Häagen-Dazs battles honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder
Funds research into apiarian apocalypse
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Ice cream manufacturer Häagen-Dazs is stumping up a $250,000 research grant to university researchers in California and Pennsylvania to probe the cause of "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD) - the unexplained sudden disappearance of millions of honeybees which has affected hives around the world since 2006.
As we reported last year, the symptoms of CCD are normally evident between late summer and early spring. In the US, colonies were hit as older bees died, "leaving behind the queen and young workers not yet ready to forage for pollen and nectar and insufficient in number to maintain the colony".
Quite what causes this is uncertain. Scientists have suggested a range of possible factors, from "harmful pesticides and increased solar radiation through ozone thinning, to falling queen fertility and use of unauthorised bee treatments", while US researchers last April fingered the single-celled fungus Nosema ceranae as a possible culprit.
Whatever the cause, the implications are serious, since honeybees are essential to the pollination of food crops. Katti Pien of Häagen-Dazs said "almost 40 per cent of the brand's flavours were dependent on bee pollination and could be threatened by CCD".
The Financial Times adds that bees "pollinate ingredients in about a third of the food consumed in the US".
Pien concluded: "Ice cream is a small part of it. The bigger issue is the food supply for the whole country." ®
COMMENTS
Ah! The GM crops, eh? Problem: SOLVED.
Honey bees and a lot of other creatures are having weird troubles, irregardless of our opinions of GM crops or inhumane bee-treatment. We are, you know, in the middle of a mass extinction. Frogs are vanishing, newts, salamanders, lots of birds en route to extinction, etc. Rather than unproductive bitching and moaning wouldn't it be lovely to frame this issue in a larger context? Because in terms of species survival things seem to be getting worse as time goes by.
@Karl Lattimer
"FYI - Monsanto actually genetically modified the crops to use FEWER pesticides, and FEWER growth agents to produce better crops..."
I do not think you are familiar with Roundup (a herbicide). "Roundup Ready" (TM Monsanto) crops are sold with an eye to farmers spraying as much roundup as possible on the crops to keep all but the crop quite dead, none of the marketing or users ever say anything about reducing use of the product.
I watch early morning TV before going to work (all the commercials aired that early here are aimed at farmers) and get inundated with Monsanto commercials in the midwest.
@Karl Lattimer
"The idea was to cut costs by giving them a genetic resistance to insects."
And perhaps such a resistance to insects is causing problems for the bees, which IIRC are insects
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