This summer, I did a project for my Girl Scout Gold award focused on the importance of bees and bats and what we can do to help them. I chose these two creatures because they are both facing serious threats to their survival, are very important to the ecosystem, and are misunderstood and feared by many. For my project I...
All too often, the rules of pesticide regulation are cumbersome and make for slow change. But EPA had an opportunity to take swift, decisive action to protect bees — and they let it pass. Today, the agency announced it is denying the request by beekeepers to declare Bayer's pesticide, clothianidin, an "imminent hazard" to bees and will not be suspending the...
In March, PAN and Beyond Pesticides joined partners and beekeepers from around the country in filing a legal petition with EPA, calling on the agency to make use of its emergency powers to protect bees from Bayer's pesticide clothianidin. Sources tell us that in the next two weeks, EPA will decide whether or not bees dying off at unprecedented rates...
This week PAN released Honey Bees and Pesticides: State of the Science, a 22-page report on the factors behind colony collapse disorder (CCD) with a sustained focus on the particular role of pesticides. By collecting and presenting the findings of dozens of peer-reviewed scientific studies — including a series of damning studies published in the last year — we hope to provide...
No farmer in his or her right mind wants to poison pollinators. When I spoke with one Iowa corn farmer in January and told him about the upcoming release of a Purdue study confirming corn as a major neonicotinoid exposure route for bees, his face dropped with worn exasperation. He looked down for a moment, sighed and said, “You know,...
I am a third generation backyard gardener. It was in my father’s and my grandmother’s gardens that I learned to love many insects, most especially bees. Bees, my grandma said, were our partners in the garden. Without bees, the big apple tree outside her back door could bear no fruit. Without them, there would be no harvest of the vegetables...