A group of biologists claims they’ve found the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder — the devastating but mysterious phenomenon of rapidly disappearing honeybees. According to their research, published in PLoS One, the population collapse is caused by the combination of a virus and a fungus (Iridovirus and Microsporidian).

Mike Adams
Natural News
Friday, October 8, 2010

(NaturalNews) A group of biologists claims they’ve found the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder — the devastating but mysterious phenomenon of rapidly disappearing honeybees. According to their research, published in PLoS One, the population collapse is caused by the combination of a virus and a fungus (Iridovirus and Microsporidian).

From this discovery, the mainstream media is leaping to the conclusion that Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has been “solved.” Oh, it’s a virus and a fungus! Mystery solved!

This kind of thinking is quite characteristic of pseudoscientific western medicine, where everything comes down to naming the right virus, fungus or strain of bacteria discovered to be involved. But it completely misses the far more important question of why honeybees are suddenly more susceptible to such viral and fungal infections.

The real cause is even deeper

You see, the Iridovirus has been around for a long, long time. And the Microsporidian fungal strain has been around for probably even longer. So why didn’t honeybees get infected before?

Obviously something had to change over the last few years to create a vulnerability to infection that’s causing the bees to die off.

By comparison, in the human world, many people think the seasonal flu is caused by a flu virus. That’s not actually true, since the flu virus is circulating all year long. What truly causes “the flu” is when people become vitamin D deficient in the winter months, creating an immune system vulnerability that the circulating virus is now able to exploit in achieving a successful infection.

It is the changes in the terrain (the altered immune function caused by nutrient deficiency) that allows an ever-present virus to cause an infection in humans. That’s why people who have healthy nutrient levels can be exposed to seasonal flu viruses all year long and never get sick. (Go ahead, sneeze on me. I dare ya!)

Getting back to the honeybees, something has obviously changed that created a vulnerability that the virus and fungus can now exploit. So the real scientific question here is what caused the honeybee vulnerability to infection?

This is a question that’s one level deeper than what western scientists typically dare to ask. Even in medicine, doctors are happy to name a symptom as a disease — “high blood pressure” — without bothering to ask what caused the symptom in the first place. They actually have a disease called “high cholesterol.” Well that’s not a disease. That’s just an observation of a symptom. I could say the weather suffers from “a really windy day” but that tells me nothing about why the wind is actually blowing harder.

Similarly, “high blood pressure” is a meaningless disease label because it indicates nothing about the cause of it. To say that honeybees are being killed off by a virus is similarly meaningless because it doesn’t get to the root cause of the infection vulnerability.

Are they going to vaccinate the honeybees?

Now, according to the limited thinking models of western scientists, the “cure” for a viral infection is, of course, none other than a vaccine! By ignoring the root cause of the infection and focusing on the virus itself, they can promote a vaccine as the solution.

Hey, why not? They do it for HPV, flu season and soon even things like cancer!

This is precisely what goes on with HPV and the scare campaigns that try to recruit young girls into getting vaccinated with high-profit HPV vaccines. Although cervical cancer is actually caused by the lack of good immune health, it is blamed on the presence of a virus that can be targeted with a vaccine. But in HPV infections, the presence of the virus is actually more of a symptom of disease than the cause of it.

I can’t wait to see what the loony vaccine pushers are going to suggest for honeybees. Will they come up with little vaccine needles and set up fly-through honeybee vaccine clinics? Will they set up a Walgreens outside every honeybee colony and offer vaccine shots 24/7? Will they launch a new non-profit called “save the honeybees” and run a TV telethon to raise millions of dollars to fund “the search for the cure?

I can just see the pharmaceutical companies drooling over the possibilities here. If they can push this viral explanation of CCD, they could potentially start marketing vaccines for honeybees. And why stop there? Why not start discovering viral infections in wild birds and butterflies and promote vaccines for them, too? (No animal is safe from Big Pharma’s vaccine agenda, it seems… just ask your veterinarian.)

The real cause of Colony Collapse Disorder

So what’s the real cause of CCD? Well it’s certainly not the mere presence of a virus and a fungus. Those are just the symptoms of something else that’s gone wrong.

To really answer the question, you need to look at the environmental influences on honeybees. What has changed over the last few years that could create an infection vulnerability among honeybees?

Some of the more obvious factors to consider include:

• An increase in the number of genetically engineered crops that are pollinated by honeybees (http://www.naturalnews.com/025287_b…).

• An increase in the number of cell phone towers emitting radiation that might affect honeybees.

• An increase in the use of chemical pesticides on crops pollinated by honeybees (http://www.naturalnews.com/023679.html). And (http://www.naturalnews.com/028429_c…).

• Increased pollution of streams and rivers (water sources for honeybees) with trace levels of pharmaceutical chemicals.

• Increased air pollution and coal-fired power plant emissions.

• Changes in the atmosphere which may impact the amount of solar radiation reaching honeybees.

• Lack of genetic diversity among honeybees, creating an “in-breeding” genetic vulnerability to disease.

… and so on. It’s not difficult to come up with a list of possible factors that are likely be the real root causes of CCD.

But I suspect that western scientists, who are typically unwilling to consider environmental factors for just about everything (just look at the cancer industry!) will ignore these root causes and focus on the viral infections. And that will send them down the path of trying to come up with a honeybee vaccine rather than addressing the real root causes of disease.

They’re doing precisely the same thing in humans, of course. Instead of addressing the real root causes of disease — widespread consumption of processed junk foods, chemicals in personal care products, lack of exercise, and so on — they focus on the presence of a virus and the intervention of a vaccine.

Vaccines are useful tools for simple minds. They’re convenient for unintelligent scientists who are incapable of looking beyond the obvious. But they don’t really do much for people. The scientific evidence, by the way, says that seasonal flu vaccines don’t really work at all (http://www.naturalnews.com/029641_v…). But that doesn’t stop superstitious scientists from “believing” in them.

I can’t wait to see what sort of vaccines they’re going to come up with to “treat” the honeybees while ignoring the real root causes of CCD. This will go down in history as yet another striking demonstration of human scientific stupidity while the honeybees continue to die off.

Maybe they’ll come up with psychiatric drugs to treat the honeybees. That’s actually the subject of a satire article I wrote back in 2007 called Breakthrough honeybee drugs to treat Colony Collapse Disorder (http://www.naturalnews.com/021857_h…).

There’s also a CounterThink cartoon on this topic that we published in 2008: http://counterthink.com/Honeybees_G…

Sources for this story include:
Iridovirus and Microsporidian Linked to Honey Bee Colony Decline
http://www.plosone.org/article/info…