Looking for the Honey Bees

My recent research in the wonderful world of pollen has taken me down a path I didn’t expect to go down. It was one of those moments where one thinks, “If it were a snake it would have bitten me.”

I do a lot of classes, presentations at conferences and talks at various agricultural group meetings. Though people hear it on the news and read about it from time to time and have concerns, it is a big topic in the agriculture community. Why are the honey bees disappearing?

At first it was called Disappearing Bee Disease and it was an event that happened from time to time. Suddenly all the bees would evacuate their hive and not return. I spoke with Dr James Tew about it a few years ago at a conference and at that time he changed his view from calling it a disease to calling it a malady.

Two years later there seemed to be a mass exodus of honey bees from an apiary in Pennsylvania which went way beyond the malady that Dr. Tew described in his article. Though it was still being called Disappearing Bee Disease at that time, it soon became known as Colony Collapse Disorder and it was being discovered in other states. It was on the move.

In previous years, there always seemed to be something that endangered the honey bees; tracheal mites, intestinal bacteria, brood disease and the worst were the varroa mites. Later it was found that the varroa mite was the vector a whole string of viral pathogens, further decimating honey bee colonies.

Early research in Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) showed that honey bees were now hosts to viral agents that had never been seen in honey bees before. Their best guess was that CCD was caused by a compromised immune system (like an acquired immune deficiency syndrome, AIDS) possibly brought on by the bees having come into contact with too many herbicides and pesticides. The bee industry was loading their colonies with all sorts of chemicals for several years trying to control the varroa mite. The mites became resistant to one chemical and than the beekeepers switched to a different lethal miteacide agent. Chemicals like fluvalenate and Cumaphos.

Killing mites on a honey bee is difficult. It is like trying to kill a monkey on your back without killing yourself in the process. Arachnid mites are not all that dissimilar to honeybees.

All the research at that point seemed to point to chemicals as the key to CCD, but then someone started dissecting the bees and they found that were starting to get darker inside and that their digestive tracts were a total mess.

As with the human diet, if something is wrong with the food you eat your health will soon tell the tale. Diets are responsible for all sorts of human conditions, diabetes, malnutrition and cancer to name a few.

Honey bees consume three things; water, nectar that they turn into honey, which is their source of carbohydrates and pollen which is their source of protein. Researchers are putting two and two together and are starting to think that the bee food may be responsible. But what possibly has changed in their food supply. Could it be that pollen from GMO crops with terminator gene technology is killing out honey bees?

It seems that there is no longer any corn in North America that hasn’t cross pollinated with a GMO variety. Consider what is going on with the other crops where Farmer A is not using any GMO crops and Farmer B across the road is using it. Honey bees will fly over two and a half miles while collecting pollen and nectar. That leaves a lot of room for GMO pollen to get mixed with non GMO pollen. This action also waters down the purity of the non GMO seed and may further alter the genetic make-up of the GMO seed.

In the mean time the unsuspecting honey bee is chowing down on this Franken-food, with altered nutrition values. The honey bees are circling the drain and Monsanto has the Department of Agriculture in its back pocket.

Monsanto GMO products need to be pulled and agriculture needs to be purged of this threat to nature once and for all, though with cross pollination so prevalent already it may be one genie that we can’t get back into the bottle. The only salvation may be not planting anything for a year and then using a seed bank after we are sure no one grew anything in their back yards,