Farm Babe: How GMOs help bees
September 18, 2017
From: AgDaily
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The fact is that, according to the USDA, the honeybee population is actually at a 20-year high. Colony collapse disorder was an issue that had originally affected the bees in 2006, however much has been done to alleviate this problem. There were many factors that contributed to their decline, such as habitat loss, varroa mites, bad management, chemicals, and predators.
The anti-GMO crowd likes to tout GMOs as a huge factor to bee death, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that GMOs allow farmers to use substantially less chemicals, and it is thanks to modern crop genetics that farmers are using fewer and safer chemicals than ever before. Before GMOs, corn and soybean farmers had to spray insecticide, but thanks to the Bt genetics, insecticides are often no longer needed. GMOs usually possess traits of herbicide tolerance, but herbicides harm plants, not insects. Insecticides are used to control insects.
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