http://qz.com/107970/scientists-discover-whats-killing-the-bees-and-its-worse-than-you-thought/
This is explaining basically, what is killing off our pollinators.
One more case for Organic food supply instead of a Pesticide/Fungicide
based food supply. Before we depleted the soils, the petro chemicals
weren't as necessary as proven again by Organic farming methods.
Scott
BEE APOCALYPSE NOW
Scientists discover whats killing the bees and its worse than you thought
By Todd Woody @greenwombat July 24, 2013
Outlawing a type of insecticides is not a panacea. AP Photo/Ben Margot
As weve written before, the mysterious mass die-off of honey bees that
pollinate $30 billion worth of crops in the US has so decimated Americas
apis mellifera population that one bad winter could leave fields fallow.
Now, a new study has pinpointed some of the probable causes of bee deaths
and the rather scary results show that averting beemageddon will be much
more difficult than previously thought.
Scientists had struggled to find the trigger for so-called Colony Collapse
Disorder (CCD) that has wiped out an estimated 10 million beehives, worth
$2 billion, over the past six years. Suspects have included pesticides,
disease-bearing parasites and poor nutrition. But in a first-of-its-kind
study published today in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists at the
University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have
identified a witchs brew of pesticides and fungicides contaminating
pollen that bees collect to feed their hives. The findings break new
ground on why large numbers of bees are dying though they do not identify
the specific cause of CCD, where an entire beehive dies at once.
When researchers collected pollen from hives on the east coast pollinating
cranberry, watermelon and other crops and fed it to healthy bees, those
bees showed a significant decline in their ability to resist infection by
a parasite called Nosema ceranae. The parasite has been implicated in
Colony Collapse Disorder though scientists took pains to point out that
their findings do not directly link the pesticides to CCD. The pollen was
contaminated on average with nine different pesticides and fungicides
though scientists discovered 21 agricultural chemicals in one sample.
Scientists identified eight ag chemicals associated with increased risk of
infection by the parasite.
Most disturbing, bees that ate pollen contaminated with fungicides were
three times as likely to be infected by the parasite. Widely used,
fungicides had been thought to be harmless for bees as theyre designed to
kill fungus, not insects, on crops like apples.
Theres growing evidence that fungicides may be affecting the bees on
their own and I think what it highlights is a need to reassess how we
label these agricultural chemicals, Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the studys
lead author, told Quartz.
Labels on pesticides warn farmers not to spray when pollinating bees are
in the vicinity but such precautions have not applied to fungicides.
Bee populations are so low in the US that it now takes 60% of the
countrys surviving colonies just to pollinate one California crop,
almonds. And thats not just a west coast problemCalifornia supplies 80%
of the worlds almonds, a market worth $4 billion.
In recent years, a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids has been
linked to bee deaths and in April regulators banned the use of the
pesticide for two years in Europe where bee populations have also
plummeted. But vanEngelsdorp, an assistant research scientist at the
University of Maryland, says the new study shows that the interaction of
multiple pesticides is affecting bee health.
The pesticide issue in itself is much more complex than we have led to be
believe, he says. Its a lot more complicated than just one product,
which means of course the solution does not lie in just banning one class
of product.
The study found another complication in efforts to save the bees: US honey
bees, which are descendants of European bees, do not bring home pollen
from native North American crops but collect bee chow from nearby weeds
and wildflowers. That pollen, however, was also contaminated with
pesticides even though those plants were not the target of spraying.
Its not clear whether the pesticides are drifting over to those plants
but we need take a new look at agricultural spraying practices, says
vanEngelsdorp.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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