Bloomberg TV news today interviewed our head beekeeper about the plight of the honey bee in England. CCD ( colony collapse disorder) is a hot issue in the press at the moment and journalists want to find out more and what the present situation is.
Bloomberg TV televise financial news both in the US and the UK. The obvious impact on the US financial market, due to the decline of honey bees and their ability to mass pollinate food crops, will have a major impact on the global food market. Hence their interest in the decline of honey bees.
James spoke about the upturn in bee populations here in the UK and posed his own theory that the US bee decline could be due to GMO crops.
The USA have had for many years, a well established open agenda of mass planted GMO (Genetically modified organism) crops throughout the USA. In Europe GMO testing is still being conducted, and is planted on a relativity small small. The Hive Honey Shop first became aware of GMO and the disappearance of honey bees in the early 1990s.
The Hive Honey Shop have many beekeeping friends around the world and we trade our honeys amongst each other. We have some friends in France that took their bees to the vast Sunflower crops each year. The honey is lovely, bright yellow in colour and creamy in texture.
Then French beekeepers began to notice that their bees were not coming back to their hives. At first they put this down to some kind of agricultural crop spray contamination. They alerted the head of the French ministry of agricultural, who advised them to bring back dead bee samples for testing. The problem was, the bees were not returning to the hives so there were no bees to collect to sample test.
In the end they could not produce any bees to be analysed, so the matter was dropped. My friends knew something was not right, but could not prove it, so they just refused to take their bees to the sunflowers. They reported to us, that many French beekeepers were convinced that there was a direct link to the genetically modified sunflower crops, that it was interfering with the bees navigational ability to find their way back to the hive. They also reported that other insects were not robbing the empty hives full of stored honey. Without being able to produce any dead/missing bees to test, their crys for help fell on deaf ears. So many French beekeepers decides to avoid any GMO crops in an effort to save their bees.
As any beekeeper can tell you, if you leave a frame of honey unattended for more than a few minutes in the open, the frame will be covered with a multitude of robbing insects. Why are the hives in the US found empty of bees or any insects for that matter? Why are no insects interested in the sweet unguarded honey ripe for the picking? Why when that honey is tested for insecticide contamination it comes back negative? Could the answer perhaps be found on a molecular level of contamination that insects are sensitive enough to reveal.
We would welcome an extensive study conducted on GMO pollen and honey bee behaviour.
Scroll down to the "Muse" box, and click on August 25th show. We are the last block of the show, so fast forward to time 17:10 to begin.
photo copyright 2008 ©-The Hive Honey Shop
