The death of bees puts the world in danger
published: 31/08/07, 10:44
The death of bees puts the world in danger
[20 / 08 / 07] -
The bees have died out by billions in recent months. Their disappearance could sound the knell of the human species.
It is an incredible epidemic, of tremendous violence and magnitude, that is spreading from hive to hive on the planet. Part of a Florida farm last fall, she first won most US states, then Canada and Europe to contaminate Taiwan last April. Everywhere, the same scenario is repeated: by billions, the bees leave the hives to no longer return. No dead bodies nearby. No visible predator, any more than squatting yet quick to occupy abandoned habitats.
In a few months, between 60% and 90% of the bees are thus volatilized in the United States where the latest estimates put at 1,5 million (on 2,4 million hives in total) the number of colonies that disappeared in 27 States. In Quebec, 40% of hives are missing.
In Germany, according to the national association of beekeepers, a quarter of the colonies were decimated with losses up to 80% in some farms. The same thing happened in Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Austria, Poland and England, where the syndrome was christened "Marie-Céleste" phenomenon, after the name of the ship whose crew vanished. 1872. In France, where beekeepers have experienced heavy losses since 1995 (between 300.000 and 400.000 bees each year) until the ban on the pesticide incriminated Gaucho, on the corn and sunflower fields, the epidemic has also resumed moreover, with losses ranging from 15% to 95% depending on the herds.
"Syndrome of collapse"
Legitimately worried, scientists have found a name to the extent of these massive desertions: the "collapse syndrome" - or "colony collapse disorder". They have something to worry about: 80% of the plant species need bees to be fertilized. Without them, no pollination, and practically no fruits or vegetables. "Three quarters of the cultures that feed humanity depend on it," says Bernard Vaissière, pollinator specialist at INRA (National Institute for Agricultural Research). Arriving on Earth 60 million years before man, Apis mellifera (the honeybee) is as indispensable to its economy as to its survival. In the United States, where 90 food plants are pollinated by foragers, the harvests that depend on them are valued at 14 billion.
Should we incriminate pesticides? A new microbe? The multiplication of electromagnetic emissions disturbing the nanoparticles of magnetite present in the abdomen of the bees? "Rather a combination of all these agents," says Professor Joe Cummins of the University of Ontario. In a statement released this summer by the London-based NGO Institute of Science in Society (ISIS), known for its critical positions on the race for scientific progress, he says "clues suggest that parasitic fungi used to biological control, and some pesticides in the neonicotinoid group, interact with each other in synergy to cause bee destruction. " To avoid uncontrollable spreading, the new generations of insecticides coat the seeds to penetrate systemically into the whole plant, up to the pollen that the bees bring back to the hive, which they poison. Even at low concentrations, says the professor, the use of this type of pesticide destroys the immune defenses of bees. By cascade effect, intoxicated by the main active ingredient used - imidacloprid (cleared by Europe, but widely disputed on the other side of the Atlantic and in France, it is distributed by Bayer under different brands: Gaucho, Merit, Admire, Confidore, Hachikusan, Premise, Advantage ...), foragers would become vulnerable to the insecticidal activity of fungal pathogens sprayed in addition to the crops.
Apathetic foragers
As proof, believes the researcher, parasitic fungi of the Nosema family are present in quantities of swarms in the process of collapse where the foragers, apathetic, were found infected by half a dozen viruses and microbes.
Most of the time, these fungi are incorporated in chemical pesticides to control locusts (Nosema locustae), certain moths (Nosema bombycis) or corn borer (Nosema pyrausta). But they also travel along the routes opened by trade, like Nosema ceranae, a parasite carried by Asian bees that has contaminated its Western congeners killed in a few days.
This is what a Mariano Higes research team based in Guadalajara, a province east of Madrid known for being the cradle of the honey industry, has just demonstrated in a study conducted on the DNA of several bees. Spanish. "This parasite is the most dangerous of the family," he says. It can withstand both heat and cold and infects a swarm in two months. We believe that 50% of our hives are contaminated. But Spain, which has 2,3 millions of beehives, is home to a quarter of the bees in the European Union.
The cascading effect does not stop there: it would also play between these parasitic fungi and the biopesticides produced by genetically modified plants, says Professor Joe Cummins. It has just been shown that larvae of the borer infected with Nosema pyrausta have a sensitivity forty-five times higher to certain toxins than healthy larvae. "Regulators have treated the decline of bees with a narrow and narrow approach, ignoring the evidence that pesticides act in synergy with other devastating elements," he concludes. He is not alone in ringing the tocsin. Without massive prohibition of systemic pesticides, the planet is likely to witness another syndrome of collapse, fear scientists: that of the human species. Fifty years ago, Einstein had already insisted on the addictive relationship that binds foragers to man: "If the bee disappeared from the globe, he predicted, the man would have only four years to live . "
PAUL MOLGA