# And now this.... GM bees.



## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/...uilding-a-better-bee?utm_source=pocket-newtab


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## JUGGERNAUT (Aug 26, 2019)

One part of this article that grabbed me is the genetic pool. So if say in 20 years I have natural bees and a natural queen mates with a GMO bee, does her offspring mean i will get sued for stealing the GMO technology? Kinda like Monsanto did with their corn genetics? I'm pretty sure whoever comes up with this Frankenbee will make it proprietary and go after people. First it was big Ag. Then Big genetics to make Ag even bigger. Next will be big polinators buisness. Just like in all the previous mentioned the little guys die out and commonsenseless college people will be in it for the money, not the morals.


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## AHudd (Mar 5, 2015)

I read that earlier today. Strange days, indeed.

Alex


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

JUGGERNAUT said:


> One part of this article that grabbed me is the genetic pool. So if say in 20 years I have natural bees and a natural queen mates with a GMO bee, does her offspring mean i will get sued for stealing the GMO technology? Kinda like Monsanto did with their corn genetics? I'm pretty sure whoever comes up with this Frankenbee will make it proprietary and go after people. First it was big Ag. Then Big genetics to make Ag even bigger. Next will be big polinators buisness. Just like in all the previous mentioned the little guys die out and commonsenseless college people will be in it for the money, not the morals.


Thing is, this never happened. In both cases where Monsanto sued farmers (Bowman and Schmeiser), the farmers had knowingly and deliberately planted and propagated patented seeds without paying the licencing fee. The farmers stole, and did so deliberately and knowing full well what they were doing. The anti-GMO crowd avoids that little detail as it ruins their david-vs-golliath myth. 



JUGGERNAUT said:


> One part of this article that grabbed me is the genetic pool. So if say in 20 years I have natural bees and a natural queen mates with a GMO bee, does her offspring mean i will get sued for stealing the GMO technology?


It depends. If you knowingly & deliberately propagate a patented GMO, than you are guilty of patent infringement and/or theft. Accidental cross-breeding (cross-pollination, etc) is explicitly excluded as an actionable event, meaning that if it happens and you have no idea it happened, you are legally protected. Cross pollination (especially of corn, which is a broadcast pollinator) happens all the time, and no one gets sued over it. It wouldn't even be possible to regulate that.

As for the article, it would have been nice if the author had made at least a passing attempt at A) learning the science, B) reporting it accurately, and C) tried to not write a 10-page screed of scaremongering. He/she couldn't even get the difference between gene editing and transgenics right :kn:


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## JUGGERNAUT (Aug 26, 2019)

Wow really?! Oh the things I dont know and learn from. GAH I love this forum. Thanks for the clarification SuiGeneris, I was a little fear mongered, but more upset about the info I read. Now that you made it more clear for me I am not upset about all of it. I generally dislike GOV things like that. I try not to dwell on that crap but sometimes i need a rant. lol.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>So if say in 20 years I have natural bees and a natural queen mates with a GMO bee, does her offspring mean i will get sued for stealing the GMO technology? Kinda like Monsanto did with their corn genetics? 

Yes. 

Monsanto likes to act like that didn’t happen but the farmers tell a very different story. In fact they say they notified Monsanto when a powerline easement was sprayed with roundup and the Canola there didn’t die. He asked Monsanto to get their plants off of his property. So Monsanto sued him. 

Then they started suing corn farmers and soybean farmers even if they never bought Monsanto seed. 

Who are you going to believe? I’m sure the court transcripts should clarify things some.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

When I worked for a big ag firm 20 years ago, we were told that cross pollination of Roundup ready soy beans with regular soy beans meant that what was then Monsanto owned those beans that showed the resistant traits, even if the farmer had never bought the patented beans. I doubt much has changed.


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## Bdfarmer555 (Oct 7, 2015)

Biggest thing to me is that they didn't invent or create the genes... they moved them from somewhere to another place. 

Some of the research was done at universities, and most that did research got a new building that they named after an executive, or the company, or a subsidiary, etc. 

I don't see how you get a patent for something that you didn't create, you only used it in a new way and place. I realize extensive R&D dollars were invested, with the promise of a payback, but the patent variety protection act has set the stage for abuse, imo.


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

Bdfarmer555 said:


> Biggest thing to me is that they didn't invent or create the genes... they moved them from somewhere to another place.


Most of the stuff reported on by the reporter wasn't even transgenics (genes moved from one organism to another), but rather gene editing (where existing genes are rendered inactive). 



Bdfarmer555 said:


> Some of the research was done at universities, and most that did research got a new building that they named after an executive, or the company, or a subsidiary, etc.


Almost all the research is done at unis or NGO's. None of them in the article received buildings, money or other compensation from industry, as is disclosed in the disclosure sections of the relevant publications. 

And even if they did, this is nothing more than a red herring - it doesn't change their results or the applicability of the technology.



Bdfarmer555 said:


> I don't see how you get a patent for something that you didn't create, you only used it in a new way and place. I realize extensive R&D dollars were invested, with the promise of a payback, but the patent variety protection act has set the stage for abuse, imo.


Generally speaking, you cannot get a patent on a naturally existing gene. You can patent organisms you've genetically modified, and you can patent applications (e.g. transferring resistance genes to an organism to allow a specific pesticide to be used on it).


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

JWPalmer said:


> When I worked for a big ag firm 20 years ago, we were told that cross pollination of Roundup ready soy beans with regular soy beans meant that what was then Monsanto owned those beans that showed the resistant traits, even if the farmer had never bought the patented beans. I doubt much has changed.


That was then case (the patent has aged out). However, Monsanto doesn't own the resultant seeds (e.g. the farmer can still sell them for feed/etc), nor can Monsanto sue them for having the genetics present in their seeds.

The only exception to that is if the farmer with the cross-pollinated seeds replants those seeds with the deliberate purpose of growing a crop with the GMO trait. Sale of cross-polinated seeds, or accidental replanting (spillage, etc) or cross-pollinated seeds is not legally actionable.


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

Michael Bush said:


> >So if say in 20 years I have natural bees and a natural queen mates with a GMO bee, does her offspring mean i will get sued for stealing the GMO technology? Kinda like Monsanto did with their corn genetics?
> 
> Yes.
> 
> ...


I was unable to find any legitimate documentation showing this to be the case - e.g. court filings or reports from non-activist sources. I challenge you to provide links to the relevant court decisions or other documents showing this. In fact, your exact claim has been tested in court, and the court ruled that not one of Monsanto's ~700 lawsuits and out-of-course settlements involved farmers who unwittingly had patented seed on their property (both GMO and non-GMO variants): http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/images/stories/opinions-orders/12-1298.Opinion.6-6-2013.1.PDF


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

You can't get sued for AP (Adventitious Presence). At the same time you have to be careful about it though as the traits may have restrictions. For example, if you deal with a distributor or grain elevator that may deal only with non gmo grain and their customers expect as much. Knowingly propagating and selecting for the traits is where people got into trouble or buying bags of bulk grain from elevators knowing full well it was traited material and not for planting is where people were getting sued over. MB's story may have some validity but it typically played out like this... well, you didn't know you had AP... but then why is 99% of your field traited.....


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

JRG13 said:


> You can't get sued for AP (Adventitious Presence). At the same time you have to be careful about it though as the traits may have restrictions. For example, if you deal with a distributor or grain elevator that may deal only with non gmo grain and their customers expect as much. Knowingly propagating and selecting for the traits is where people got into trouble or buying bags of bulk grain from elevators knowing full well it was traited material and not for planting is where people were getting sued over. MB's story may have some validity but it typically played out like this... well, you didn't know you had AP... but then why is 99% of your field traited.....


Exactly. We've grown both GMO (from KWS) and non-GMO sugar beets on our farm* and have had cases of GMO beets growing from spillage in non-GMO fields. Not only did KWS not give a ****, they helped identify the contaminated area so that we could separate the beets so that they wouldn't go to the wrong processor. Contrary to what people seem to believe, these companies are not monsters and in most cases are an absolute pleasure to work with. Monsanto (now Bayer) knows we have a dozen or so seed suppliers to work with - it is not in their interest to treat us poorly or to work against us. Steal from them, and yes, they will come down on your with an army or lawyers - same as any other big firm. But work with them honesty and they'll treat you well.

*FWIW, my extended family owns/farms 10,000 hectares (~24,000 acres) of combined crop/range land as a farmers collective (essentially as a corporation, although legally there are some differences). I do not live or work on the farm itself, but I am part of the team that negotiates our annual seed purchases and receive some of the profits in return.


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## JUGGERNAUT (Aug 26, 2019)

All I'm concerned with is the color GREEN. More to the point of getting legally robbed by big companies. Big companies are mostly concerned with the GREEN. Their corporate big bosses and lawyers only truly care about money. Its been seen by articles, many articles about anything can be traced to money. A good decision here, a bad decision there, ALL can be traced to money. Most are also traced to stupidity and negligence, but money makes america go round. Majority of CEO's arent really interested in much else when it comes down to it. 

Just how I feel about it from how I've read people through the years. You know, that feeling you get from people. Im pretty in tune with that. It sucks. lol.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Hey guys and gals, let's keep this thread about GMO's and not get sidetracked on a money tangent. Money is a good thing. I wish I had more of it.


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## JUGGERNAUT (Aug 26, 2019)

JWPalmer said:


> Hey guys and gals, let's keep this thread about GMO's and not get sidetracked on a money tangent. Money is a good thing. I wish I had more of it.


True sir. I do as well but for me its a moral thing. lots of people do their thing just for money and aren't happy, probably cause they screw over other people or get screwed over to make that money. I'd rather be poor and happy than rich and hate life. Id say im closer to the latter. lol.
But back to the GMO, when I think about a GMO bee it sounds cool! The perfect bee? I dunno though. Lots of honey and nice temperment? If it works and doesnt turn out like AHB then cool. I just dunno if id want to get into it being that its not naturally bread like livestock and crops once were. I guess we'll see in the years to come...


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

JUGGERNAUT said:


> I just dunno if id want to get into it being that its not naturally bread like livestock and crops once were. I guess we'll see in the years to come...


There is nothing natural about the way that our current non-GMO crops and livestock have been bread. You'd be hard pressed to find anything on your table, farm or even backyard garden that doesn't have radiation/chemical mutagenesis, induced polypolidy, interspecies hybridisation, line breeding, marker-assisted breeding, reverse breeding, or double-haploids in its breeding history. None of those happen in nature, and all but two (mutagenesis and double-haploids) have been used by humans (largely unwittingly) for millennia.

About the only thing different about GMO's is that GMO produces very small, specific changes to the genome, while "classical" breeding are relatively uncontrolled and generate enormous, unknown changes to the genome. The changes GMO's create are incredibly specific - in some cases (gene editing) to literally a single DNA base.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Heres a 6 year old thread with lots of hand wringing and predictions about the prospect of patented GMO bees. Of course nothing has come of it....
https://www.beesource.com/forums/sh...g-On-Varroa-Mite-Solutions&highlight=monsanto


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## JUGGERNAUT (Aug 26, 2019)

I've never heard of mutagenesis and double-haploids. I need to get educated on those. As far as breading goes we got to what we had before GMO's through milleniums of just breading. It worked out for our ancestors and they were primitive. Now we take what they created and all the work they did somewhat naturally and we do more through genetics. Maybe thats our fate and the next evolution. What do these mods truly do to us when we eat them though? How ,if any, would GMO bees affect the honey or flowers they pollinate. SuiGeneris you sound very qualified in this field. I know nothing about such things. Way beyond my scope of understanding. But I love to learn. Pleases learn me! Please! lol.


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

JUGGERNAUT said:


> I've never heard of mutagenesis and double-haploids.


Mutagenesis is you nail the seeds with a s***-ton of radiation or mutagenic chemical (usually to the point where 60-70% of the seeds die), grow out the mutants that survive, and then try to cross out as many of the tens of thousands of mutations present to keep the few you want. This tech has been around since the 1920's. Double-haploids is a bit harder to explain...essentially for you force the sperm/egg (pollen/seed) to double their chromasomes and then breed with that, giving you offspring with either 3 or 4 (instead of the normal 2) copies of each chromasome. That tech's a bit newer - invented in the 1960's, but not really used until the 80's.



JUGGERNAUT said:


> As far as breading goes we got to what we had before GMO's through milleniums of just breading. It worked out for our ancestors and they were primitive.


Except that it didn't work out. History is filled with repeated famines and agricultural collapses. These are the number one reason why cultures have gone extinct. The high cultures of the bronze age (Sumaria, Babylon, etc) all died because of this, as have hundreds of societies since. Even in the modern era its an issue - as examples the Irish potato famine of the mid-1800's, and the collapse of Somalia in the 1990's. Traditional agriculture is many things, but reliable is not one of them.



JUGGERNAUT said:


> What do these mods truly do to us when we eat them though?


When consumed they act as nutrition. For transgenic foods, the transgenes are simply DNA, which is present in every piece of food you've ever consumed. When you eat DNA It gets digested, and your body then uses it to make more DNA or breaks it down further for energy. Those transgenes genes in turn encode proteins, which are what do the actual work. And those proteins are digested when you eat them, just as is all the other proteins present in every bite of food you've consumed. Neither the DNA, nor the resulting proteins, make it past your stomach intact. From the perspective of your body, a transgenic organism is inseparable from a non-transgenic organism.

Nor do "unexpected" things happen when you transfer genes between organisms. One of the nice things about all life on earth sharing a singular evolutionary history stemming from a single common ancestor is that all life on earth uses the same biology. Thus, a gene from a human works the same in a cow, a plant, a yeast or a bacteria. You can take that gene and know that it will do the same thing, in the same way, regardless of what organism you plug it into. This is science, not magic. If a gene codes for a protein which recognised and cleaves glyphosate (roundup) into an inactive form, that is all that gene can and will do, regardless of what organism you put it into. That is the joy of how biology, biochemistry and physics come together to create life.

When it comes to gene-edited organisms, the differences are even less. Gene editing is literally a way to remove specific genes from an organisms - nothing is added, only unwanted genes are removed.

As for how I know this, while I grew up on farms (and "farm" as a member of my families cooperative/my wife is a farmer), in my day job I run a biomedical research lab and am a uni prof. While our work does not have anything to do with creating transgenic therapies, we do use transgenics all the time as a research tool. I have, conservatively, 400 bacterial strains carrying human genes for various research purposes. I also teach a course where a major aspect it teaching students the basics of microbial transgenics and their creation/use in industry, and have also done a little bit of work as a contractor in the commercial fermentation world (some of which involves transgenics).


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## JUGGERNAUT (Aug 26, 2019)

Wow. It truly does amaze me how we can do all this. Mostly because its beyond what I have learned. As far as the Mutagenesis, doesn't the radiation leach through from seed to food to seed? Or is it short half life radiation source.


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

They use gamma rays or beta radiation; gamma rays are simply high-energy light and therefore cannot persist (they are absorbed by the seeds and the surrounding container). Beta particles (high-energy electrons or anti-electrons) are slightly longer lived, but are so reactive that in the presence of matter (e.g. seeds, atmosphere, etc), that they get consumed quickly.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

The distinction is the SOURCE of the radiation (radioactive material) VS the RADIATION itself. The radiation, as SuiGeneris pointed out, passed through it. It does not cause the seed to become a SOURCE of radiation.


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## JUGGERNAUT (Aug 26, 2019)

All I know about radiation is through weapons and reactors. Mostly through youtube documentarys. So is the radiation equvelant to a chest x-ray? Short half life if it is absorbed? I know in reactors there are things like graphite, water, other metals and materials that become radioactive. How is this different.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

> So is the radiation equvelant to a chest x-ray? Short half life if it is absorbed?

No. You are missing the point. Radioactive MATERIAL has a half life. It is radioactive because it is the SOURCE of radiation. X-Rays are just rays, not the material. They travel about the speed of light and are gone as soon as they have passed through. They are like "light" (another radiation) in that they are not a material and therefore have no half life.


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## SuiGeneris (Feb 13, 2018)

You are confounding "radiation" and "radioactive". Radioactive things - e.g. reactors, etc - release radiation. They exhibit a half -life - e.g. how long it takes before the radioactive item releases half of its radiation. If you contaminate something with a radioactive material, that object then becomes radioactive and emits radiation. Radiation on its own (with a few rare exceptions) cannot render a non-radioactive material radioactive. Essentially, radiation is energy, radioactivity is the source of that energy.

In terms of seed mutagenesis (as well as gamma-irradiated foods), gamma-emitting substances such as cobalt-60 are used. The cobalt is in a sealed container, and the gamma rays are emitted from that to mutate the seeds (or steralise the food).


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## JUGGERNAUT (Aug 26, 2019)

Ok I think I'm starting to get it. So if the seed came in direct contact with the Radioactive material it could become radioactive. But since the source is sealed and the radiation passes through the vessel and the seed it won't emit radiation. Correct?


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

JUGGERNAUT said:


> Ok I think I'm starting to get it. So if the seed came in direct contact with the Radioactive material it could become radioactive. But since the source is sealed and the radiation passes through the vessel and the seed it won't emit radiation. Correct?


Correct.
The radiation is a type of electromagnetic waves of a certain wave lengths (just like visible light waves, infrared waves, ultraviolet waves, x-ray waves, etc).
Radiation material is some matter that emits the radiation waves.
See that?

The type of radiation discussed probably technically means - gamma rays or the like (something similar to what the atomic bomb explosion will emit).
The firefighters on Chernobyl got two different problems:
1)they got exposed to radiation waves from all the radioactive materials around them
2)they themselves got some of the radioactive materials onto them and even inside them too (by inhaling) and, thus, themselves became sources of the radiation.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

The seed "becomes radioactive" because it has radioactive material stuck to it. The seed is still not radioactive, but now has some radioactive material with it.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Michael Bush said:


> The seed "becomes radioactive" because it has radioactive material stuck to it. The seed is still not radioactive, but now has some radioactive material with it.


Exactly and straightforward.


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