# Scientists discover whatâs killing the bees and itâs worse than



## cornbread (Jul 4, 2005)

*Scientists discover whatâs killing the bees and itâs worse than you thought*
By Todd Woody @greenwombat July 24, 2013 
http://qz.com/107970/scientists-discover-whats-killing-the-bees-and-its-worse-than-you-thought/

As weâve written before, the mysterious mass die-off of honey bees that pollinate $30 billion worth of crops in the US has so decimated Americaâs _apis mellifera_ population that one bad winter could leave fields fallow. Now, a new study has pinpointed some of the probable causes of bee deaths and the rather scary results show that averting beemageddon will be much more difficult than previously thought.

Scientists had struggled to find the trigger for so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that has wiped out an estimated 10 million beehives, worth $2 billion, over the past six years. Suspects have included pesticides, disease-bearing parasites and poor nutrition. But in a first-of-its-kind study published today in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have identified a witchâs brew of pesticides and fungicides contaminating pollen that bees collect to feed their hives. The findings break new ground on why large numbers of bees are dying though they do not identify the specific cause of CCD, where an entire beehive dies at once.
When researchers collected pollen from hives on the east coast pollinating cranberry, watermelon and other crops and fed it to healthy bees, those bees showed a significant decline in their ability to resist infection by a parasite called _Nosema ceranae_. The parasite has been implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder though scientists took pains to point out that their findings do not directly link the pesticides to CCD. The pollen was contaminated on average with nine different pesticides and fungicides though scientists discovered 21 agricultural chemicals in one sample. Scientists identified eight ag chemicals associated with increased risk of infection by the parasite.
Most disturbing, bees that ate pollen contaminated with fungicides were three times as likely to be infected by the parasite. Widely used, fungicides had been thought to be harmless for bees as theyâre designed to kill fungus, not insects, on crops like apples.
âThereâs growing evidence that fungicides may be affecting the bees on their own and I think what it highlights is a need to reassess how we label these agricultural chemicals,â Dennis vanEngelsdorp, the studyâs lead author, told Quartz.
Labels on pesticides warn farmers not to spray when pollinating bees are in the vicinity but such precautions have not applied to fungicides.
Bee populations are so low in the US that it now takes 60% of the countryâs surviving colonies just to pollinate one California crop, almonds. And thatâs not just a west coast problemâCalifornia supplies 80% of the worldâs almonds, a market worth $4 billion.
In recent years, a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids has been linked to bee deaths and in April regulators banned the use of the pesticide for two years in Europe where bee populations have also plummeted. But vanEngelsdorp, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland, says the new study shows that the interaction of multiple pesticides is affecting bee health.
âThe pesticide issue in itself is much more complex than we have led to be believe,â he says. âItâs a lot more complicated than just one product, which means of course the solution does not lie in just banning one class of product.â
The study found another complication in efforts to save the bees: US honey bees, which are descendants of European bees, do not bring home pollen from native North American crops but collect bee chow from nearby weeds and wildflowers. That pollen, however, was also contaminated with pesticides even though those plants were not the target of spraying.
âItâs not clear whether the pesticides are drifting over to those plants but we need take a new look at agricultural spraying practices,â says vanEngelsdorp.


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## Darren (May 10, 2002)

Interesting! We know each person is like an individual universe populated by a tremendous amount of bacteria. What about fungi? Fungi are involved in essential symbiotic procesess in the plant kingdom. What about the animal kingdom?


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## PrincessFerf (Apr 25, 2008)

Thanks for sharing the article.


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## 1shotwade (Jul 9, 2013)

where i found this video,maybe utube, but any i watched it a few months ago.Acording to the clip france no longer has ccd as a result of the country banning products sold under the name goucho and poncho. .basicly what i understood was that these products are used to treat seed before planting.It's some type insect control and they found out that it resides in future seed from the plant that grew from the treated seed.They say it will last about 6 generations in the seed from original. The connection to the bees is that the pollen carried in to feed the young is the contaminate source.The waY I UNDERSTOOD THE VIDEO WAS THAT THEY NO LONGER HAVE THE PROBLEM.


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## 1shotwade (Jul 9, 2013)

i think the clip is saw was on amazon or aybe netflix so if any of you want to check it out and correct anything i didn't get right i'm sure people on here wouldn't mind. I happen to be out of town w/no access for a while.


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## Andrei (Jul 9, 2013)

Monsanto and Bayer and Industrial agriculture are killing the bees.
But industrial beekeeping is just as responsible in population decline.
We have lost 60% of beekeepers in the last 40 yrs and at the same time we have beekeepers with 20000 hives maintained artificially and with reduced genetic abilities.


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