Vanishing Bees by Suryanarayanan and Kleinman

Temible and since now unstoppable, everything started in the USA. It was 2005 when US beekepers noticed that their bees were massively dying for unknown reasons. The illness was called later Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD. Vanishing Bees

by Suryanarayanan and Kleinman treat the topic seen it under various perspectives. Governments, beekeepers companies productors of pesticides  Published  by Rutgers Press this one is a valuable book if you want to understand the problem.

Sure: keeping bees healthy and in a good environment, so not close to factories, not close to pollution or places where farmers add pesticides means the best choice. And honey, I do pay a lot of attention at what I eat, where it is from, etc, pays.

Once as tell this book, a beekeper had chosen two places where to keep during the easter time the various hives and he noticed that a group of bees, once he returned home with all of them were much more healthier than the group exposed at pollution and unclear environment's conditions.

Problems of insecticides, DDT, (appeared during the last second world war conflict) meant to the beekepers a danger and beekepers since there started to fight a personal pacific protest with these companies, launching various and diversified alarms because they saw that their bees reacted in worrying ways at the arrival of pesticides.

Beekepers observing their bees, noted a "mutation" of the condition of life of bees, with, at the end these consequences. Colony Collapse Disorder is a multifactorial illness, but mainly caused, add beekepers by pollution, use of pesticides.

But...not all beekepers agree with this firm position of the most, regarding Colony Collapse Disorder as you will read and so it is difficult to find a solution at this big problem. Yes, because bees play the most important and crucial part during spring and summer-time: the one of impollinating the world and in this way, continuing the humanity of the Planet, keeping it alive and healthy. A world without bees would mean rapidly a world without a lot of creatures, a lot of flowers, plants but also without men.

Prince Edwards Island, Canada, the land where was born mrs. Montgomery the creator of Anne of Green Gables is also famous for potatoes. They organize festivals of potatoes,

they have a museum of potatoes, tons of yummy recipes all for you with potatoes. There is a big celebration of this tuber and a real veneration. What happened in 2000? There was a strange and abrupt departure of a lot of bees in the island and beekepers started to search for the cause. It happened that some farmers had used on the fields where they planted potatoes the so-called Admire by Bayer. Expanded since 1995 when the Canadian Government permitted it, this chemical substance, imidacloprid started to have a great success and was tried also in PEI with funest results for the bees. Bees are not attracted by the flowers of potatoes, but some of this chemical substance could be found into nearby ditches and so in the nectar and pollen of the goldenrod and clover plants. Not only: the amount of imidacloprid was incredibly elevated. This chemical also, remained per various years in the soil.

Beekepers asked for a moratorium on Admire.

Bayer made its own studies and the company is of course involved in the great debate that there is regarding Colony Collapse Disorder and how it can be possible to arrest it. Sure: the multi-factoriality of the disease, Varroa for example can be another co-cause, keeping bees weak, but also climate change are not helpful. Sure: a world without pesticides, a cleaned world would mean a simpler existence not just for bees but also for the human race. 

Highly recommended.

I thank Eurospan and Rutgers University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori