeepers. Although apiarists have been given a 
chance to make their case -- for example in the run-up to the German 
cabinet's approval of a genetic engineering policy document by 
Minister of Agriculture Horst Seehofer in February -- their 
complaints are still largely ignored. 


Even when beekeepers actually go to court, as they recently did in a 
joint effort with the German chapter of the organic farming 
organization Demeter International and other groups to oppose the use 
of genetically modified corn plants, they can only dream of the sort 
of media attention environmental organizations like Greenpeace 
attract with their protests at test sites. 


But that could soon change. 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. 


In an article in its business section in late February, the New York 
Times calculated the damage US agriculture would suffer if bees died 
out. Experts at Cornell University in upstate New York have estimated 
the value bees generate -- by pollinating fruit and vegetable plants, 
almond trees and animal feed like clover -- at more than $14 billion. 


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." 


One thing is certain: Millions of bees have simply vanished. In most 
cases, all that's left in the hives are the doomed offspring. But 
dead bees are nowhere to be found -- neither in nor anywhere close to 
the hives. Diana Cox-Foster, a member of the CCD Working Group, told 
The Independent that researchers were "extremely alarmed," adding 
that the crisis "has the potential to devastate the US beekeeping 
industry." 


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." 


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. 


The scientists are also surprised that bees and other insects usually 
leave the abandoned hives untouched. Nearby bee populations or 
parasites would normally raid the honey and pollen stores of colonies 
that have died for other reasons, such as excessive winter cold. 
"This suggests that there is something toxic in the colony itself 
which is repelling them," says Cox-Foster. 


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."
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