Comments on: Pesticide Kills Over 100 Billion Honey Bees…Who’s Responsible?

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 19 May 2010 16:07:59 +0000

Notice the use of the evil M word, Monsanto. Just to be precise, Monsanto works with almost everyone. And whoever doesn’t work with them probably works with Pioneer. Do you think that even the evil Monsanto Conglomerate would gloss over the loss of honey bees, considering that their loss would devastatingly crush agriculture all over the world? There is NO cost effective alternative to this natural process. This article completely misses the point in a deliberate fashion designed to stir up fear and anger and not to improve the situation or our understanding of it.

By: Manuka Honey

Manuka Honey — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:05:21 +0000

American honeybees pollinate some 90 different crops that bring in more than $15 billion annually. We need to find out what is making the hives collapse and do something about it now.

By: Pete

Pete — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 13:30:49 +0000

A shame that this article has so selectively reported on what is an important issue. Steve Sheppard at WSU did find fairly high levels of multiple pesticide residues in beeswax but did not particularly single out any one product as an issue of concern. Similarly, Maryann Frazier from Penn State University looked at residues found in beeswax and bee bread (pollen stored in combs) and found many samples containing multiple residues. Her work identified acaricides used by beekeepers to control the important & devastating varroa mite as those pesticides most frequently found. But both focussed concern on the unknown combined sub-lethal effects of these multiple residues on honeybees.
The panel of US research scientists have found no evidence for any one product (incl. imidacloprid) being responsible for CCD.