Help Save The Bees

Bayer has just sued the European Commission to overturn a ban on the pesticides that are killing millions of bees around the world. A huge public push won this landmark ban only months ago — and we can’t sit back and let Big Pesticide overturn it while the bees vanish.
Just last month, 37 million bees were discovered dead on a single Canadian farm. And unless we act now, the bees will keep dying by the millions. We have to show Bayer now that we won’t tolerate it putting its profits ahead of our planet’s health. If this giant corporation manages to bully Europe into submission, it would spell disaster for the bees.
Please join me in signing the petition to tell Bayer and Syngenta to drop their bee-killing lawsuits now.
http://action.sumofus.org/a/bayer-bees-lawsuit/?sub=mtlm5
Thank you”.
BACKGROUND:
Colony collapse disorder (CCD) — the sudden and massive die-off of honeybees — has emerged as one of the most mysterious ecological disasters of the past several years, and one of the most expensive. Around the middle of the last decade, commercial beekeepers began to report that colonies of bees were collapsing without warning, with death rates approaching 30 to 90% of a hive. Even stranger was the behavior of bees in an afflicted colony — worker drones would simply fly away, abandoning their hives and queen to simply die alone in the open. Beekeepers have struggled to adjust, and costs of commerical pollination for crops have soared.
About 130 crops in the U.S. — worth some $15 billion a year — depend on honeybee pollination, and if bee populations really did collapse, it would mean an agricultural catastrophe.
That’s why scientists have been working overtime to figure out just what might be causing CCD. New research by a Harvard biologist Chensheng Lu, in a new study to be published in the Bulletin of Insectology, points the finger at the pesticide imidacloprid, a chemical often used on corn plants. Honeybees are now fed with supplements of high-fructose corn syrup — and if Lu is right, we could be killing the bees ourselves. “We’ve actually isolated a single risk factor for CCD,” says Lu. “We really need to be looking at this data.”
Read more:
New Research Connects Bee Colony Collapse Disorder to Pesticide | TIME.com http://science.time.com/2012/04/11/whats-the-buzz-study-links-pesticide-with-honeybee-collapse/
Why Should We Care?
The impact honeybees have on the human population and the environment is far more crucial than we may think. Agricultural crops rely on honeybees worldwide to provide them with life and guarantee their reproduction. Bees facilitate pollination for most plant life, including well over 100 different vegetable and fruit crops. Without bees, there would be significantly less pollination, which would result in limited plant growth and lower food supplies. According to Dr Albert Einstein, “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live. No more bees, no more pollination…no more men”. Bees’ eradication affects us more than we may think.
Interesting fact:
Bee pollination actually accounts for approximately one-third of all of our food supply. In fact, many of the country’s crops would not even exist without bees.
ALSO SEE:
www.AdoptaBeehive.com.au
A GLOBAL BEE CRISIS …
Worldwide, the global bee population is in serious decline. This phenomenon is known as CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder), with an increasing number of bee hives collapsing and many bee species becoming extinct or threatened.
If this disturbing trend continues, it could lead to a global food crisis due to the vital pollination role that bees play. Honeybees are responsible for pollinating around 80% of fruit and vegetable crops so this threat is not only affecting bee populations, but also critically impacting our farmers and food supply.
Bee fruit tree blossom
Scientists and concerned beekeepers around the world are finding more evidence of the contributing causes of this serious situation. Studies and research now suggest that there are multiple factors affecting the demise of our precious honeybees including chemicals such as Neonicotinoids used in agricultural crops; use of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides; beekeepers using antibiotics in the hive; genetically modified crops; pests and diseases; electro magnetic radiation; Microwave interference; monoculture farming practices; artificial feeding; malnutrition and the list goes on.