We already know that glyphosate – the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide – can damage the human gut by killing beneficial bacteria. Now, an alarming new study has revealed that glyphosate can also damage the guts of honey bees.

The research, conducted at The University of Texas at Austin and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on September 24, shows that honey bees exposed to glyphosate lose some of the beneficial bacteria in their guts. This makes the bees more susceptible to infection and death from harmful bacteria.

Scientists believe this is evidence that glyphosate might be contributing to the years-long decline of honey bees and native bees around the world.

In a press release, the researchers explained their findings:

Because glyphosate interferes with an important enzyme found in plants and microorganisms, but not in animals, it has long been assumed to be nontoxic to animals, including humans and bees. But this latest study shows that by altering a bee’s gut microbiome — the ecosystem of bacteria living in the bee’s digestive tract, including those that protect it from harmful bacteria — glyphosate compromises its ability to fight infection.

To conduct the study, the research team took 2,000 honey bees from hives at the University of Texas campus and fed them either a low dose of glyphosate, a high dose, or a glyphosate-free syrup.

It didn’t take long for glyphosate to cause problems for the bees involved in the study: after only three days of exposure at levels known to occur in crop fields, yards, and roadsides, the herbicide significantly reduced healthy gut microbiota. “Of eight dominant species of healthy bacteria in the exposed bees, four were found to be less abundant. The hardest hit bacterial species, Snodgrassella alvi, is a critical microbe that helps bees process food and defends against pathogens,” the researchers reported.

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Monsanto’s Glyphosate Linked To Global Decline In Honey Bees

September 26, 2018

Monsanto’s Glyphosate Linked To Global Decline In Honey Bees

Glyphosate, the world’s most common weed killer, has caused significant concerns over its potential risk to human health, animals, and the environment for several decades. Earlier this month, a US court awarded a groundskeeper $289 million who claimed Bayer AG unit Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weed-killers, including Roundup, gave him terminal cancer.

Now, a new report from PNAS alleges that glyphosate may be indirectly killing honey bees around the world, a threat that could potentially also leave a major mark on the global economy.

Brandnew research from The University of Texas at Austin shows that bees exposed to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, lose critical bacterial in their guts and are more susceptible to infection and death from harmful bacteria.

The report titled “Glyphosate perturbs the gut microbiota of honey bees,” was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) on September 24. It provides enough evidence that glyphosate could be seen as the contributing factor to the rapid decline of honey bees around the world, otherwise known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a phenomenon that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear and leave behind the queen.

“We need better guidelines for glyphosate use, especially regarding bee exposure, because right now the guidelines assume bees are not harmed by the herbicide,” said Erick Motta, the graduate student who led the research, along with professor Nancy Moran.

“Our study shows that’s not true.”

UT News of The University of Texas at Austin says that glyphosate interferes with an important enzyme found in plants and microorganisms, but not in animals, it has long been assumed to be nontoxic to animals, including humans and bees.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Differences Between Commercial and Organic Honey Can Help You Find Your Sweet Spot

November 5, 2015

The Differences Between Commercial and Organic Honey Can Help You Find Your Sweet Spot

For thousands of years, honey has been widely used for both nutritional and medicinal purposes. Over 300 varieties are available in the United States alone. These range from those that are nearly colorless and bland tasting, to strains offering rich brown hues, robust with flavor. However, many store-bought honeys are processed, removing much of the pollen content.

While preserving pollen is attainable simply by using a coarse filter and minimal heat to sift bee parts, wax and hive debris, recent scientific research is throwing out some very sticky questions: Can products containing little to no pollen still be called honey? Does bee pollen really matter?

As it turns out, the answer is both yes and no.

WHY BEE POLLEN STILL MATTERS

Health, definition and identity are the central issues to understanding why these tiny flower grains are of vital concern. First, many believe that bee pollen contains nutrient-rich properties that promote good health. Second, pollen is what defines honey. Third, pollen is honey’s DNA that allows its source to be identified.

HEALTH

Contrary to widely held beliefs about pollen’s powerful health benefits, ongoing scientific studies have shown that its quantities in the product are insufficient to have any meaningful nutritional value. According to Dr. Lutz Elflein, a honey analysis expert with an international food laboratory, amounts range from about 0.1 to 0.4 percent. Similarly, a 2004 study by the Australian government found the percentage of pollen in 32 Australian canola honey samples ranged only from 0.15 percent to 0.443 percent.

Another 2012 study by the National Honey Board analyzed vitamins, minerals and antioxidant levels in raw and processed varieties. The study revealed that commercial processing significantly reduced pollen content, but did not affect its nutrient content or antioxidant activity. The results led researchers to conclude that the micronutrient profile of honey is not associated with its pollen content and is unaffected by commercial processing.

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Suicide By Pesticide

May 23, 2015

Suicide By Pesticide

What the honey bee die-off means for humanity

As you are aware, honey bees have been suffering from something called Colony Collapse Disorder. In practice, what this means is that the bees simply vanish from their hives, leaving behind their most precious worldly possessions: honey and larvae.

What causes these mysterious vanishing acts has been something of a mystery. But because the phenomenon began really ramping up in 2006, we can focus in on some suspects.

While it’s always possible that the bees are suffering ‘death from a thousand cuts’ — where it’s no one specific thing but rather a wide range of minor insults, ranging from loss of forage to herbicides to fungicides to pesticides — there’s actually quite strong evidence pointing to a specific class of pesticides calledneonicotinoids.

This class of pesticides is massively and indiscriminately toxic. More specific to our investigation here, it was only introduced into widespread use shortly before the massive bee die-offs began.

Biocide = Suicide

Actually, it’s not really proper to call neonicotinoids ‘pesticides’ because they don’t solely target pests. They should more accurately be called ‘biocides’ because they kill all insects equally and indiscriminately.

How toxic are they?

The neonics are so toxic that it’s sufficient to simply lightly coat a seed with it before planting. When the seed grows to maturity, the plant will still have enough absorbed toxin circulating within its system to kill any insect that munches on it or sucks on its sap.

Think about that for a minute. Coat a kernel of corn with a neonic, sow it, and the mature plant will still be lethal to a corn borer when the corn ears develop several months later.

But not just to insects:

“A single corn kernel coated with a neonicotinoid can kill a song bird.” As a long time environmental lawyer and campaigner, I should not have been stunned by that fact but I was. Shaking my head in dismay, I read on, “Even a tiny grain of wheat or canola treated with the …neonicotinoid… can fatally poison a bird.”

(Source)

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Albert Einstein, Soil, Honey Bees and Biodiversity.

May 22, 2015

Albert Einstein, Soil, Honey Bees and Biodiversity.

Among the manifold quotes that are attributed to Albert Einstein, are variants along the lines of:

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

and

“If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live.”

Whether it was in fact the author and originator of “Relativity” (both special and general) and the “Photoelectric Effect”, the latter of which, from his Annus mirablis, won him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921, is disputed, “http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/08/27/einstein-bees/, nonetheless, Einstein was a man of great awareness, as might be summarised by his more provenly attributable quote, to the effect that: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins121993.html The latter axiom is indeed true.

There is a tendency for humans to perceive ill occurrences as unconnected events, rather as the Biblical plagues of Egypt: water into blood, frogs, lice, wild animals or flies, deceased livestock, boils, storms of fire, locusts, darkness and death of the firstborn. Scientists now believe that these events really happened, but they were in fact all results of a single cause: not the wrath of a punitive God, but climate changehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7530678/Biblical-plagues-really-happened-say-scientists.html. Modern humans are aware of contemporary global menaces: a changing climate, peak oil, a dodgy economy that could collapse at any moment, and the extinction of honey bees, but relatively few of us know that the world’s productive soils are also under threat.

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