L.A. Times: The reason that honeybees are disappearing may well be a new fungus, but that’s just a hypothesis, like the idea that it could be radio waves.
Comments are closed.
Open source, procurement, and gov tech.
L.A. Times: The reason that honeybees are disappearing may well be a new fungus, but that’s just a hypothesis, like the idea that it could be radio waves.
Comments are closed.
Maybe they’re dying just ’cause they die from time to time. Kinda like reservoirs’s fill up and empty. Fill up and empty. Or maybe it’s something completely new and unseen under the sun!
The Germans are looking at another cause – the introduction of genetically modified corn. The subject modifying bacterium – Thurgensis, controls grubs by destroying their gut.
The study in question is a small research project conducted at the University of Jena from 2001 to 2004. The researchers examined the effects of pollen from a genetically modified maize variant called “Bt corn” on bees. A gene from a soil bacterium had been inserted into the corn that enabled the plant to produce an agent that is toxic to insect pests. The study concluded that there was no evidence of a “toxic effect of Bt corn on healthy honeybee populations.” But when, by sheer chance, the bees used in the experiments were infested with a parasite, something eerie happened. According to the Jena study, a “significantly stronger decline in the number of bees” occurred among the insects that had been fed a highly concentrated Bt poison feed.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,473166,00.html
I knew that Bacillus thurgensis was trouble!
Pending study, of course — but it sounds like a reasonable hypothesis.