1. The Issue:
Alarmist press releases:
The colony collapse disorder (CCD) is allegedly caused by GM crops
Read the article from the German weekly magazine DER SPIEGEL, the magazine maintains also a website in English: Der Spiegel Online International http://www.spiegel.de/ as a typical example of a sensational, unsubstantiated European press feature: In the headlines they ask: “Are GM Crops Killing Bees”? and the German Contribution talks in the headline about “Aids in the Bee Hive”. And instead of making the allegation that GM crops are the real culprit themselves, they interview a well known beekeeper and opponent of GM crops.

Latsch, G. (2007)
Aids im Bienenstock, Der Spiegel 12 pp 58-59 (Der Spiegel Article)
English: http://www.botanischergarten.ch/Bees/Latsch-CCD-Spiegel-2007.pdf

Latsch, G. (2007)
Electronic Source: Are GM Crops Killing Bees? , Der Spiegel Online International
published by: Der Spiegel Online March 22, 2007
Spiegel Online for free: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,473166,00.html

As a well known lobbyist for beekeepers Mr. Haefeker has numerous times spoken out against GM crops, in the Spiegel interview he does not make an exception:

“Walter Haefeker is a man who is used to painting grim scenarios. He sits on the board of directors of the German Beekeepers Association (DBIB) and is vice president of the European Professional Beekeepers Association. And because griping is part of a lobbyist’s trade, it is practically his professional duty to warn that “the very existence of beekeeping is at stake.”
The problem, says Haefeker, has a number of causes, one being the varroa mite, introduced from Asia, and another is the widespread practice in agriculture of spraying wildflowers with herbicides and practicing monoculture. Another possible cause, according to Haefeker, is the controversial and growing use of genetic engineering in agriculture.

” (Latsch, 2007a, b)
The Spiegel text is notoriously cited, here an example of a pseudoscientific article from the GMO-journal, discussing the CCD and trying to link it to GM crops without a shred of evidence, but nice citations of texts only publishing assumptions: http://www.botanischergarten.ch/Bees/Gitlin-CCD-GMOS-20090924.PDF

2. Summary
The assumption, that GM crops could be the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is not substantiated in any scientific documentation of peer reviewed journals. CCD happened decades before ever GM crops showed up. CCD has also recently been reported from many regions in Europe, where the acreage of GM crops up to now (2009) remains small.
There are a number of different hypothesis named as the cause of the CCD documented in the scientific literature, but GM crops per se can be ruled out as a cause and therefore can be labeled as anti-GM-crop scare propaganda. The possible causes – still not really nailed down as the main factor, are infections of parasites, viral infection, as a sum multiple stress factors as we will see below. The recent report for EFSA confirms this summary (Hendrikx et al., 2009). See the extended summary of this most comprehensive report published in December 2009 under 3.1.

To read more, click http://www.ask-force.org/web/AF-1-Colony-Collapse/AF-1-Colony-Collapse-20100222-web.pdf
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