Reclaiming the future of food and farming

GE corn & sick honey bees - what's the link?

Heather Pilatic's picture




Honey bees caught in the cross-fire



  • fly through clothianidin-contaminated planter dust;




How corn farming went off the rails





... and in the space of a decade, U.S. corn acreage undergoes a ten-fold increase in average insecticide use. By 2007, the average acre of corn has more than three systemic insecticides — both Bttraits and a neonicotinoid. Compare this to the early 1990s, when only an estimated 30-35% of all corn acreage were treated with insecticides at all.


Enter fungicides



Back to the bees. Neonicotinoids are known to synergize with certain fungicides to increase the toxicity of the former to honey bees up to  1,000-fold, and fungicides may be key culprits in undermining beneficial bee microbiota that do things like make beebread nutritious and support immune response against gut pathogens like Nosema.Fungicide use in corn is likewise destroying beneficial fungi in many cropping systems, and driving the emergence of resistant strains.



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Peregrin's picture
Peregrin /

Thank you very much, Heather Pilatic, for this eye-opening and excellent article.

Hudbamurph's picture
Hudbamurph /

Just a quick question/comment...your article suggests that if pesticides/fungicides were not used (including seeds not being coated with nicotinoids), but instead kept IPM (integrated pest management) as a biocontrols, then the GM seeds would not have affected the honeybee this right? (Full disclosure..I teach ethics and biotechnology courses...questions such as these are central to our interests)...We are very interested in examining whether or not some GMO's are ethically responsible (for example, peanuts engineered to OMIT genes responsible for protein allergies v.s. ADDING new genes...or, genes for salt/drought tolerance...)...comments appreciated...

Carrie's picture
Carrie /

Thank you very much for the information, I am a hobby bee keeper and interested in this subject. Your article mentions corn: "grown from seeds treated or genetically engineered to express three different insecticides", but the Purdue study you mention together with the GE crop reference in your article seems only to have studied neonicotinoid treated maize - corn whose seeds were treated topically - as far as I can tell. So I'm trying to understand whether anyone has studied the GE crops  - I think those are the ones you call "Bt–expressing variants aimed at controlling the European Corn Borer and corn root worm" - ?, as being part of what is harming bees ?