BEE-L Archives

Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

BEE-L@COMMUNITY.LSOFT.COM

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
James Fischer <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 16 Jun 2013 23:38:55 -0400
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (37 lines)
> The man-made, for profit poisons... killing the pollinators... the enemies of our honeybees"

The accusations above seem slightly misplaced.

Monsanto makes nothing generally considered "poison" to honey bees or other pollinators - they make an herbicide, "Round up" (glyphosate), they sell both GMO seed and conventional seeds, and center most of their business on weed control.

Pesticides certainly can kill bees.  Fungicides are being viewed with more critical eyes given their potential to affect the nutritional value of pollen/nectar mixtures that make up brood food.

But herbicides like Round Up are not known to kill pollinators in field settings, nor are they considered "poison" to bees.
After 48 hours, the acute LD50 for honey bees was greater than 281 µg fed per bee, which is generally called "non-toxic."

The levels of "acute toxicity" are generally this:

Highly toxic (LD50 < 2μg/bee)

Moderately toxic (LD50 2 - 10.99μg/bee)

Sightly toxic (LD50 11 - 100μg/bee)

Nontoxic (LD50 > 100μg/bee) to adult bees.

So, while other things are called "non-toxic" to bees when 100ug/bee can kill half the bees to which it was fed, this Round-Up stuff had to be crammed down their throats at a rate of 281ug/bee to kill half of them.

I lack subject-matter expertise to address concerns about "permeating our world" or "poisoning our bodies", but I can say that growers do not buy anything that they can avoid buying, so if they are using Round-Up, they use it because it works to increase their yields to the levels that allow the USA to stuff Globemasters full of food aid at the drop of a hat to feed hungry victims of natural disasters and political/military disasters anywhere on the planet.  I call that a win.  I'd much prefer seeing Globemasters carrying food to MQ-9 Reapers carrying Hellfire missiles as the most memorable image of our foreign policy.

I can say with certainty as one who has traveled incessantly that I've only seen cynicism and doubt about the desperate need for new technologies to "feed the world" from well-dressed, well-educated people of extreme privilege who have clearly never missed a meal in their life.  I'd be happy to act as a guide to show them situations that have scarred me for life, but so many of them are so shocking incurious about the "natural world" they wish to "save", they don't even have passports.

> There's a lot of us cranks out here screaming from the mountaintops.

A beekeeper is the ultimate environmental steward, as his bees can only thrive if everyone around him acts ethically toward the land.
I think the "crank" label is most often applied when homework is not first done to make sure that the screams are factual.

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

ATOM RSS1 RSS2