I had a chance to watch
Vanishing of the Bees over the weekend, and I loved it. I have read and seen quite a bit on Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), but this film does a great job of putting it all together, and is the best I have seen on the subject as of yet. I am planning on showing it to my environmental science class next term.
The film goes into some details on what CCD is and how it has affected our agricultural system. Then the film dives into possible reasons behind this mysterious disorder.. and why most of them are likely not valid. The reason that the movie suggest to be the likely culprit is pesticides. But not the spray-on pesticides that have been used for generations. Instead, the problem is likely the new systemic pesticides which work from inside the plant.
These pesticides are not killing the bees on contact. And, in fact, that is what is so mysterious about this disorder. Very few dead bees are actually discovered. So, it's not like the fields were sprayed with pesticides which instantly killed many bees. That would be obvious. Instead, these bees are visiting plants with sub-lethal doses of systemic pesticides in them and bringing pollen (with systemic pesticides in it) back to the hive to feed the brood. The results are not immediate, but instead start to appear about 6 months later (during the winter), when the hive is relying on this stored pollen as its food source.
So it is not the pesticides that kill the bees directly. Instead, it is thought that these chemicals weaken their immune system and make them more susceptible to viruses, limited genetic variation or other problems that have been labeled as potential causes of CCD. The overall collapse of a hive may take several generations, which is why it is so difficult to show a precise link between these pesticides and bee deaths.
France had their own version of CCD happen there about 10 years ago, and after eventually figuring that it was linked to systemic pesticides, they were banned throughout the country and are now banned throughout many parts of Europe. Yet we are still using them in the US. With a vengeance.
The US follows an "innocent until proven guilty" method, where chemicals are usually approved for use unless it can be shown that they are dangerous. The problem with this is that the way this is regulated is that the EPA requires chemical companies to do their own tests to determine chemical safety. Hmmm, sounds fishy, right? So, if the pesticide company says it is safe, then it must be? Bayer, one of the makers of systemic pesticides, did test these chemicals on bees. But, they gave them high doses and watched them for 3 days. When they found no bee deaths, they deemed the pesticides to be safe. We now know that CCD happens over a longer period of time, and that it affects multiple generations (not just the bees who ingest the affected pollen). But Bayer says that they don't need to test that because no one is requiring them to. It's a crazy world that we live in.
To me, the most depressing aspect of all of this is that if bees that come into contact with systemic pesticides are seeing their entire civilizations die off within a generation or two, what is going to happen to the humans who are ingesting food with systemic pesticides? Are our children never going to be able to have children because of the affects of these chemicals? I think that we should take this as a warning. If the bees are suffering tremendous consequences from these systemic pesticides, don't you think we will as well? It may take a generation or two, which for humans is many many years, but if we wait that long to fix the problem, it will likely be too late. Let's save the bees and save ourselves.
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