THE BEE
The bee, a millennium insect which is essential to balance and functionning ecosystems, it conditions the life of flowering plants, their quality and quantity. It is an excellent indicator of our environment health.
80% of plant species in the world need bees to be fertilized and are directly dependent upon pollination by insects, especially bees, and also 84% of cultivated land in Europe.
Without the intervention of bees and pollinators, more than 20 000 plant species are threatened to disappear from the face of the Earth.
The bee is vital to maintaining the environmental balance but the honeybee population is declining worldwilde.
We have observed, in European Countries, Canada and Australia, a bee mortality due to insecticide use in intensive agriculture.
In just few years, some extremely toxic pesticides wiped billion of bees.
Legal proceedings initiated by the beekeepers updated the failings of the approval of so-called "phytosanitary" increasingly dangerous, deadly for the pollinating fauna, harmful to the environment but also for public health.
The toxicity of new generations of insecticides can reduce doses per hectare but their effectiveness is "fatal". The toxicity persists in soils and is found in the following crops.
These insecticides are still used for cereals but have been temporarily suspended in France on crops of sunflower and maize pending decision of the European Community.
However, in the context of nanontechnologies, 12 other molecules with systemic properties are scrambling to attack a lucrative market.
These "systemic" insecticides as Gaucho, Cruiser or Regent (called "new generation") are real bee killers. This responsability in the anormal mortality and in the entire World of bees was widely
blamed by scientists present at the APIMONDIA International Congress held in Montpellier in September 2009.
The insecticides (imidacloprid-based) attack the immune system of bees.
Does the sudden death of the bees may have a case with GMOs?
Beekeepers beleive they are dealing with a specific toxin.
The empty bee colonies are not visited by opportunistic parasites
Scientists believe that the toxin deters approaching the abandonned hives.
Leader of the German Beekeepers Association, Walter Haefcher criminalizes the "Varroa mite", a parasite from Asia, and the use of increasingly popular herbicides
He also cites GM crops as possible causes of the disaster..
University of Jena in Germany in 2001 led a study examining the effect of pollen from corn genetically modified, "Bt Corn" on bees.
This kind of corn has been genetically modified by introducing the gene of a bacterium toxic to combat plant pests.
This study has not updated direct toxic effect but found that if bees were victims of an infection, they showed a much weak resistant than normal parasite.
The bacterium toxic GMO corn could have weakened the intestinal wall of bees, allowing the parasite to cross.
The General Directorate of Food has submitted a draft decree to set at 50 meters (!) the isolation distance between GM maize andnon-GMO!
Bee experts confirm that bees can forage over distances up to more 6 kilometers to collect the pollen necessary for the colony and experiments show that genetic contamination from pollen is impossible to control.
Beekeepers denounce the absence of GMO/GMP risk assessment on the bees and the pollen they use, it alerts the catastrophic ecoomic damage that would induce the presence of GMOs in the honey and pollen in the case of liberalization of GM crops.
Sources : Association Terre d’Abeilles, INPN (Institut National de Protection de la Nature)