Bee Colony Collapse

Last night watched a great movie about honeybee colony collapse disorder, Vanishing of the Bees. I learned that colony collapse happens when the worker/foraging bees leave the hive and don't come back to the poor abandoned queen... she has some workers and nurse bees left, and works frantically to lay more eggs, but with thousands of bees missing, there is not enough food to feed the babies. The nurse bees go out for food, but alas, it is fruitless... Often the bees experiencing the collapse are being rented out to pollinate big orchards of almonds, blueberries, apples, oranges... and move around the country to go to different monocultures. These are often being treated, or next to other crops that are treated, with systemic pesticides such that the pollen the bees experience give them sublethal doses of toxins that mess up their nervous system, and their navigation skills.

In 1993, Bayer Corp. started selling systemic pesticides that farmers started using on their crops. The beekeepers witnessed major hive abandonments and realized it came at the same time as the use of the new pesticides. They staged protests in Paris and at Bayer factory offices! The pesticide Gaucho was to blame (containing Imidacloprid which becomes available in the pollen and nectar). Certain metabolites of Imidacloprid were found to be more toxic than the original molecule.

The French minister of Agriculture agreed, and banned some of the systemic pesticides from being used on sunflowers, because he said, his job was to protect the environment. Unfortunately, many beehive collapses were observed for subsequent years because of the contamination of soils, and beacause of it's continued use on corn neighboring some of the crops bees were brought in to pollinate.

And just this April, in Germany, people protested in front of the Bayer annual meeting about their use of nicotine-based systemic pesticides (that render the entire plant, stem, leaves, roots, nectar and pollen toxic). Those pesticides are widespread as seed-coatings on most corn sold worldwide through Bayer's partnership with Monsanto. These seeds are almost always both Genetically Modified (GMO) and coated with a systemic nicotine pesticide - and sometimes also a fungicide or other pesticide.

Cartoon above is from this site.

The almond groves of California use 80% of the commercial bees to get pollinated, said Charlie Lybrand, of Gainesville Florida, last night. He said they are aiming to plant 1 million more acres of almonds in CA. They are also trying to develop a new olive bush and punch a hole in the expensive olive market, and it will need millions of commercial bees for pollinating.

Bees need variety and multiple plants blooming at different times of year to be healthy. Giant expanses of one crop are not good for bees. Buy your food from smaller organic farms that don't use pesticides and offer a variety of plants for bees to forage throughout the year to have happy lives.