Bee death is closely linked to destructive agricultural practices. Newly-developed pesticides by Syngenta, Bayer and BASF are more and more powerful and they can cause acute and chronic poisoning with deadly consequences for individual bees and entire colonies (colony collapse disorder). In addition to pesticides, bees suffer from the effects of climate change, parasites and the increasingly monotonous landscapes created by industrial agriculture that lead to a loss of biodiversity, availability of food and undisturbed habitats. However, regardless of independent scientific evidence, beekeepers’ claims and civil society demands, the companies still promote these bee-killing pesticides and Syngenta, BASF and Bayer try to protect their profits. However, this can come at the cost of the bees, the environment and human food security and sovereignty. The only solution is to reduce and then eliminate such damaging pesticides by moving away from destructive industrial agriculture towards an ecological farming system.
Groups try to defend apiculture and raise awareness about the importance of pollinators in agriculture and ecosystems:
Bee Life has recently established an international alliance together with more than 45 beekeeping’ organisations, farmers associations, research institutes, citizen rights and environmental organisations called the “Alliance to Save the Bees and Agriculture”.
▻http://corporateeurope.org/agribusiness/2013/11/shame-bee-killers