Save the bees from corporate greed

Two crucial scientific studies have confirmed that pesticides and insecticides at even low, undetectable levels are linked to the massive collapse of honey bee colonies.

Chemical firm Bayer, which produces the nicotine-based imidacloprid, has always dismissed any connection between the use of its insecticide and the disappearance of bee colonies in the United States and Europe.

But from the University of Maryland, we learn that sub-lethal doses of imidacloprid weaken bees, so that they lose their immunity to a common parasite Nosema.

Though the doses were not high enough to affect longevity or the ability to forage, the increase in the Nosema parasite infestation shows that even undetectable levels of the pesticide affect the immune system of bees.

The researchers conclude that interactions between pesticides and pathogens like Nosema, "could be a major contributor to increased mortality of honey bee colonies, including colony collapse disorder, and other pollinator declines worldwide."

Scientists at the University of Purdue, Indiana, analysed bees found dead in and around hives from several apiaries over two years and discovered the presence of neonicotinoid insecticides in all of them. These products are used to coat corn and soybean seeds before planting.

They were present on nearby dandelion flowers up to two years after treated seed was planted and in corn pollen gathered by bees.

"We know that these insecticides are highly toxic to bees; we found them in each sample of dead and dying bees," said Christian Krupke, associate professor of entomology and a co-author of the findings.

Other bees at the affected hives exhibited tremors, uncoordinated movement and convulsions, all signs of insecticide poisoning.

All corn seed and about half of all soybean seed planted in the US is coated with the sticky insecticide, and to keep the seed flowing freely in the planters, it is mixed with talc.

"Given the rates of corn planting and talc usage, we are blowing large amounts of contaminated talc into the environment," Krupke said. "This material is so concentrated that even small amounts landing on flowering plants around a field can kill foragers or be transported to the hive in contaminated pollen."

Bees that do not die directly as a result of the insecticide suffer other effects, such as loss of homing ability or lowered resistance to disease or mites. In other words, bee colony collapse is due to multiple problems, but it is likely that the loss of resistance to viruses, mites and parasites is itself connected to the use of these deadly chemicals.

(And while we are on the subject - what is the cumulative effect on human beings eating food grown in this way? It can't possibly have no effect. Perhaps we should be told.)

Late last year, Monsanto (inventor of the neonicotinoids and many other deadly agro-industrial weapons) bought up one of the key companies looking at genetic modification of honey bees to survive colony collapse.

Beeologics, based in Florida and Israel, has developed a product called Remembee, an anti-viral agent that works by interfering with the bees' DNA, its genetic make-up.

Kelly Powers, a Monsanto PR person, said at the time, without a trace of irony: "I don't need to tell you how important bees are to farmers who rely on pollination, and Remembee has great promise, pending approvals."

First they create the chemicals that harm the bees - then they manipulate their genes to resist some effects of the poison. And at every point - big fat profits!

If anything requires genetic modification, it’s corporations like Monsanto and Bayer, for the sake of the eco-system as a whole. The consequences of a world without pollinating bees are too shocking to contemplate.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

Earth's early warning system is dying

Scientists working for the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) have identified more than a dozen factors behind the colony collapse affecting bee populations across the world.

Factors ranging from the decline of flowering plants and the use of memory-damaging insecticides to the world-wide spread of pests and air pollution, are contributing to the collapse.

And these factors are being multiplied and spread across the world by the uncontrolled and unconsidered corporate-driven globalisation of agriculture and international trade.

The report warns that “without profound changes to the way human-beings manage the planet, declines in pollinators needed to feed a growing global population are likely to continue”.

The Increasing use of chemicals, including “systemic insecticides” and those used to coat seeds, is damaging or toxic to bees. Unplanned combinations of chemicals can be even more damaging, the so-called “cocktail effect”.

And finally, climate change will aggravate the situation in various ways including by changing the flowering times of plants and shifting rainfall patterns, affecting the quantity and quality of available nectar.

Bees are the planet’s early warning system, and indicators of wider impacts on animal and plant life, including human life. Food production is not possible without bees – and the fate of many other economically and environmentally-important plants and animals is linked to theirs. Of the 100 crop species that provide 90% of the world's food, over 70 are pollinated by bees.

The authors of the report call for farmers and landowners to be offered incentives to restore pollinator-friendly habitats, and for more care to be taken in the choice, timing and application of insecticides and other chemicals..

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP executive director, said: "The way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century.

"Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature. Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less dependent on nature's services in a world of close to seven billion people."

He is absolutely right. The profit monomania of capitalism, which is presented by governments, educators and neo-classical economic “experts” as the natural order of things, is in fact an unnatural disorder. Present social relations alienate us from nature, which is then exploited as a “resource”.

The labour of human beings transforms the natural resources provided by the eco-system into commodities for sale without regard to the consequences, which include climate change, the loss of species as well as the collapse of bee colonies. Reckless expansion in the name of the sacred cow of “growth” during the last 30 years has left the eco-system bereft and in many areas, close to collapse.

And rather than implementing the kinds of useful measures proposed by this report, capitalism is powering ahead with the global land grab and the expansion of industrial forms of agriculture to new areas. They are pushing humanity to many tipping points that can’t be ignored, including the disaster of a world with no pollinators.

This is the contradiction facing humanity – the eco-system, including human beings, can’t continue to exist if the capitalist mode of production continues to exist – and yet the conservative weight of the system’s ideology tell us there’s no alternative.

Resolving this contradiction is a must to enable humanity to make a leap to a different future based on ourselves as part of nature and not its enemy.

Penny Cole
Environment editor