Did GMO Corn Really Kill All Those Bees in Canada?

Did GMO Corn Really Kill All Those Bees in Canada?

Postby Oscar » Sun Nov 16, 2014 10:57 am

Did GMO Corn Really Kill All Those Bees in Canada?

[ http://truth-out.org/news/item/27446-di ... -in-canada ]

Saturday, 15 November 2014 10:40 By Maryam Henein, Truthout | News Analysis

As the director of the film Vanishing of the Bees, [ http://www.vanishingbees.com/ ] and the resident bee guardian within my virtual community, FB friends regularly post bee news on my wall. Last week, a handful of people sent me a story titled "37 Million Bees Found Dead In Ontario, Canada, After Planting Large GMO Corn Field." [
http://organichealth.co/37-million-bees ... orn-field/ ] It sounded familiar. Interested to learn more, I tracked down the beekeeper, Dave Schuit, who had lost all those bees.

I discovered that not only was the story inaccurate, it was also pretty old.

"Yes, I saw [the piece] circulating on Facebook, but I don't know why they re-ran it. That happened in 2012. I've lost 100 million bees by now," he confirmed.

OrganicHealth.co started the falsehood by basically repurposing a version comprised of two articles published by the online site The Post in June 2013 and CBC News in August 2013. Neither of those articles mentioned GMO corn as the culprit.*

Other than the title and the first sentence, Organic Health steered away from the notion that a GMO corn field killed millions of bees in Canada. If you read far enough, they correctly concluded that systemic pesticides are at fault.

While Dave (interestingly the poster boys for colony collapse disorder [CCD] in America are also both called Dave) did indeed lose about 600 hives, there is a distinction that needs to be made. These seeds, which, by the way, likely are genetically modified, are enrobed in systemic pesticides like clothianidin and/or thiamethoxam.

These nicotine-based neurotoxins are what impair the bees' navigational capabilities and compromise their immune and nervous systems', causing paralysis and eventually death. In a way, it's like the honeybee gets Alzheimer's and is unable to find her way back home.

A honeybee cannot live more than 24 hours without her hive.

While we all love to hate Monsanto - the makers of genetically modified organisms (GMO) - other pesticide manufacturing companies like Bayer and Syngenta don't need any more help deflecting responsibility.

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[ http://truth-out.org/news/item/27446-di ... -in-canada ]
Oscar
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