New Film Blames Bayer Pesticide for Plight of Honey Bees

September 30th, 2009

Via: Independent:

It’s a question that has baffled the worlds of agriculture and science – what is it that has caused the mysterious deaths of honey bees all over the world in the last five years? A new film may have the answer.

Vanishing of the Bees, which will be released in Britain next month, claims the cause is the use of a new generation of pesticides that weakens the bees and makes them more susceptible to other diseases.

Narrated by the British actress Emilia Fox, the 90-minute film tells the story of what has become known as colony collapse disorder.

The problem first appeared in America in the winter of 2004, when many beekeepers across the country found that their bees had suddenly vanished, leaving behind empty hives. Since then scientists have failed to find a single cause for it.

The film goes on to suggest that neonicotinoid pesticides, some of them made by Bayer, one of the world’s biggest chemical companies, may be behind the disappearances.

The pesticides include the widely-used imidacloprid (marketed under the trade name Gaucho), which has been banned in France following pressure from beekeepers. It is still in use in Britain, the US and elsewhere.

Research Credit: IL

2 Responses to “New Film Blames Bayer Pesticide for Plight of Honey Bees”

  1. tochigi says:

    in related news…
    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10598772

    An orchid grower driven to desperation after losing his entire crop and income to a new spray dumped thousands of his flowers in a public protest at the devastation the insecticide has caused.

    Tauranga grower Paul Hulshof poured a truckload of affected cymbidium orchids on the doorstep of Bayer Crop Science’s Glenfield headquarters yesterday.

    Mr Hulshof said the insecticide Oberon, distributed in New Zealand by Horticentre, had totally destroyed his crop and severely affected at least 30 other orchid growers.

    Twenty-one months since he applied the insecticide he was still seeing deformities in his plants.

    He said he was appealing to the company to compensate him so he could return to his livelihood.

    “I have become desperate. All I want to do is hide in a greenhouse and produce some beautiful flowers.”

    Oberon, manufactured by German crop science and pharmaceutical conglomerate Bayer AG, was withdrawn from the market by its New Zealand subsidiary in May last year.

    It went on sale again the next month, but as a treatment for tomatoes and capsicums, not for ornamental flowers.

    Mr Hulshof was also concerned that the insecticide interfered with the reproductive system of insects, and was being used in crops grown for human consumption.

  2. Eileen says:

    The humble bee,
    that works all day long to give life
    to thee and me.

    I grow the flower Nicotania (or first planted it years ago and it reseeds itself) as a natural attractant for flea beetles. The flowers are sticky, and bugs stick to the leaves and die because they cannot get off the leaves. Flea beetles loved my eggplant and potatoes for many years. The flea beetles are pretty much absent from my garden (well they weren’t there this year) cause I’m better at removing the piles of weeds. In any case, the nicotania plant very closely resembles the leaves and flowers of a tobacco plant ( I’ve grown those as well).
    My neighbor about a hundred feet a way – also has a garden, but she does not use pesticides. I don’t know of any other garden for miles around.
    We have honeybees that live in the hollows (now two nests) of a hickory tree. These bees are THRIVING. God/dess has blessed us.
    I looked at neonicotinoid re google:
    Of the neonicotinoids, imidacloprid is the most toxic to birds and fish. Both imidacloprid and thiamethoxam are highly toxic to honeybees.
    http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/PI117
    I bought an Edgar Cayce treatment for Mom’s hemmorhoids that contained nicotine! We didn’t use it because it says on the label not to use on persons with high blood pressure. But I think that the nicotine is in the product because it most likely causes capillaries in tissue to shrink and constrict. Imagine what a chemical form of nicotine would do to a fragile honeybee!
    @tochigi – I think that the orchids would die because they live by absorption (we have about 10 orchids that are in continual bloom) – and I imagine it could be good air and water or vice versa that would cause them to thrive or not. Orchids live in the wild in the U.S. in Florida, living on trees and don’t need soil to live. Orchids are “suckers” just like the bees, or for that matter hummingbirds.
    Does Oberon contain neonicotinoid ?

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