Saw the feature on BBC Breakfast this morning. It's certainly a bit scary. You take things like bees for granted.
I'm sure there'll be an answer to it soon. If not from artificial means, then evolution will come up with something. They've survived this far, maybe there's a hive somewhere with a superbee waiting to take it on. 
Rob
This has been a problem for some time now. I read about it in some article at least a year ago. I'll try to find it again and post it.
So here it is:
PROOF Bees ARE Dying From GM?
'We are playing about with genetic structures that existed for millions of years, and the experiment is running out of control.'
Research by a leading German zoologist has shown that genes used to genetically modify crops can jump the species barrier, newspapers reported on Sunday. A 3-year study by Professor Hans-Heinrich Kaatz at the University of Jena found that the gene used to modify oil-seed rape had transferred to bacteria living inside honey bees. The findings undermine claims by the biotech industry that genes cannot spread.
They will also increase pressure on farmers across Europe to destroy fields of oil-seed rape contaminated with GM seeds. In an interview for The Observer newspaper, Kaatz said: "I have found the herbicide-resistant genes in the rapeseed transferred across to the bacteria and yeast inside the intestines of young bees. This happened rarely, but it did happen."
The Observer said Kaatz was reluctant to talk about his work until it is officially published and reviewed by fellow scientists. The reports come a day after Britain's Agriculture Minister Nick Brown urged farmers to destroy crops contaminated with genetically modified seeds. Up to 600 farmers in Britain are believed to have inadvertently planted more than 30,000 acres of oilseed rape contaminated with GM rape seeds, supplied by Anglo-Dutch seed company Advanta. Similar crops have been planted elsewhere in Europe, including in France, Germany and Sweden. The French and Swedish governments have already announced they are ordering the uprooting of the crops.
The research is highly significant because it suggests that all types of bacteria could become contaminated by genes used in genetically modified technology, including those that live inside the human digestive system. If this happened, it could have an impact on the bacteria's vital role in helping the human body fight disease, aid digestion and facilitate blood clotting.
Agriculture Minister Nick Brown confirmed the potential significance of Kaatz's research. He said: 'If this is true, then it would be very serious.'
The 47-year-old Kaatz's reluctance to talk about his research until it has been published in a scientific journal is because he fears a backlash from the scientific community similar to that faced by Dr Arpad Pustzai, who claimed that genetically modified potatoes damaged the stomach lining of rats and was sacked and discredited.
Dr Mae-Wan Ho, geneticist at Open University and a critic of GM technology, has no doubts about the dangers. She said: 'These findings are very worrying and provide the first real evidence of what many have feared. Everybody is keen to exploit GM technology, but nobody is looking at the risk of horizontal gene transfer.
'We are playing about with genetic structures that existed for millions of years and the experiment is running out of control.' One of the biggest concerns is if the anti-biotic resistant gene used in some GM crops crossed over to bacteria. 'If this happened it would leave us unable to treat major illnesses like meningitis and E coli .'
Kaatz, who works at the respected Institute for Bee Research at the University of Jena in Germany, built nets in a field planted with genetically modified rapeseed produced by AgrEvo. He let the bees fly freely within the net. At the beehives, he installed pollen traps in order to sample the pollen from the bees' hind legs when entering the hive. This pollen was fed to young honey bees in the laboratory. Pollen is the natural diet of young bees, which need a high protein diet. Kaatz then extracted the intestine of the young bees and discovered that the gene from the GM rape-seed had been transferred in the bee gut to the microbes.
http://rense.com/general76/gent.htmAn Organic View On Colony Collapse Disorder
I'm on an organic beekeeping list of about 1,000 people, mostly Americans, and no one in the organic beekeeping world, including commercial beekeepers, is reporting colony collapse disorder (CCD).
The problem with the big commercial guys is that they put pesticides in their hives to fumigate for varroa mites, and they feed antibiotics to the bees. They also haul the hives by truck all over the place to make more money with pollination services, which stresses the colonies.
And yet, though most of us beekeepers are fighting with the Varroa mites, I'm happy to say that I don't have any such problems. WHY?
It's mostly because I've gone to natural sized cells. In case you weren't aware, and I wasn't for a long time, the foundation in common usage results in much larger bees than what you would find in a natural hive. I've measured sections of natural worker brood combs that are 4.6mm in diameter. What most people use for worker brood is 5.4mm in diameter. If you translate that into 3 dimensions instead of 1, it produces a bee that is about half as large again as is natural.
On the other hand, by letting the bees build natural sized cells, I have virtually eliminated my Varroa and Tracheal mite problems. One cause of this is shorter capping times by one day, and shorter post-capping times by one day. This means less Varroa get into the cells, and less Varroa reproduce in the cells.
Why should anyone be surprised that the major media reports forget to tell us that the dying bees are actually hyper-bred varieties that we coax into a larger than normal body size? It sounds just like the beef industry, and all the rest. And, have we here a solution to the vanishing bee problem?
Although a not uncommonly held opinion is that, since this new pattern of bee colony collapse seems to have struck from out of the blue, there must be a triggering agent, it is more likely that some biological limit in the bees has been crossed. There is no shortage of evidence that we have been fast approaching this limit for some time.
We've been pushing them too hard, Dr. Peter Kevan, an associate professor of environmental biology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, told the CBC. And we're starving them out by feeding them artificially, and by moving them great distances. Given the stress commercial bees are under, Kevan suggests CCD might be caused by parasitic mites, or long cold winters, or long wet springs, or pesticides, or genetically modified crops. Maybe it's all of the above...
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July 25, 2020, 15:27