Why would one of the largest purveyors of pesticides, genetically engineered seeds and agrochemicals want to buy a company which has been seeking solutions to the escalating threats to the world bee population? Monsanto spokeswomen Kelly Powers says it is to give the fledgling company a helping hand. Beeologics has developed a product called Remembee, an anti-viral agent which its boosters claim will help stem the tide of Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious plague which has led to the disappearance of the bees in up to a third of the commercial colonies located in the U.S. during the last decade. The root of the problem, however, may not be the virus targeted by Remembee, a chemical agent which utilizes RNA interference, a mechanism that blocks gene expression, but the herbicides and insecticides that agro-chemical giants like Monsanto, Dow and Bayer have themselves been hawking to farmers around the world. This is the conclusion of three recent studies which implicate a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, or “neonics” for short, which coat a massive 142 million acres of corn, wheat, soy and cotton seeds in the U.S. alone. They are also a common ingredient in a wide variety of home gardening products. As I detail in an article which was published by Reuters last month, neonics are absorbed by the plants’ vascular system and contaminate the pollen and nectar that bees encounter on their rounds. Neonics are a nerve poison that disorient their insect victims and appear to damage the homing ability of bees, which may help to account for their mysterious failure to make it back to the hive. This was the conclusion of research which came out in the prestigious Journal Science during March…
Posted on: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 01:22:06 +0000
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