Cool Science

Nobody knows what's going on with bees. Actually - that's not true. It's trickier than that. The problem of massive deaths of hives and of millions of bees was first reported by a hometown beekeeper right here in central PA and was suddenly recognized as a major national crisis. What I can glean is that the point of conensus is that bees are experiencing multiple environmental stresses. From there, things get murky and if I think there was a need for a Congressional probe, this is it, because in the spirit of 'X-Files' I think the truth is out there.

Kudos to wikipedia for an interesting and useful article on this problem. One of the clearer discoveries is of an imported virus. But pesticides are also suspected and appear to represent a point of departure in how nation's regulate on this problem (not to mention being fodder for suspicion on how the crisis is being investigated). The case for blaming certain pesticides has real merit, has led to emergency bans of certain pesticides in Europe, but would be unpopular since US farming sides strongly with the use of pesticides.

Trying to find out if pesticides are playing a role is tremendously difficult. As a chemist, I raise this to emphasize my point that chemists have the most respect for chemicals; and every year when I beg Jenn to let me spray our damn broad-leaf weeds she reminds me that the world is already saturated in herbicides so why add to it and then I come back to earth and agree. We continue to introduce non-native chemicals into huge ecologies with no idea of what the long term effects are.

When DDT was first released, farmers applied it to crops at levels 10-100 fold more than recommended because it was so good. It was a miracle insect killer and all respect for the power of new chemicals was thrown out the door. Despite the debacle of DDT, we seem to have learned little. Worldwide, farmers demand the next best additive or chemical, certain that big corporations and the feds will look out for them. But when we design pesticides of unprecedented strength and potency we must expect serious consequences because this is precisely the situation where we will not be able to 'expect the unexpected'.

Chemicals are wonderful and beautiful and improve our lives in countless ways, but blind faith in them is stupid. It's time in this country that we changed our views towards saturating our land with non-native chemicals whose long-term impacts are not known.