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Colony Collapse Disorder Linked To Pesticide, High-Fructose Corn Syrup
hondo77 writes "Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health '...have re-created the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder in several honeybee hives simply by giving them small doses of a popular pesticide, imidacloprid.' This follows recently-reported studies also linked the disorder to neonicotinoid pesticides. What is really interesting is the link to when the disorder started appearing, 2006. 'That mechanism? High-fructose corn syrup. Many bee-keepers have turned to high-fructose corn syrup to feed their bees, which the researchers say did not imperil bees until U.S. corn began to be sprayed with imidacloprid in 2004-2005. A year later was the first outbreak of Colony Collapse Disorder.'"
And even more interesting, in all three studies the pesticide was intentionally fed to the bees in the sugar water; it wasn't collected by the bees. The Harvard study also points out the bee keepers feed their colonies HFCS, which apparently started containing trace amounts of the pesticide about the time they noticed colony collapse become a problem. Kind of sounds like they need to stop feeding HFCS.
But was this food grade HFCS?
Is the FDA on board with pesticide being passed thru at detectable levels in a supposedly simple processed food product?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The same pesticide IS in every food you eat. Not because of HFCS, which doesn't contain that much (except if you're an insect), but because they spray the same pesticide on everything. There is 50-1000 PPB in your fresh greens, 10-40 PPB in your mashed potatoes, 0.0004 in your tap water (averaged over the USA, as high as 0.01 BBP in farm lands, and 0.1 from well water in farm land). When you buy organic, the levels are still only lower, not gone. It persists in the ground for years upon years. But don't worry, they've tested the LD50 so they know how much it takes to kill a person instantly, and presumably anything not instantly fatal is harmless. Sure, it causes birth defects in rats, but rats aren't people.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
According to the article, it took more than a month for the bees to show the CCD effects when they were fed trace amounts.
Also, if the hives are running out of honey in late winter, then the keeper is taking too much honey.
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But was this food grade HFCS?
Is the FDA on board with pesticide being passed thru at detectable levels in a supposedly simple processed food product?
Welp, farmers are definitely the sort of folks that try to make the best use of anything. "Ah hell, well this batch isn't any good for selling, but I guess I could feed it to the bees..."
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Current U.S. sugar tariffs go back to the 1930s and have nothing to do with the Castro regime in Cuba. U.S. sugar tariffs are, as they always have been, about protecting U.S. sugar producers. If you look closely, you will find almost no support for sugar tariffs amongst the rank and file conservatives. What you will find is that sugar tariffs have a minimal negative impact on a large number of people so that it is not an important issue for them. However, they have a large positive impact on a small group that very aggressively campaigns to maintain them. This group is well aware that if this issue were to become well publicized, their position would be wildly unpopular, so they maintain a very low profile only allowing it to become high profile when they are in a position to spin the story to be about "American jobs".
This is an issue that if you want to actually make a difference on, you should avoid trying to make it a left vs right issue because it isn't. There are just as many left wing politicians who have supported the sugar tariffs as there are right wing politicians who have done so.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
It's also worth remembering -- not that it helps anything now -- that honeybees are not native to the US. We only need them because of our extreme use of pesticide-heavy monoculture. Pesticides obviously kill off native pollinators, but monoculture is just as bad -- when everything for dozens of miles around, for the most part, all blooms at once and then there's virtually nothing for the rest of the year, you can't support most types of pollinator populations.
While true and (yes) worth remembering—and even with the caveat that you seem to be getting at that we still depend on them whether they're native or not—there's also the matter of the combined dangers of sidelining those other pollinators, so that we may not be able to rely on them even if we get our shit together in terms of food production; and the danger of other pollinators, also part of a complex ecosystem, being subject to the same kinds of stressors and industrial challenges the honeybees suffer. The honeybees serve also as a figurative canary in the coal mine. The quite obvious upshot is that intensive meddling in the name of efficiency or profit might have a profound impact on our survival.