Comments on: What's Wrong With The Bees?

Steve Kroft Reports On The Mysterious Disappearance Of Bees

[couleekid]

I know what happened to the bees. They were all killed by a spray plane doing a nearby field during the day. If they all left or got lost someone should have seen them. I was a beekeeper until my neighbor had his flowering canola crop sprayed with MATADOR in July. The pilot did not spray at dusk when my bees would have been back at the hive. He sprayed all morning.All my worker bees left that morning and never came home. Idid not notice a problem as I still had bees flying around my hives. When I went to collect the honey there was none.There were a few bees but not enough to survive the winter. I reported this to Health Canada and Environment Alberta and no one did anything. They wouldn''t even tell the pilot to stop spraying pesticides during the day.The Matador label states"do not spray when the bees are foraging" but the investigators did not think that it was clear enough. I contacted Syngenta and advised them that their unclear label was killing bees. They promised to change that label 3 years ago and with even 2 followup calls that label is still the same. Every time you see a spray plane spraying during the day on a flowering crop he could be killing all the bees in 16 sq.miles around that field. There is no misterious disease it is spray plane pilots who spray when it is convenient not safe.

[watcher269-2009]

This problem has been going on for the past 5 years and is just now getting mainstream media attention.

Maybe, just maybe it''s all the pollution controls that were allowed to be ignored - so the carbon emissions have increased, the mercury in the air and water have increased, the teflon in the water supply has increased - the additives for gasoline has increased in the water supply also.

I''d say this is just the beginning of the problems that the people in the United States will be facing in the next 10 years.

It is our corporations that are causing our problems - and lack of controls on them.

[caliengineer]

"spy" 2222 - Who do you work for? Your downplaying of an obviously severe problem makes you an enemy of this nation. If our food supply drops, and war breaks out - it will be a problem. Nations usually don''t quit until they exhaust their food. I am accusing you on this thread of being an anti-American operative.

[silangua]

I''m grateful that you did a piece on the bees, but disappointed that you didn''t discuss organic farmers and their bees. The last I heard, the organic farmers were not losing their bees. Please see reports from Organic Bytes online. Hopefully no one is protecting Mansanto or gunning for contemporary heroines following in the footsteps of Rachel Carson.

[silangua]

I''m grateful that you did a piece on the bees, but disappointed that you didn''t discuss organic farmers and their bees. The last I heard, the organic farmers were not losing their bees. Please see reports from Organic Bytes online. Hopefully no one is protecting Mansanto or gunning for contemporary heroines following in the footsteps of Rachel Carson.

[silangua]

I''m grateful that you did a piece on the bees, but disappointed that you didn''t discuss organic farmers and their bees. The last I heard, the organic farmers were not losing their bees. Please see reports from Organic Bytes online. Hopefully no one is protecting Mansanto or gunning for contemporary heroines following in the footsteps of Rachel Carson.

[brianbwb-2009]

Bio terrorism at work;

"Monsanto''s genetically engineered ``Bollgard'''' cotton or Bt. cotton has genes from a bacteria engineered into it so that the plant produces its own pesticide, which is contrary to Monsanto''s claim. Bt. cotton is not "pest-resistant" but a pesticide producing plant. The severe ecological risks of crops genetically engineered to produce toxin include the threat posed to beneficial species that are necessary for pollination and for pest control through prey-predator balance."

It is public record that this company has illegally planted large crops in India, and the result has damaged India''s native ecosystem. Have they also done so secretly in the US? Most probably, we know they have planted GM corn, which is wind pollinated, it is not too far fetched to presume they have planted other GM crops in the US that produce toxins.

This possibility should be the first avenue to be investigated.

[yhwhwarrior]

LOL if you want, but when you look into the sky and see a broken contrail??? does that mean the airplane cut off it''s engines in mid flight before turning them back on ? do you fly one of these undercover chemtrail planes ? are you in on the cover-up ? hmmm?

[nothappyatall]

"Don''''t forget the Americas had thriving agricultural societies before European''''s began to collinize them. Some of these cultures even grew pumpkins with great success. This the the crop that the Walmart Grower was so concerned about. These same cultures also cultivated tomatoes, peppers, beans, squash, cotton and other crops without the use of the European honey bee."

spey2222

Yeah, back in the days when there was 1/10th the population there is NOW, when a 10 acre farm could feed an entire town, newsflash: a city like Chicago, NYC, San Francisco need millions of TONS of food, a 10 acre family farm is no longer viable to feed anyone but the owners of the farm, thus we need BIG SCALE factory farms with 30,000 acres, try hand polinating that many acres...

[nothappyatall]

Chemtrails LOL, you mean water vapor exhaust from airplanes, you conspiracy nuts listen to too much Art Bell and Witless Streeber!

Watch out for that face on mars too!

"Campbell figures he needs 30 bee visits per flower to pollinate 300 acres of pumpkins, all headed to Wal-Mart for the Halloween trade."

Wasting the declining bees on a stupid frivolous thing like haloween PUMPKINS??? is this what they are calling bees polinating 1/3 of our "FOOD"?

STUPID!

[yhwhwarrior]

educate-yourself.org CHEMTRAILS........come on people, it is as plain as the nose on your face. you are so used to seeing them (chemtrails) that they are second nature now. The answer is right in front of your eyes. Wake up. LOOK TO THE SKY.

[kittle7]

The problem seems synergistic. However, based on what we know about GMOs, pesticides, and declining environmental factors, the bees are like canaries in a coal mine. It is deplorable what we continue to take and demand from our environment yet continue to give little to nothing back. Until we, as individuals, wake up and take responsibility for our daily actions, live consciously, problems such as this will continue. WE are dependent on the health of the environment. Without it, we are nothing. Seems, especially that people with children would be most concerned about it.

[pensacola88]

I think genetically engineered plants that resist disease actually play a part in the immunosuppressant systems of the bees. Healthier plants offer less to keep the bee''s immune systems optimized. This country has already genetically engineered corn, potatoes and many plants with hopes of improving the yeild, but I haven''t read any data assessments for the impacts on bees or other insects with respect to their auto-immune systems. Immunology is an infant science with respect to genetic engineering.

[hypnotoad72]

spey2222 - thank you MUCH for your post, but I think there''s some truth in the 60 Minutes article too.

But it''s not all gloom and doom yet...

[lori176]

Exactly, the honeybees have lived here in harmony since the European settlers. But modern man is killing them off. Pesticides, you watch the news in a fews years that is what will finally be told.


Again, I urge everyone to come to the aide of these beekeepers and contact their state reprenstatives. The Department of Agriculture''s relies on these beekeepers, we need to get financial assitance to the beekeepers to keep them going while this "Colony collapse Disorder" is taken control of.
They literally work to get the food on all of our table. And I prefer American harvested food on my dinner table, as to China''s infested products.

[spey2222]

NEW FLASH. Honey bees are not native to the Americas. They were brought to this by Euorpean settlers. This story is just another eco-scare brought to you by CBS and 60 minutes.

After honey bees began to decline in the late 90''s due to throat mite infestations, it was thought that fruit production would decline. This turned out not to be the case. Native pollinating insects such as bumble bees and carpenter bees continued to pollinate crops. Musch as they did before the introduction of the European Honey Bee.

Don''t forget the Americas had thriving agricultural societies before European''s began to collinize them. Some of these cultures even grew pumpkins with great success. This the the crop that the Walmart Grower was so concerned about. These same cultures also cultivated tomatoes, peppers, beans, squash, cotton and other crops without the use of the European honey bee.

Not all food crops are dependent on animal pollinators. Corn and wheat for example are wind pollinated. Potatoes are are reproduced with vegatively and do not need a pollinator. Leaf vegetables such as lettuce, spinach and brocklie are not fruit berring so they don''t need a pollinator for us to eat them. The majority of seed for food crops are hand pollinated by people so bees are not need to produce seeds.

Thank you 60 minutes, for providing a useless scare story without all of the facts.

[lori176]

I urge everyone to come to the aide of these beekeepers and contact their state reprenstatives. The Department of Agriculture''s relies on these beekeepers, we need to get financial assitance to the beekeepers to keep them going while this "Colony collapse Disorder" is taken control of.
They literally work to get the food on all of our table.

[jolener-2009]

I agree with some of the other posters. Why don''t they go back to another pesticide and see if it makes a difference? This would be a relative easy way to determine whether the pesticide is the culprit or not. With the economy leaning towards a recession, the last thing we need is the bee keepers and farmers losing money.

[blubabe432]

Having lived on a small farm for many years, I saw this happening a long time ago. Plants, that blooms fall off of, never having a chance to produce; herbacious plants that can''t be grown the next year because no flowers no seeds.
One day maybe, just maybe, when money isn''t the motivating factor(and it may be sooner than anyone thinks), people will wake up and realize that even the smallest of God''s creations all have a purpose in this Circle of Life.
It''s going to take more than recycling to clean the mess that ''man'' has made on this Earth.

[reasonable88]

if it is a nicotine pestiside that is killing the bees maybe there is not trace of it in the hives because not a single affected bee makes it back to the hive ?