“This pesticide had been applied to rapeseed and sweet cornseeds in the Rhine River Valley. Piles of dead bees were discovered at the entrance of hives in early May 2008.”
This confirms what is well-known to beekeepers, namely, that pesticides can be lethal to bees. It also confirms that they are not the cause of CCD, which is characterised precisely by the fact that the dead bees are not found in the vicinity if the hive.
To get round this difficulty partisans of the insecticide thesis have come up with the idea that non-lethal doses of insectide can cause disorientation of the bees and therefore affect their capacity to get return to the hive. This would be surprising since bees with lethal doses manage to get back to the hive to die. As the Canadian Honey Council website notes:
“To the beekeeper, the most obvious sign of pesticide poisoning is the presence of an exceptional number of dead bees in front of the hives”
We would then have it that the affect of the toxin is in inverse proportion to the dose.
Taken together with the fact that the banning of pesticides in France was seemingly ineffective, the pesticide thesis, though fashionable and having helped fill the vaccuum left by the failure of the Penn State investigation, seems unlikely: in any event, less likely than the EM radiation thesis which has long provided a credible experimentally and theoretically verified basis for explaining CCD.
By Dr. James Howenstine, MD.
November 24, 2008
For several years I have been curious and concerned about reports from many parts of the world that bee colonies were vanishing or dying. Because of their ability to pollinate fruit and vegetables bees are of enormous importance to mankind. . Finally a breakthrough in understanding this problem has appeared on the scene. Whether this solves the whole bee problem or is simply one part of a more complex issue remains to be seen. Read the rest of this entry »
In These New Times 