The Bt in gmo corn is the same found in nature. The corn was modified, not the Bt.
Monsanto, the FDA and many other researchers have tested GMO crops for human safety, many times, all peer reviewed.
The same cannot be said for the anti-GMO camp.
http://sleuth4health.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/anti-gmo-movement-continues-to-disappoint/
There is a lot of research on colony collapse and on GMO plants and some of it intersects.
One of the reasons GMO is not implicated in colony collapse is because they have it worse in Europe where almost no GMO crops are grown (like .06% of total farm acreage).
The major (or only) gmo crops are corn, soybean, cotton, canola and sugar beets. How many of those are major food sources for bees. Cotton, soybeans and corn are BT crops, canola and beets are Round Up Ready crops.
I don’t think bees are being killed by an herbicide, do you?
And organic farmers use more BT and more applications of it than the GMO growers and for the last 70 years or so, so it’s doubtful that Bt is the problem.
I think CCD is probably a syndrome with multiple factors involving malnutrition (taking too much honey and replacing with cheap corn syrup due to high prices/demand for honey), travel stresses because there are fewer keepers traveling farther distances, plus the various parasites and diseases given a foothold because of poor general hive condition.
Valpal1 ~:” One of the reasons GMO is not implicated in colony collapse is because they have it worse in Europe where almost no GMO crops are grown (like .06% of total farm acreage).”
That would seem to bring the question to rest.
My only contact with ‘encapsolated Pericap M ‘ was when it was found in my hives.
I believe it to have weakend the hives vitality , and made it more suseptable to ‘Foulbrood’, a common bee disease.
The Bt the organic farmers use isn’t systemic to the entire corn plant. It’s (hopefully) washed off before the produce is consumed.
The GMO Bt corn contains Bt in every single cell throughout the whole plant. It can’t be washed off or removed with conventional treatment.
And, the whole notion that since it’s a protein it would be broken down and digested rather than absorbed in the gut is fallacy as well.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=bt+toxin+blood+pregnant
“Serum 3-MPPA and CryAb1 toxin were detected in PW, their fetuses and NPW.”
So, the Bt protein wasn’t digested and was, in fact, absorbed into the blood stream. Testing for this for long term effects? Not done.