It's not news that bee populations are collapsing. Its cause is news. Scientists studying the problem now know why.
They looked at the pollen the bees were gathering and found it was contaminated on average with nine different pesticides and fungicides and identified eight agricultural chemicals that have been associated with increased risk of infection by the parasite that's been blamed for killing bees, Nosema Ceranae.
But the real killer here seems to be fungicides. Bees that ate pollen contaminated with fungicides were three times as likely to be infected by the parasite.
The choice before us appears to be no pests and no food or giving up ag chemicals. Seems to me there's no better time to go organic than now.
No comments:
Post a Comment