REQUIEM FOR THE HONEYBEE

Professor Joe Cummins is Emeritus Professor of Genetics at the University of Ontario. He produced a detailed scientific paper in April 2007 last year which gives an overview of all the research from France, Italy and the USA regarding the impact of Neo-Nicotinoid pesticides on honeybees. The paper contains full scientific references with detailed sources.

“Certainly, honeybees are declining both in areas where GM crops are widely grown, and in other areas where GM crops are released in small test plots.

Is there a common thread that links both areas? Yes there is: the universal use of systemic pesticide seed dressing in GM crops and conventional crops; in particular, the widespread application of a relatively new class of systemic insecticides – the neo-nicotinoids -“

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REQUIEM FOR THE HONEYBEE – CLICK TO VIEW DOCUMENT

Last Flight of the Honeybee

Oilseed rape is treated with Imidacloprid and other Neo-Nicotinoid Pesticides

Alison Benjamin is a Guardian journalist who has written extensively on the issue of Colony Collapse Disorder in the USA and the recent mass poisoning of colonies in the German Rhineland. On 31st May she published a major article which was the fruit of her visit to California’s Central Valley where she interviewed Dave Hackenberg – the bee-farmer who first told the world about CCD when he lost 400 hives in Florida.

Hackenberg has been intimately involved in the struggle to find out what is causing CCD and has given dozens of interviews to journalists and researchers over the last year. Interestingly – he has now concluded for himself that “Neonicotinoid Pesticides are at the root of CCD.”

Visit the Guardian article at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/31/animalwelfare.environment

“Hackenberg, 59, wears cowboy boots, a checked shirt and blue jeans. He even has a hard hat in the shape of a Stetson, with netting attached that he wears when unloading beehives. He began his own investigations into what killed 2,000 of his honeybees at the end of 2006, by talking to growers and reading up on pesticide use and research into their effects on bees. “It’s those new neonicotinoid pesticides that growers are using,” he says. “That’s what’s messing up the bees’ navigation system so they can’t find their way home. . . . Tests have shown that the pesticides Hackenberg refers to can interfere with the bees’ communication and orientation skills, and also impair memory“

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last-flight-of-the-honeybee