This editorial was written by Stephen Cavallaro

Throughout South Georgia, honey production is a vibrant industry.

In Lowdnes County and every year the Honey Bee Festival, promotes appreciation for local manufacturing of honey and honey bee related products.

While consumers are increasingly mislead to purchase and consume “fake honey,” a pollen-less concoction of corn syrup and artificial sweeteners marked as real honey in laboratories is sold in grocery stores as an overpriced alternative to honey. Americans are being blinded by a mass genocide occurring across the nation.

The honey bee is quickly becoming extinct in the United States. Common species of honey bees in the county have declined 96 percent in recent decades. The cause of the decline is colony collapse disorder, an instance where bee colonies spontaneously vanish. The cause of the disorder is the increasing use of neonicotinoid insecticides.

These insecticides, typically used on corn crops, cause bee populations to dramatically fall causing beekeepers and farmers to grow concerned. 37 million bees were found dead this June in Elmwood, Calif. shortly after corn was planted near a series of six hundred hives. In the same month fifty thousand bees were found dead in a Wilsonville, Ore. parking lot. The culprit was a neonicotinoid insecticide known as “safari,” which was sprayed over trees in the area.

Why should the existence of honey bees be a concern when the art of fake honey making has been mastered and integrated into the diets of many Americans? Without the honey bee, 90 percent of global agriculture will be endangered. Humanity needs the pollinating bees to ensure a flourishing and stable food supply.

Congressmen have introduced the Saving America’s Pollinators Act of 2013. This legislation is a means to save the defenseless honey bees by suspending the use of the insecticides. If passed the act will call for a 2-year suspension of the insecticide and the effects will be analyzed. The European Union has also strove to enact legislation that combats neonicotinoid and ensures the livelihood of the bee.

Here at the Spectator we support legislation that ensures the safety of the honey bee and disprove of the use of neonicotinoid insecticide.

Humans and bees possess a vital mutually exclusive relationship. As we grow agricultural crops the bees acquire a food source in the form of nectar, and in return they pollinate the crops ensuring the vitality of the crop and the development of the seed, essentially our own existence.