As bee colonies continue collapsing, scientists seem to be making some connections to what we are doing to the environment and the fate of the bees. This comes just as academics are warning that the continued collapse of honey bee colonies is ushering in an era of food scarcity. Even corporate food giants like Häagen-Daz are starting to get worried about their bottom line when ingredients like raspberries and almonds are becoming rarer and more expensive.
This month, the Washington Post reports that three University of Virginia researchers have shown that air pollution is interfering with bees’ pollination efforts by impeding their ability to find flowers. Due to smog, power plant and auto emissions, they literally can’t smell the flowers. The study traces how quickly cent-bearing hydrocarbon molecules released by flowers are destroyed from contact with ozone and other pollutants.
Scents that traveled as much as 4,000 feet 200 years ago now travel only 650 feet in areas with high pollution levels such as Los Angeles and Houston. High ozone levels during the summer exacerbate the problem at just the time when the bees should be in a pollinating frenzy. And then the vicious cycle for the bees of not enough food leading to declining populations leading to less pollinating leading to less food for the bees.
In Germany, bee keepers are preparing to sue a pesticide company and Bavarian farmers after scientists linked a massive bee die off to the pesticide clothianidin used on maize seeds. In an attempt to get rid of fruit flies and corn worms, farmers may have released the pesticide into the wild where the bees came in contact.
While this is not the sole source of CCD, it may very well be yet another contributing factor. Britain’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is investing more effort into determining the cause of the die off of bees just as British bee keepers warn that without some significant action, the U.K.’s honey bees could disappear within 10 years. In the meantime, German scientists are discovering new information about bee diseases such as American Foulbrood (AFB) in the hopes of being able to prevent some of the infectious diseases causing honey bee die off.
Evidence seems to be amassing that it is much more than disease that is killing the honey bees, however. In fact disease may merely be a result of a bee population weakened by pesticides, pollution and, as Joe Rowland testified before the New York Assembly in 2000, genetically modified foods:
At the beginning of my testimony, I mentioned the fact that bees in the U.S. are increasingly afflicted with a strain of antibiotic resistant American Foulbrood (AFB). Before the advent of antibiotics, this bacterial infection was the most serious bee disease in the world. Tetracycline had been used effectively against AFB for 40 years until 1996. In that year, tetracycline resistance was confirmed in both Argentina and the upper Midwestern states of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Since then, it has spread to at least 17 states, including New York. During the 1990's, millions of acres of Round-up Ready crops were planted in the U.S. and Argentina. According to my information, the antibiotic resistant gene used in the creation of Round-up Ready crops was resistant to tetracycline. After 40 years of effective usage against an infective bacterium found in the guts of honeybees, suddenly 2 geographically isolated countries develop tetracycline resistance simultaneously. A common thread between the U.S. and Argentina is the widespread and recent cultivation of GM crops containing tetracycline resistant genes. -- Biotech-Info.netFurther Reading:
