Albert Einstein once said : “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”
Apocalyptic for sure. We haven’t reached that point yet, but some worrisome indicators suggest dramatic drops in the bee population of the US are likely to impact crop production. This is not a small agricultural sector that is being impacted either. In the US bees pollinate more than $14 billion worth of seeds and crops each year.
The disappearing bee phenomena isn’t restricted to the US. In Europe countries are experiencing varying degrees of what investigators describe as “colony collapse disorder” (or CCD). Countries effected include Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. However the most serious losses have occurred in the US. On the West Coast keepers have seen bee population losses in the 30 to 60 percent range. On the East Coast and Texas it gets as high as 70%. These are catastrophic drops for an industry that considers around a 20% population decline to be an off-season norm.
There are a number of different theories about why this is happening. After looking at a cross-section of scientific opinion I tend toward the view that the decline in the bee population is being triggered by a variety of factors, rather than a single overriding cause.
There is evidence that the immune system of bees has been adversely effected by modern agricultural practices. These range from use of insecticides to the controlled raising of bees in order to have an army of pollinators ready to service crops on schedule. Some researchers take the view that genetically modified crops are a contributing factor in bee population decline. Stress figures into it too, given that increased pressure is being placed on colonies as their habitat is squeezed each year due to urban development. Parasites are also an issue. The varroa mite introduced from Asia has proved to be problematic.
The decline in the health of the colonies can be demonstrated by research data. You know the problem has reached crisis levels when a guy like Dennis van Englesdorp with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture uses an Aids analogy in an attempt to underscore the seriousness of the threat to bee populations.
Researchers have discovered multiple infections co-existing in some colonies, many of which were also infected with fungi, an indicator that the bees’ immune systems were seriously compromised. This compromised immune function may be related to genetically modified crops and scientists are currently working to try to determine any possible links. When you look at the stats though, on the surface there does seem to be a generalized cause and effect pattern. In the US, which has experienced the most severe bee losses, 40% of the corn is now a GM insect-resistant strain. By contrast in Germany we are only talking about 0.06%, mostly grown in the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg regions.
A number of earlier studies investigated whether or not GM crops were having a negative impact on bees. One such study took place at the University of Jenna from 2001 to 2004. The researchers used a GM maize variant named “BT corn” that includes a gene from a soil bacterium in order to make it insect-proof. At first the study seemed entirely positive. No discernible negative effects were detected in the bees from the BT corn. Then researchers discovered that when the bees were attacked by a parasite, the portion of the colony exposed to the BT corn had a much lower ability to fight off infection and showed much more rapid levels of decline.
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