Day #395 What Are We Doing to Our World?

On 11/11/11, it seems fitting to talk about the insanity of people who believe that killing is the answer. It's not only people we kill with ours wars.

The phrase, man's inhumanity to man has, unfortunately become a common one. Our inhumanity stretches farther than simply to other people.

November 11^th is supposed to be set aside as a time to remember the war that was supposed to have ended all wars. I’ll let the irony of that statement speak for itself.

There are, unfortunately, many “wars” being fought on many different fronts—some as small as our own back yards.

Doggone it. I can try as much as possible to make my yard and my neighborhood safe for bees and birds and other small critters, but then a chemical giant comes along, pays for research that says, “Oh yes, this product is perfectly safe for honey bees,” publishes that research, and expects everyone to believe it.

The unfortunate truth is that people DO believe such lies.

Bayer – the company that makes the aspirin on your shelf – also produces neo-nicitinoid pesticides. I hope they concoct the two products in separate buildings. Their clothianidin pesticide (the nasty pink stuff in the jars shown in this 2008 picture) was touted to be perfectly safe for honey bees. I even saw an advertising film where company officials bragged about its safety, based on “the very best research.” Research, it turns out, the folks at Bayer had hired out to their own researchers.

In the spring of 2008, millions of bees in Germany died as a result. I know that sounds like old news, but this kind of devatation continues to happen, and not only in Europe. One of the members of our bee club lives close enough to a particular small farm where the unenlightened owner sprays all sorts of toxins with reckless abandon. She said she’s extremely tired of coming home from work and finding entire hives wiped out.

Caption: In early May 2008, between 330 and 500 million bees were killed in the Western part of Germany (Rheintal) by Bayer's clothianidin pesticide, which had been applied as a dressing to amize seed. More than 7.000 beekeeper rang up the Landesverband Badischer Imker (beekeepers' union) to report total losses. 

http://www.bayer-kills-bees.com/

When will we humans wake up to what we're doing to our world?

Closer to home, Dan Rather presented a report in September of 2011 which revealed that all those reports from the multinational Bayer corporation that told us their systemic pesticides were safe for bees contained a wee problem. A wee problem with far-ranging consequences.

The test fields covered only 2 acres. The bees from a hive forage over about a thousand acres. Therefore, the bees that were killed by the pesticides in those 2 acres pretty much disappeared from the results because so many of the foragers were gathering from the other 998 acres around their hive. Here’s the report, if you’re interested:

http://www.panna.org/blog/dan-rather-pesticides-bees

In the interest of full disclosure – here’s the site where I found the photo:

http://www.bayer-kills-bees.com/

Just as I encourage people to check out forwarded emails with www.snopes.com to prevent infecting friends’ e-boxes with garbage, so I’d like to find a way we could know whether “research” is valid.

Even better would be if the folks doing the “research” would act with integrity.

Is that too much to ask?

BEEattitude for Day # 395:

       Blessed are those who treat our Mother Earth with respect. We bees appreciate them.