Honey Bees & GM Update

This is a bit of an update posting. As my regular reader may know I posted some carefully worded details of some partial research that seemed to indicate that there could be a link to the problem of “Colony Collapse” in honey bees and genetically-modified-crops. However, the data I saw raised more questions than it answered. Further, I questioned why the researchers were not taking this data to the main stream media.

Therefore I posted with caution and caveats. Anyway here is the original posting.

About a week following the posting I was contacted by someone who had been told of the posting. I mailed this prospective reader the story. This reader was using a dot ac address.

Now before I continue I should point out that for me personally, the jury is still out on GM. As most of the crops thus far produced are just breed to allow the use of more chemicals, the benefits have yet to be proved. Especially as the promised yield increase from them is only one percent. Further, the much promised ability to feed the developing world has yet to happen. So while they have promised so much they have delivered so little.

Additionally the cost of development for these crops means that for farmers and growers in the developing world to grow them, they have to borrow money for the seeds. This is causing some farmers and growers in the developing world, effectively become indentured to the seed companies.

There is one exception that I have heard of, that of a rice verity that survives flooding and is benefiting the people in Bangladesh.

However, my main concern is that we don't yet understand what genes do. At the moment all we are doing is acting like children, switching on pretty lights, without knowing what they do or what else is happening.

Now, in the research that seemed to suggest that bees feeding on the pollen from GM crops were dying, seemed to be an example of this. Where an unknown effect of a gene was producing an unwanted and unexpected effect.

Therefore, while I have serious reservation about GM crops, I am not totally against them per say, but I do think that there needs to be much more rigorous testing of these crops for safety.
Thus when the prospective reader contacted me I was not surprised that this person was sceptical. However, once we overcame the rather tetchy initial communications made to me, this student started asking many of the questions I had about the original posting. Further, we both acknowledged that more research was needed. This was something the student did.

While the results are far from conclusive, the student mapped out where GM crops are grown, or have been grown, and where the Colony Collapses have occurred and more or less they do match. I emphasise again that this is not conclusive proof that GM crops are at the root of this problem but it does raise questions that need answering.

I don't have access to all the data I would need to retest this hypothesis, but as there are no other evidence based theories offering an explanation I feel it should be properly tested. What data I have had access to though, does show that there is a mirroring of the incidences of Colony Collapse and where GM crops are grown.

I will end this posting with a further caveat. As I have in the past been contacted by people who have tried to feed me miss information regarding Climate Change, in the hope of undermining my credibility, I am making this posting with caution. While the evidence and data that I have seen seems to point to a smoking gun, I am still wary of why these people have not take this data to the mainstream media?