KILLING BEES

This guy has some strange pets. They are also about to be rare, if not extinct, as CCD takes its toll on the hives and the EPA does nothing about it in the US. The task of working out what is wrong is largely left to apiarists and environmentalists, with sometimes little help from the press, which would rather chase stupid celebrities.

A recent study by Eric Mussen, an entomologist at UC Davis, sheds some light on this issue. He looks at GM modification of plant proteins, and draws attention to the fact that modified enzymes occur when man starts playing around with nature, and notes that a toxin produced from Bacillus thuringiensis made bees more susceptible to a parasite. Little things that work their way into the system can have disastrous results, long after Monsanto has made its money.

Mussen's study rebuts the notion that Em radiation from cell phones puts bees off, but I suspect that his observations of this are too limited to use to draw conclusions, and are in direct contradiction to Dr. Mae Wan Ho's recent study in Germany.

The more I gather information on this, the more it seems that a number of factors are responsible, and we need to limit pesticides, GM plants, and cell phone masts if we want to continue our own existence. (see previous posts for more information on bees and CCD).