Plantation of large GMO Corn fields causes death of over 37 million Honey Bees

After all the controversies that Genetically Modified Organisms have had in recent years, there is another big one. The plantation of GMO corn seeds in a massive land area has caused the death of over 37 million bees in Elmwood, Ontario, Canada. Dave Schuit, who is a local farmer, found out all those honey-bees, which were of his 600 bee hives, to be dead after the GMO corn seed was planted in the surroundings.

According to the experts, farmers and many other national and international organizations (which include European Union), the cause devastating death of the bees is a special class of insecticides known as neonicotinoids, manufactured by Bayer CropScience Inc. There is another major cause for this calamity- the genetic modification of corn is meant to act as a pesticide, killing insects that are harmful to the crop. In the very same process, it also killed the bees, without having those bees to pollinate the plants.

US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in the honey, wax and pollen, which makes us believe that insecticides are the main problem. Two of Bayer CropScience Inc.’s pesticides, Imidacloprid and Clothianidin are widely known to get into the pollen and nectar of plants, which can directly affect insects such as bees. Neonicotinoids, which is used in planting corns and other crops, has been recently banned by the European Union for two years starting from December 2013. This happened due to the marketing of such also coincided with the occurrence of large-scale bee deaths in many European countries and the United States. Another major cause of the ban was however, also to be able to study how it relates to the large bee kill they are experiencing there also.

Dave Schuit, in his loss, said, “Once the corn started to get planted our bees died by the millions.” He further stated, “I feel like we all have something at stake with this issue.” He had organized a panel discussion in his farm as soon as the event happened so that all the interested parties can get together and discuss about the reason and ways to stop this problem from growing further.

The death of the bees is not only limited to Dave Schuit. In the South-West of Hanover, at the farm of Gary Kenny, eight of the 10 hives he kept for a beekeeper out of Kincardine, died this spring just after corn was planted in neighbouring fields. Similar incident had happened to Nathan Carey, the National Farmers Union local 344 member and local farmer of Neustadt, as he noticed the lack of bees and bumblebees on his farm last spring. He also said that he believes there is a strong connection between the insecticide use and the death of pollinators.

The scientists have named such incidents as ‘colony collapse disorder (CCD)’, and have been struggling a lot since years to find the exact cause. It is reported that the number of honey-bees is in decreasing order in a constant manner from the past seven consecutive years. It is estimated that more than one-third of the world’s pollination is done by the bees, which means they contribute over 30 billion dollars a year to the Global Economy, and the decrease in their numbers is a major loss to the crops, and eventually the whole world.

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