Heather Callaghan
Many arrows point to the bee decline. A Harvard professor recently warned that Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is only the beginning for us. The ripple effect from new classes of pesticides is just getting started.
But there's more...
The problems they face can be compared to a kaleidoscope, where the shapes are layered, interconnected, many and morphing.
It's not only pesticides that lead to pollinator death - it's more. It's other things, the combination of things, thought to be harmless to bees and to humans.
Heather Callaghan
While chemical corporations and critics of bee activists want people to remain focused on addressing symptoms of colony collapse disorder, and fund research aimed at that goal, one Harvard PhD stands out as he presses on pesticides.
Researcher and Harvard professor, Chengsheng (Alex) Lu, has been outspoken about the effects of neonicotinoid pesticides and their contribution to colony collapse disorder. Especially so, since conducting his own tests for a number of years now.
But he now warns that a pollinator drop could be the least our worries at this point. That it may be a sign of things to come - bees acting as the canary in the coalmine. That not only are we connected to bees through our food supply, but that the plight that so afflicts them may very well soon be our own.
Sayer Ji
What if the very GM agricultural system that Monsanto claims will help to solve the problem of world hunger depends on a chemical that kills the very pollinator upon which approximately 70% of world's food supply now depends?
A new study published in the Journal of Experimental Biology titled, "Effects of field-realistic doses of glyphosate on honeybee appetitive behavior," establishes a link between the world's most popular herbicide – aka Roundup – and the dramatic decline in honeybee (Apis mellifera) populations in North American and Europe that lead to the coining of the term 'colony collapse disorder' (CCD) in late 2006 to describe the phenomena.[1]
The researchers found that concentrations of glyphosate (GLY) consistent with the type of exposures associated with standard spraying practices in GM agricultural - and neighboring ecosystems - reduced the honeybees' sensitivity to nectar reward and impaired their learning abilities – two behavioral consequences likely to adversely affect their survival abilities. Moreover, while sub-lethal doses were not found to overtly affect their foraging behavior, they hypothesized that because of their resilience, "..forager bees could become a source of constant inflow of nectar with GLY traces that could then be distributed among nest mates, stored in the hive and have long-term negative consequences on colony performance."
Heather Callaghan
