Greetings
By way of a brief recap, the PLoS paper by Bromenshenk et al, came out this month describing in great detail a plausible scenario where a combination of Nosema ceranae and newly discovered virus could be responsible for the symptoms of colony collapse. It was immediately misunderstood by the press and public, which is understandable. 

However, Katherine Eban issued a scathing attack against Jerry B., insinuating that he was under the sway of Bayer and was deliberately trying to divert attention away from the real issue, which is neonicotinoids. The fact of the matter is, the role of pesticides in the combined issue of honey bee health AND colony losses, has been explored in depth for decades. 

I posted the summary knowing full well it was compiled by Bayer, simply because it so closely paralleled the conclusions that I had come to, and because the reference list was exactly the one I would have cited, relying heavily on work published in the Journal of Apicultural Research and the Journal of Invertebrate Pathology. 

These are all excellent papers written by the best and the brightest in the field. How could they ALL be beholden to Bayer? Is there a vast conspiracy among the entire scientific community to suppress the truth and allow the birds and bees to vanish off the face of the earth, allowing Einstein's predictions about pollination to come true? [sic]

Fact is, all the digging for a connection between neonics and bee demise hasn't turned up much. Aside from the surprise that hives are far more contaminated by beekeepers than anyone else. Of course, they wouldn't have done this were it not for varroa mites, so you could make a case that the entire thing is caused by varroa (See recent writing by Ernesto Guzman, et al)

OK, back to the summary. It was criticized because it lacked support for the pesticide connection and because it was compiled by Bayer. In response, I replied: show me the work that supports banning neonics on the basis of actual harm, not the precautionary principal (which invokes potential risk). 

Meanwhile, here is an example of the kind of stuff usually presented by by the anti-neonic camp:

> Colony Collapse Disorder is a false name that serves to mislead the public into believing that there's a new, mystery disorder, probably something very complex, that needs tons of money to be thrown at it so that every possible angle can be studied. The reason is simple. By misdirecting the public, and apparently many professionals too, the real reason for bee die-offs is obscured.

> This is very much like the misleading pseudoscience that supposedly debunks global climate change by giving a false impression that there is no consensus among scientists. By stirring pesticides into a mix of other supposedly possible causes, such as bacterial infections, fungal infections, and environmental stress, a false controversy is created. That results in precious time being wasted, while we really do move into a world without bees. At the same time, money is being thrown at scientists, who should know better, but being just as human as the rest of us, they're tempted.

> Eventually, the real cause starts to become obvious, as is happening now in bee die-offs. However, the guilty party, the one making obscene profits by selling neurotoxic poisons that destroy the earth, launches a campaign of disingenuous lies, misdirection, and lawsuits to continue to sell their contaminants as long as possible.

> Meanwhile, we're being told that we must prepare to live in a world without bees, as if it's inevitable. All because of Colony Collapse Disorder, a cleverly marketed nonexistent disease. We live in fear of the implications of no bees, when the real threat is poisons manufactured for the sole benefit of obscene profits.

>Is it an accident that most of Big Pharma also manufactures pesticides? Is there a connection between the two types of products? Do the pharmaceutical arms of these corporations profit on the illness caused by the pesticide arms? These questions are rhetorical. We'll let the reader decide.

SOURCE:
Colony Collapse Disorder Debunked: Pesticides Cause Bee Deaths
Tuesday, July 22, 2008 by: Heidi Stevenson, citizen journalist
http://www.naturalnews.com/023679.html

* * *

You see? They are poisoning us in order to make money off of our illnesses. They are selling products to treat bees (Bayer CheckMite) as well as products to kill them off. Makes perfect sense, they make money either way. Except that if bees were really being wiped out by Bayer, we would have figured it out by now and put a stop to it, because bees are needed to pollinate crops. Bayer has no flower pollinating technology, yet.

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