Without honeybees, many of the crops America plants would never make it to harvest.  Pollinating crops is so important that farmers are importing bees from outside the country.  They have to import the bees because an FDA approved pesticide has destroyed much of the domestic bee population.

According to Evaggelos Vallianatos in Truthout, about 60 percent of honeybee populations are being lost each year due to a type of pesticide used on crops the bees are expected to pollinate.   The pesticide is actually a nerve gas that was developed for possible chemical warfare and was licensed for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1974.

The pesticide is actually a nerve gas, parathion that is “trapped into nylon bubbles the size of pollen particles.”  These “bubbles” are time release capsules similar to time release medicine that people take.  In this case, the parathion is released over a period of days rather than hours.

When honeybees land on plants that have been sprayed with microencapsulated parathion, several things can happen.  The honeybees may die immediately or may pollinate other plants with the toxic pollen.  The bees can become disoriented and not find their way back to their hive.

If the honeybees do make it back after contact with the parathion, they carry it into the hive and it gets into the wax and honey.  When the parathion gets into beeswax and honey, it can get into products that we buy from our local food store.

Vallianatos quoted several disturbing statistics.

S. E. McGregor, a honeybee expert who documented that about a third of what we eat benefits from honeybee pollination. This includes vegetables, oilseeds and domesticated animals eating bee-pollinated hay.

In 2007, the value of food dependent on honeybees was $15 billion in the United States.

Bees are trucked all over the country to pollinate farm crops.  In 2006, the US National Research Council warned about the decline in bee populations.  That decline has led farmers to rent imported bees to pollinate their crops and has caused beekeepers to purchase bees from as far away as Australia.

Without bees, farmers would lose about 90 different crops that depend on bee pollination.  Parathion is not only having a damaging affect on the bee population but may be affecting the food we eat and us in ways we haven’t yet discovered.

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Entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 5:56 pm under Science and technology.

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