Bees love Maryam

There was quite a stir among beekeepers and anti-GMO activists last fall when chemical and seed giant Monsanto purchased Beeologics, a small company best known for its “groundbreaking research” applying RNAi technology to honeybees, a process that blocks gene expression. This was Monsanto’s first acquisition of a pest control biotech company.

Since its inception in 2007, Beeologics has been developing Remebee®, an anti-viral treatment for use in honeybees affected with Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV), a bee-specific virus which originated from Australia and was found and named in Israel in 2002.

President and CEO Eyal Ben-Chanoch explained in 2008 that Beeologics was assembling scientists, beekeepers and business people “to create the missing corporate support” in an industry that traditionally has only been supported by a few hardware manufacturers. Sure, there were hives, tools, bee suits and the like being offered, but very little had been invested in technology and medicine for the bees — until Beeologics came along, that is.

To put things in context, many scientists were all abuzz about IAPV at the time. Many firmly believed that it was a primer for Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Remembee®, meanwhile, was regarded as a first line of defense to control the virus and its effect on bee mortality.

The pesticide problem
While CCD is a complex issue, no-doubt, much of the developing research points to another cause: newfangled chemicals called systemic pesticides. Instead of being applied to leaves, they are enrobed on seeds and/or entrenched in the soil, allowing for the poison to literally become part of the plant.

Consequently, honeybees bring the systemic pesticides back to the hive in the form of pollen and nectar and store it in their honeycomb. When future generations dip into their reserves, they ingest toxins that target their central nervous system, affect their navigational capabilities and impair their memory. More importantly, the chemicals compromise their immune system – the number one key to fighting any kind of insult to the body, including a virus like IAPV.

Ben-Chanoch didn’t quite agree with our conclusions back then saying, “While I am also concerned with the world we are going to leave to our children, those who are using so-called facts that are based on pseudo or incomplete scientific work are as dangerous as the chemical companies who don’t release the data they have.”

New research just released this winter has confirmed that sub-lethal exposure to a particular class for these systemic pesticides (neonicotinoids) are directly linked to an increase in Nosema virus in honey bee colonies. Both Nosema and neonicotinoids have been implicated as contributors to CCD, and this latest piece of real, complete science adds another nail to the chemical coffin.

Insect inoculation may be the latest rave, but is it the best solution? Today we know that subsequent research failed to confirm a link between CCD and IAPV. Although IAPV can result in honey bee mortality, the symptoms are not consistent with those of bees dying from CCD.

With that said, why does Monsanto claim that “…the Remebee® product line is now proving to be a viable solution to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)…” on their website?

Perhaps anti-viral remedies are the next generation of products used to combat agricultural pests and pathogens but they don’t deal with the root of our problems such as native bee extinctions and unsustainable agriculture (ie. GMO crops, pesticides and herbicides). In the end we will still have a polluted environment.

Generational genetics
There may other ramifications as a result of these gene expression manipulations as well. “Basically, if the bees eat Remebee®, there are likely to be unknown effects in gene expression, anti-viral abilities, their ability to evolve inherent defenses against viruses, and more,” says Brian Dykstra, the administrator behind Ethnobeeology who holds a BS in Environmental Policy and an MS in progress pollination biology.

Meanwhile, researchers are discovering the chilling potential long-term effects of RNA manipulation. It was once thought changes needed to occur within the DNA to be passed down through the generations. It is now clear that changes to micro-RNA can be inherited without any DNA involvement. Recent research has also provided the first example of ingested plant micro-RNA surviving digestion and influencing human cell function.

Monsanto’s website however claims that, “there is no need for, or value in testing the safety of GM foods in humans.” And Beeologics is confident that the acquisition comes at an ideal time and that they are in safe hands.

Motivation
Which brings us back to Monsanto, arguably the most detested chemical company on the face of the planet.

Why were they drawn to Beeologics? Was it because the competition (Syngenta and Bayer Crop Science) had also expressed interest? Or was it because they had identified some low-hanging fruit to add to their portfolio of proprietary life forms? Perhaps Monsanto, which boasts a revenue of more than $10.5 billion per year, plans on buying anything and everything to do with gene manipulation?

Considering that the honey bee genome has been sequenced, how long before we bear witness to a genetically modified bee? If seeds are any indication, Apis melifera may also soon belong to Monsanto. Kill the bees with GMO plants and pesticides, offer a band-aid solution by creating a bee that is resistant to all the crap peddled on the market and then “persuade” beekeepers to buy Monsanto bees or else. It’s wicked genius.

But I am sure Monsanto and many others would call all of this paranoid phooey. Take one well known scientist and beekeeper’s opinion on the subject: “Honeybees aren’t an organism that anyone who understands anything about their molecular biology would advise as a subject for genetic modification,” he recently told colleagues on the online Bee List. “Do you really think that Monsanto envisions that there would be any substantive return on investment on a patented bee?”

Not 30 years ago we were saying the same thing about patented plants.

Business as usual
According to a Monsanto press release it will be business as usual. Beelogics will continue to “promote bee health” under the new ownership. And Monsanto will simply use “the base technology from Beeologics as a part of its continuing discovery and development pipeline.” Whatever that means.

To further reassure folks, the press release goes to describe Monsanto as “a leading global provider of technology-based solutions and agricultural products that improves farm productivity and food quality.” They even state that they are into sustainability.

My jaw dropped. Apparently Monsanto is experiencing delusions about its identity. In the past two decades, Monsanto’s seed monopoly has grown so powerful that they control the genetics of nearly 90% of five major commodity crops including corn, soybeans, cotton, canola and sugar beets! They make gobs of cash and yet sue farmers both in the U.S. and in struggling international communities.

Between 1997 and 2010, Monsanto admits to filing 144 lawsuits against America’s farmers, while settling another 700 out of court for undisclosed amounts. Due to these aggressive lawsuits, Monsanto has created an atmosphere of fear in rural America and driven dozens of farmers into bankruptcy. As one person recently remarked on the Vanishing of the Bees Facebook page, “it’s a shitty business model to create something that can’t be controlled except by suing the hell out of people.”

In India, thousands of farmers have committed suicide—by drinking insecticide no less—because they were promised harvests and income only to have crops fail and debts surmount thanks to their newly planted GM seeds.

Business as usual, indeed. You be the judge. Is Monsanto really investing in bee health? Or is this another example of man making money off the backs of our bees?

Remembee is currently being reviewed for potential commercial sale by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Another product RemebeePro, is also on its way. For more on RNA interference watch this video:

Maryam Henein has more than fifteen years’ experience working as an investigative journalist, a documentary and television producer and professional researcher. Her credits include producing documentaries for the BBC, Discovery, Robert Greenwald and Morgan Spurlock. She co-directed the acclaimed film Vanishing of the Bees. As a journalist she has written for publications such as The Los Angeles Times, Science & Spirit Magazine, and The Cairo Times. Working in front of the camera, Maryam co-wrote and hosted a program for TLC about the Ark of the Covenant. Following a near death experience several years ago, Maryam delved into the science of nutrition and alternative ways of healing. She also became more conscious about the environment and went on to produce a piece on the Exxon Valdez Oil spill for Robert Greenwald and The Sierra Club. Her curiosity and tenacity energizes her work as a documentarian. Her latest venture is www.HoneyColony.com and you can support her via WePay.

If you’ve never watched bees carefully, you’re missing out. Looking up close as they gently curl and uncoil their tapered mouths toward food, you sense that they’re not just eating, but enjoying. Watch a bit more, and the hesitant flicks and sags of their antennae seem to convey some kind of emotion. Maybe annoyance? Or something like agitation?

Whether bees really experience any of these things is an open scientific question. It’s also an important one with implications for how we should treat not just bees, but the great majority of animals. Recently, studies by Geraldine Wright and her colleagues at Newcastle University in the UK have rekindled debate over these issues by showing that honeybees may experience something akin to moods.

Using simple behavioral tests, Wright’s research team showed that like other lab-tested brooders — which so far include us, monkeys, dogs, and starlings — stressed bees tend to see the glass as half empty. While this doesn’t (and can’t) prove that bees experience human-like emotions, it does give pause. We should take seriously the possibility that it feels like something to be an insect.

As invertebrates — animals without backbones — bees are representatives of a diverse group accounting for over 95 percent of animal species. But despite their prevalence, not to mention their varied and often nuanced behaviors, invertebrates are sometimes regarded as life’s second string, as a mindless and unfeeling band of alien critters. If that seems a bit melodramatic, just consider our willingness to boil some of them alive…

[continues at Scientific American]

This man broke the world record for the heaviest bee suit after being loaded up with 83.5kg of the flying insects. Zhang Wei, from Zizhou County, in western China, wore a special frame covered in foliage to hold the mass of bees.

Wearing a pair of gggles and holding a tube in his mouth for breathing, Mr Wei was seated as around two dozen crates full of bees were released next to him.

The man – who was wearing a jacket and trousers but did not have his hands or face protected – did not seem to mind as thousands of the insects buzzed around him and almost completely engulfed his frame.
Mr Wei achieved the feat just two days after Chinese beekeeper Shen Zonghong broke the previous world record by having 36kg of bees on his body.

They covered everything from joining Ron Paul in the 2012 presidential election to the fall of World Trade Center 7 on 9/11, discussing many topics along the way including Colony Collapse Disorder, fluoride in municipal water supplies, legalization of drugs, and much more.

See their earlier conversations at the Russian Tea Room: Part 1 and Part 2.

GENEVA (AFP) – The UN on Thursday expressed alarm at a huge decline in bee colonies under a multiple onslaught of pests and pollution, urging an international effort to save the pollinators that are vital for food crops.

Much of the decline, ranging up to 85 percent in some areas, is taking place in the industrialised northern hemisphere due to more than a dozen factors, according to a report by the UN’s environmental agency.

They include pesticides, air pollution, a lethal pinhead-sized parasite that only affects bee species in the northern hemisphere, mismanagement of the countryside, the loss of flowering plants and a decline in beekeepers in Europe.

“The way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century,” said UNEP executive director Achim Steiner.
“The fact is that of the 100 crop species that provide 90 percent of the world’s food, over 70 are pollinated by bees,” he added.

Wild bees and especially honey bee colonies from hives are regarded as the most prolific pollinators of large fields or crops.

Overall, pollinators are estimated to contribute 153 billion euros ($212 billion) worldwide or 9.5 percent of the total value of food production, especially fruit and vegetables, according to the report.

Honey bee colony declines in recent years have reached 10 to 30 percent in Europe, 30 percent in the United States,and up to 85 percent in Middle East, said scientist Peter Neumann, one of the authors of the first ever UN report on the issue…

[continues at AFP via Yahoo News]

We call on you to immediately ban the use of neonicotinoid pesticides until and unless new independent scientific studies prove they are safe. The catastrophic demise of bee colonies could put our whole food chain in danger. If you act urgently with precaution now, we could save bees from extinction.

If you are curious as to just why this is so important, here’s Tom Theobald, the whistleblowing beekeeper who “leaked” an EPA memo about the systemic pesticide Clothianidin. EPA scientists do not approve of the use of this toxic poison because of the damage caused to honeybees and other insects and invertebrates. Yet the EPA proposes the sale will simply continue. Here he discusses the EPA and the bigger picture problems that allowed this toxic chemical to be released onto the market – despite concerns of the EPA scientists.

As crime sagas go, a scheme rigged by a sophisticated cartel of global traders has all the right blockbuster elements: clandestine movements of illegal substances through a network of co-operatives in Asia, a German conglomerate, jet-setting executives, doctored laboratory reports, high-profile takedowns and fearful turncoats.

What makes this worldwide drama unusual, other than being regarded as part of the largest food fraud in U.S. history, is the fact that honey, nature’s benign golden sweetener, is the lucrative contraband.

What consumers don’t know is that honey doesn’t usually come straight – or pure – from the hive. Giant steel drums of honey bound for grocery store shelves and the food processors that crank out your cereal are in constant flow through the global market. Most honey comes from China, where beekeepers are notorious for keeping their bees healthy with antibiotics banned in North America because they seep into honey and contaminate it; packers there learn to mask the acrid notes of poor quality product by mixing in sugar or corn-based syrups to fake good taste.

None of this is on the label. Rarely will a jar of honey say “Made in China.” Instead, Chinese honey sold in North America is more likely to be stamped as Indonesian, Malaysian or Taiwanese, due to a growing multimillion dollar laundering system designed to keep the endless supply of cheap and often contaminated Chinese honey moving into the U.S., where tariffs have been implemented to staunch the flow and protect its own struggling industry.

Industry insiders began tracking the questionable cargo years ago when low-priced honey from surprising countries infiltrated the market. But federal law enforcement officials have only begun to home in.

Savvy honey handlers use a network of Asian countries to “wash” Chinese-origin product – with new packaging and false documents – before shipping it to the U.S. for consumption in various forms.

Fifteen people and six companies spanning from Asia to Germany and the U.S. were recently indicted in Chicago and Seattle for their roles in an $80-million gambit still playing out in the courts. That case has been billed as the largest food fraud in U.S. history. But American beekeepers, already suffering from a bee death epidemic that is killing off a third of their colonies a year, say the flow of suspect imports has not let up.

At stake is more than just a sweet industry. Honeybees are responsible for pollinating millions of acres of agricultural crops, including fruits, vegetables, oilseeds and legumes, worth $20-billion annually in the U.S. alone. More than a quarter of the human diet hinges on those crops.

“If we lose our honey industry in the U.S., there’s going to be massive food shortages like we haven’t seen before,” said Richard Adee, a South Dakota beekeeper who owns 80,000 honeybee colonies, the largest operation in the U.S.

The world honey bee population has plunged in recent years, worrying beekeepers and farmers who know how critical bee pollination is for many crops. A number of theories have popped up as to why the North American honey bee population has declined–electromagnetic radiation, malnutrition, and climate change have all been pinpointed. Now a leaked EPA document reveals that the agency allowed the widespread use of a bee-toxic pesticide, despite warnings from EPA scientists.

The document, which was leaked to a Colorado beekeeper, shows that the EPA has ignored warnings about the use of clothianidin, a pesticide produced by Bayer that mainly is used to pre-treat corn seeds. The pesticide scooped up $262 million in sales in 2009 by farmers, who also use the substance on canola, soy, sugar beets, sunflowers, and wheat, according to Grist.

The leaked document (PDF) was put out in response to Bayer’s request to approve use of the pesticide on
cotton and mustard. The document invalidates a prior Bayer study that justified the registration of clothianidin on the basis of its safety to honeybees:

Clothianidin’s major risk concern is to nontarget insects (that is, honey bees). Clothianidin is a neonicotinoid insecticide that is both persistent and systemic. Acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis. Although EFED does not conduct RQ based risk assessments on non-target insects, information from standard tests and field studies, as well as incident reports involving other neonicotinoids insecticides (e.g., imidacloprid) suggest the potential for long-term toxic risk to honey bees and other beneficial insects.

The entire 101-page memo is damning (and worth a read). But the opinion of EPA scientists apparently isn’t enough for the agency, which is allowing clothianidin to keep its registration…

[continues at Fast Company]

The Dell's Maraschino Cherries building in Red Hook

Well what do expect from bunch of Brooklyn Bees, living in the borough of Junior’s Cheesecake, Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs and other not so healthy culinary delights? The New York Times relates the tale of the bright red bees:

Cerise Mayo expected better of her bees. She had raised them right, given them all the best opportunities — acres of urban farmland strewn with fruits and vegetables, a bounty of natural nectar and pollen. Blinded by devotion, she assumed they shared her values: a fidelity to the land, to food sources free of high-fructose corn syrup and artificial food coloring.

And then this. Her bees, the ones she had been raising in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and on Governors Island since May, started coming home to their hives looking suspicious. Of course, it was the foragers — the adventurers, the wild waggle dancers, the social networkers incessantly buzzing about their business — who were showing up with mysterious stripes of color. Where there should have been a touch of gentle amber showing through the membrane of their honey stomachs was instead a garish bright red. The honeycombs, too, were an alarming shade of Robitussin.

“I thought maybe it was coming from some kind of weird tree, maybe a sumac,” said Ms. Mayo, who tends seven hives for Added Value, an education nonprofit in Red Hook. “We were at a loss.”

An acquaintance, only joking, suggested the unthinkable: Maybe the bees were hitting the juice — maraschino cherry juice, that sweet, sticky stuff sloshing around vats at Dell’s Maraschino Cherries Company over on Dikeman Street in Red Hook.

“I didn’t want to believe it,” said Ms. Mayo, a soft-spoken young woman who has long been active in the slow-food movement. She found it particularly hard to believe that the bees would travel all the way from Governors Island to gorge themselves on junk food. “Why would they go to the cherry factory,” she said, “when there’s a lot for them to forage right there on the farm?”…

[continues in the New York Times]

It has been one of the great murder mysteries of the garden: what is killing off the honeybees?

Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.

Now, a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two.

A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana in the online science journal PLoS One.

Exactly how that combination kills bees remains uncertain, the scientists said — a subject for the next round of research. But there are solid clues: both the virus and the fungus proliferate in cool, damp weather, and both do their dirty work in the bee gut, suggesting that insect nutrition is somehow compromised.

Liaisons between the military and academia are nothing new, of course. World War II, perhaps the most profound example, ended in an atomic strike on Japan in 1945 largely on the shoulders of scientist-soldiers in the Manhattan Project. And a group of scientists led by Jerry Bromenshenk of the University of Montana in Missoula has researched bee-related applications for the military in the past — developing, for example, a way to use honeybees in detecting land mines.

But researchers on both sides say that colony collapse may be the first time that the defense machinery of the post-Sept. 11 Homeland Security Department and academia have teamed up to address a problem that both sides say they might never have solved on their own…

It is rare for any species of animal to regularly kill its own in combat. However, male Dawson’s bees, one of the world’s largest bee species, are so aggressive that they kill each other en masse in a bid to mate with females.

The bees enter a frenzy of fighting, and by the time their deadly combat is over, every male bee is either killed or has perished. The extreme behaviour, which can lead to even females being killed, is caught on film by a BBC natural history crew.

Video on BBC Earth News

If you know anything about the food supply, you know that honey bees are a crucial part of the food production chain. In the United States, they pollinate roughly one-third of all the crops we eat, and without them, we’d be facing a disastrous collapse in viable food production.

That’s why, when honey bees started to disappear a few years ago, scientists scrambled to find the root cause of the phenomenon, which has since been dubbed “Colony Collapse Disorder.”

The name is a bit of a misnomer, though. It’s not really a “disorder.” It’s more of a poisoning. Or at least that’s what we may be learning from new research that’s just been published in the ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

It’s been difficult, of course, trying to determine the cause of colony collapse disorder. Some of the suggested theories for explaining the phenomenon included chemical contamination from pesticides, genetic contamination from genetically modified crops, changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, climate change and air pollution. In an attempt to nail down some scientific answers, researchers from the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Tucson, Arizona joined with other researchers in New Orleans and the University of Wisconsin to check out another possible culprit: High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

HFCS, as you may already know, is a processed, liquid sweetener used in disturbingly large amounts throughout the global food supply. You can find it in not just sodas, but pizza sauce, salad dressings and even whole wheat bread. It’s in breakfast cereals, food bars, peanut butter, ketchup and a thousand other products.

There are two reasons why you find HFCS in so many food products: 1) It’s sweet. 2) It’s cheap.

It is for these same two reasons that high-fructose corn syrup is fed to honey bees. It provides them the sugar calories to stay active without resulting in a huge cost for the beekeeper. That’s why HFCS has been used for decades as a food source for honey bees.

But this very food source may, in fact, be poisoning the bees.

HFCS forms hydroxymethylfurfural

What these USDA researchers discovered is that when HFCS is heated, it forms hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), a chemical that can kill honey bees. The production of HMF during cooking rose in parallel to the temperatures to which HFCS was exposed.

To put it plainly, when you cook HFCS, it becomes contaminated with HMF. And according to the research, levels of HMF “jumped dramatically” when temperatures rose above 120 degrees Fahrenheit (which isn’t very hot, by the way)….

A plunge in beehive population has been reported from different parts of Kerala and if measures are not taken to check mushrooming of mobile towers, bees could be wiped out from Kerala within a decade, environmentalist and Reader in Zoology, Dr Sainudeen Pattazhy says in his study.

GO TO FULL STORY

To learn more about the biochemistry of addiction, scientists in Australia dropped liquefied freebase cocaine on bees’ backs, so it entered the circulatory system and brain.

The scientists found that bees react much like humans do: cocaine alters their judgment, stimulates their behavior and makes them exaggeratedly enthusiastic about things that might not otherwise excite them.

What’s more, bees exhibit withdrawal symptoms. When a coked-up bee has to stop cold turkey, its score on a standard test of bee performance (learning to associate an odor with sugary syrup) plummets.

“What we have in the bee is a wonderfully simple system to see how brains react to a drug of abuse,” said Andrew B. Barron, a senior lecturer at Macquarie University in Australia and a co-leader in the bees-on-cocaine studies. “It may be that when we know that, we’ll be able to stop a brain reacting to a drug of abuse, and then we may be able to discover new ways to prevent abuse in humans.”

GO TO FULL STORY

GO TO FULL STORY