Glyphosate/RoundUp kills bees, the proof

For years glyphosate, or RoundUp as Monsanto's biggest pesticide seller is called, has been seen as responsible for the death of several non-pest species, most notably bees.

And yes, if bees die out, we humans are screwed too.

Of course Monsanto fought back, saying that their (released) studies have found no proof of that (duh!)

But now it looks like scientists have finally found the mechanism that links RoundUp (and possibly other neonicotinoids) to dead bees.

The main point in RoundUps defense was always that it does not affect bees directly. It does, however, affect the microbiome in bees guts.

As an herbicide, glyphosate works by blocking an enzyme called EPSP synthase in plants and microbes needed to create aromatic amino acids like phenylalanine and tryptophan. Glyphosate doesn’t kill microbes, but it keeps them from growing, and most bacteria found in bee guts carry the gene for the enzyme.

And what does that mean for the bees?

The team, led by Nancy Moran, an expert in bee biology at the University of Texas, Austin, treated hundreds of worker bees with glyphosate at concentrations they might encounter while foraging near agricultural fields, reintroduced them into their hive, and then analyzed the gut bacteria of treated and untreated bees in the hive. After three days, the researchers found that the abundance of some of the eight predominant species fell in treated bees compared with untreated ones, suggesting that exposure to glyphosate changed the composition of the bees’ guts. When challenged with a common bee pathogen, the worker bees exposed to glyphosate died at higher rates than unexposed bees, suggesting that the bacterial shake-up made the insects more vulnerable.

Or in other words, we get results similar to those we found in the last decade: That bee hives get ill more often and more serious, and that some hives can get completely destroyed by e.g. the Varroa mite.

That is the third or fourth devastating news for Monsanto right after they were finally bought by giant Bayer in June. What a coincidence! As if someone had known it...

source

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A LOT less RC usage!